U.S. military commanders said they suspected that some leaders had headed to Hussein's hometown of Tikrit for a final bloody showdown and that others had fled to Syria. Dogged fighting by Iraqi forces at Qaim, near the Syrian border, has led some U.S. and British officials to suspect that Iraqi troops there may be protecting important Iraqi leaders or family members, although it was not clear who.
As Baghdad slipped from Hussein's control yesterday, covert CIA and Special Operations teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi president and senior leaders discovered that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders, troops and high-level government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts. Even the information minister, who had been briefing journalists with outlandish versions of daily events, did not go to work.
"All of a sudden, all communications ceased and the regime didn't come to work," was the way one senior administration official described what happened in Baghdad. "Even the minders for [foreign] journalists did not go to work," he added.
If Hussein is alive, he and his loyalists may have sought refuge in Tikrit, a town about 90 miles north of Baghdad on the low bluffs overlooking the Tigris River. "We certainly are focused on Tikrit," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of the U.S. Central Command told reporters yesterday, " to prevent the regime from being able to use it as a place to command and control, to restore command and control, or to hide."
Some Iraq analysts, such as former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, said Hussein is highly conscious of how he will be perceived by history. Therefore, he would be unlikely to leave Iraq, and would probably prefer to make a last stand in Tikrit.
The Battle of Tikrit. That's certainly better than the possibiity that they slipped into Syria. I wonder how much fight they have left, and whether they have the will now that country is already lost.
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