Robin Moore - Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

To SFC Bill Bennett, MSG Kevin Morehead, CSM Jerry Wilson, and all of the hundreds of brave servicemen and -women who have given their lives during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and the Global War on Terror.

To those who have fought for it, life has a special flavor that the protected will never know.

Motto of the Special Operations Association

Dedicated to those who have fought for freedom in Iraq, and in places far flung and unsung. Too many of you have paid the ultimate price.

This book is also dedicated to those who are still Missing in Action, from Mad Dog Jerry Shriver to Scott Speicher, and all the warriors before and after.

You are not forgotten.

FOREWORD BY MARK VARGAS

Just after midnight on an early December morning at Baghdad International Airport, my colleague Peter Lofgren and I were waiting patiently onboard a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, destined for Kuwait. Without notice, a military chaplain appeared out of the darkness near the ramp of the aircraft, and announced that the plane would be carrying three of our soldiers who had been KIA (Killed in Action). Instantly, there was staunch silence among the fifty or so passengers, the majority in uniform. Following the chaplains announcement, a provisional honor guard carried onboard the first fallen comrade and rendered honors. Without direction, we rose in unison and snapped to attention, holding a salute as each casket was loaded onto the aircraft.

Stirring and emotional events like these tend to be far removed from the American public. These were Americas sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, who placed their lives in jeopardy to uphold the right of freedom.

As a former Special Forces soldier (Command Sergeant Major (D), Ret.), veteran of Operations URGENT FURY, DESERT STORM, and several Special Category Missions, I was honored to be asked to write the foreword to Robin Moores Hunting Down Saddam , a book that brings to light the triumphs and tragedies behind Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and the hunt for Saddam Hussein. Moore is a Special Forces brother, an icon, and esteemed expert on the past and present lineage of Special Forces.

Robin Moores illustrious career spans four decades as an author and supporter of Special Forces and the U.S. military, and cannot be measured in words or deedsthere are far too many. Moore is the only civilian to have received special permission to attend, and thus pass, the Special Forces Qualification Course and Airborne School. He was subsequently deployed to Vietnam with the 5th SFG (A) to Vietnam in 1964. He used his experiences to bring to the world an inside glimpse into the life of the Green Beret, in his book The Green Berets .

I was fortunate to make Robin Moores acquaintance in 1981 while attending the Special Forces Qualification Course in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As was true of most other soldiers in my position, Robin Moore and The Green Berets meant something to me personally. I remain very proud of Robins devotion to our country and countrymen who are fighting and supporting the U.S. Global War on Terror (GWOT).

I was with Robin in Iraq in October and November 2003. I was there in my role as Area Security Manager for KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), stationed in Tikrit at Camp Speicher/Camp Ironhorse, alongside the U.S. Armys 4th Infantry Division. Robin was there to write this book. For his most recent bestseller, The Hunt for Bin Laden , Moore had spent nearly a month living next to the men of the 5th Special Forces Group (A) in Afghanistan. For Hunting Down Saddam , Moore did it again. Celebrating his seventy-eighth birthday in Baghdad, and suffering from Parkinsons disease, Moore still had the internal strength and fortitude to obtain firsthand accounts of battlefield experiences of our brave young men and women in uniform. In Hunting Down Saddam , he brings to the page his brilliance, authority, and determination in illustrating and capturing significant battles and the daily challenges of the soldiers and leaders of the 3rd, 5th, and 10th Special Forces Groups Airborne, as well as those of the 101st Airborne Assault Division Screaming Eagles and the 4th Infantry Division Regulars, culminating with the capture of Saddam.

The content and characters in Hunting Down Saddam are a part of my life. Moore writes of the Green Berets with whom I used to fight, and he writes of the private contractors and reconstruction efforts in Iraq that I am involved with. Moore writes about Major General (MG) Ray Odierno, for whom I served as Force Protection Officer in Operation ALLIED FORCE, in Albania. And he writes of Odiernos 4th ID, who were behind the raid that captured Saddam, and who initially detained him a few hundred meters from my worksite in the Tikrit Palace compound. Incidentally, Robin Moore had spent time here during his trip to Iraq. He was given a tour of the Palace Compound, none of us knowing that Saddam himself would be brought there as a prisoner just seven weeks later.

In typical Robin Moore style, he unflinchingly examines the daring and emotional accounts of our fellow countrymen who are risking their lives as the U.S. military machine accomplishes its first objective of the war, regime change, and progresses toward the arduous objective: building a secure and free Iraqfree from lawlessness, terrorism, and oppression.

War is an exercise in the uncontrollable and unpredictable. War is volatile, unattractive, and disconcerting, at the same time explosive and gripping. Moore chronicles the dimensions of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and the Global War on Terror, redefines the fundamentals of the unconventional warfare (UW) mission of Special Forces, and underscores the modern-day urban battlefield tactics of light and heavy U.S. Army Divisions. This book is a must-read for those seeking to understand the art of unconventional warfare, one of the premier trademarks of past and present-day Special Forces. Employing modern weaponry, tactics, techniques, and procedures, the outnumbered Green Berets overcame the odds on the battlefield, using non-doctrinal strategies to defeat and outwit the enemy. Although the best technology and weaponry are prolifically applied, the Special Forces credo of brotherhood continues to be the underlying strength that forges the cohesiveness of this special breed of men.

Unpredictably, the challenge to Coalition forces was exponentially increased after President Bush declared the cessation of major combat activity. At home, the American public tuned in and began to express euphoria. All the signs were present, the stock market was up and news broke that our men and women would be coming home soon.

Challenged daily with implausible and hearsay intelligence, the light and heavy forces of the U.S. Armys 101st Airborne Assault Division, led by MG David Petraeus, and the 4th Infantry Division, led by MG Ray Odierno, continued to attack at the heart of the insurgency, initially in a reactionary posture, reacting to the hit-and-run tactics of the Iraqi Fedayeen, Former Regime Loyalists, Al Qaeda, the al-Zarqawi Network as well as Ansar al-Islam, the Syrian Fedayeen, and other outside terrorist groups. Employing hit-and-run tactics, a strategy of guerrilla warfare, these insurgent forces appeared to be gaining an edge on an irregular and undefined battlefield. Attacks were occurring within minutes of each other within a three-hundred-kilometer area; an Area Network, a criterion of UW was now firmly established. Who was leading it? Saddam? Was and is it his remaining generals? How could the Coalition break the back of the insurgency? What level of involvement do outside forces have? Deaths were mounting and the Coalition needed a monumental event to break the will of the insurgency.