ZAGREB/WASHINGTON, March 20 (Hina) - U.S. President George W. Bush issued an order for a limited missile attack on Baghdad after CIA director George J. Tenet informed him that the military had Saddam Hussein and Iraq's virtually
entire most senior leadership covered, Washington Post said on Thursday.
ZAGREB/WASHINGTON, March 20 (Hina) - U.S. President George W. Bush
issued an order for a limited missile attack on Baghdad after CIA
director George J. Tenet informed him that the military had Saddam
Hussein and Iraq's virtually entire most senior leadership
covered, Washington Post said on Thursday. #L#
On Wednesday afternoon local time, Tenet entered the Oval Office
and offered President Bush a unique opportunity which might enable
him to resolve the Iraqi war with one strike at the very beginning,
wrote the newspaper.
Hussein and Iraq's top state leaders came under CIA surveillance,
Tenet said according to the Post, adding the CIA knew not only
Saddam's whereabouts but also where exactly he would be over the
next several hours.
Hussein and his advisors were said to be in one of his private
residences in Baghdad. Tenet reportedly said this was a unique
opportunity as Saddam is known to rarely stay at one place for
several hours and never sleeps in the same bed two nights in a row.
Tenet's proposal was accepted and an action plan quickly drawn up.
Two and a half hours later Bush issued the order to launch the
strike. The first missiles were supposed to break through the roof
and walls of the building Hussein was in, in the hope that the first
strike would "decapitate" the Iraqi leadership.
The effects are as yet unknown. Even though Hussein later addressed
the nation via state television, the Americans are still not sure
whether that was a previously videotaped speech.
(hina) ha sb