BUSH ATTACKED AFTER REPORT MILITARY HAD SADDAM COVERED

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