Back when the war against Iraq was going full bore and we had the occasional “we’re sure we got Hussein this time” followed later by the “well, now it looks like Saddam got away,” I’m sure a lot of people were as curious as I was to know what was going on behind the scenes.
Now one of Uday’s bodyguards is talking and apparently a) there was an informant relatively close to Saddam who was tipping of the Americans and b) Saddam suspected him and set the informant up in one of the higher profile attempts to kill the Iraqi dictator. Here’s The Times of London’s report on the bodyguard’s claims,
The bodyguard said the Americans’ next “decapitation” strike came a lot closer, and that Saddam survived only because several safe houses had come under attack and he suspected there was an informant within his camp.
Saddam asked the suspect, a captain, to prepare a safe house behind a restaurant in the Mansour district for a meeting. They arrived, and left again, almost immediately, by the back door. “Ten minutes after they went out of the door, it was bombed,” the bodyguard said.
Saddam had the captain summarily executed while the Pentagon was claiming that the strike had probably finished off Saddam and Uday.
Source:
Bodyguard Tells of Saddam and Sons’ Life on the Run. The Times of London, July 25, 2003.