Hunting Down Saddam Read Online Free PDF Page A

Special Forces Group ended up leaving for Iraq from Constanta, Romania, that very day.
    Special Forces Companies, or B-Teams (ODBs), are comprised of a group of A-Teams under them, much like the Army has platoons. One Company Commander—generally a major—has up to six A-Teams or ODAs in his command. SGM (Sergeant Major) Tim Strong was the noncommissioned officer in charge of the B-Team, comprising the five A-Teams of this first expeditionary force of Green Berets to openly invade northern Iraq. The five ODAs were not all from the same company. SGM Tim Strong and his B-Team were only the skeleton of the company that would soon be augmented by thousands of native Kurdish tribesmen. Known as Peshmerga, the Kurd warriors were indigenous to the mountainous area in the north of Iraq, and almost immune to the raids of ordinary Iraqi soldiers. They collectively hated the lowlanders whose leader, Saddam Hussein, and his cousin, “Chemical Ali,” had launched the gas attack that had killed thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.
    Before the five A-Teams could go into action against the Iraqis, they had to reach their destination as quietly as possible, and meet up with the awaiting Peshmerga and their commander of the Irbil sector, General Mustafa.
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    In England, at Biggin Hill, an airbase about forty miles north of London, LTC (Lieutenant Colonel) Mark Alsid was one of the pilots who fly the particularly dangerous and most difficult missions the U.S. Air Force has to offer, as part of the 352nd Special Operations Group (SOG). This was to be no exception. Alsid took off from Constanta, Romania, with four other American pilots, each piloting a huge MC-130 transport filled with crew and supplies to be used by the A-Teams.
    At the same time, units from the Florida National Guard were waiting to cross from Kuwait into southern Iraq, and start the march to Baghdad. Also waiting in the wings for their cue into Iraq were the British Royal Marines, Parabats (Parachute Battalions) and Tank Regiment—their job being to control the southern port of Basra and secure the route past it for the Florida National Guard, who would head up to Baghdad. With everything prepared and ready, the forces poised to invade Iraq had nothing to do but wait—a common malaise at the beginning of wartime action.
    While the Special Forces were waiting for the “green light,” or go-ahead, the intelligence contingents were scratching their heads, wondering if they could perhaps knock out Saddam Hussein and prove he’d been killed—thus ending the war before it started.
    As the 10th Group ODAs waited with their pilots, ready to fly, a top-secret group made up of Special Forces and Delta Force was on patrol inside of Baghdad, hoping to determine Saddam Hussein’s exact location. As they interrogated their assets regarding the dictator’s present whereabouts, they finally got a break—a clue as to where Saddam was at that very moment. They learned he was most likely deep down in the subbasement structure of the house of a Ba’ath Party general, a veritable underground fortress and bomb shelter, with fifty-foot-deep roots. Relaying the information to call in Close Air Support (CAS) attachments, the Special Forces intelligence group moved as far away from the target area as possible. No one wanted to be taken out by friendly fire or stray bombs dropped by their own planes before the war even began.
    Task Force 20 (the super-secret Special Operations Task Force with one purpose: hunting down Saddam and his henchmen) gave the go-ahead, and a two-thousand-pound smart bomb was dropped from an F-117/A Nighthawk, directly onto the house where Saddam was suspected to be hiding. The entire city shook as the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) bomb hit and exploded after penetrating close to one hundred feet into the ground.
    If the dictator was in or near the building that was destroyed, he would never