[Previous entry: "J. Crew"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Las Vegas mayor: Naked 'Bambi' hunts a fraud"]

07/25/2003 Archived Entry: "Bodyguard Tells of Life on the Run"

THAT THEY ACTUALLY THOUGHT THEY COULD WIN WAS FUNNY: Uday Hussein's bodyguard has given an interview that relates life during wartime for the Husseins.

In an exclusive interview with The Times of London, the bodyguard claimed that, far from fleeing Baghdad, the three men held out in the capital for at least a week after its fall.

He said that they evaded repeated American attempts to assassinate or capture them, and even appeared in public under the noses of U.S. troops.

During a three-hour interview in a house in a town an hour northwest of Baghdad, the bodyguard said that Saddam and his sons had remained in the capital throughout the war, convinced they could hold the city.

When the first bombs fell on a house in a southern suburb, where the Americans believed Saddam and his sons were meeting, he and Uday were on the other side of the city in one of dozens of safe houses belonging to trusted friends and relatives through which the three men were to pass in the weeks to come.

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.

Read on.