MISSION: IMPROBABLE 217their luggage were required to pass through metal detectors and physical
searches by courteous guards who controlled access to the hotel.
The next morning, while my colleagues went shopping for supplies
that might be difficult to find in Iraq, I met with Dan at his hotel to review
our game plan prior to my first meeting with Imad later that night. It was
during our morning meeting that Dan shared some somber news. A few
weeks earlier, US forces killed over a dozen of Imad’s family members,
including his four young daughters and his only son. American war-
planes dropped six JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) on his large
family compound in Ramadi, in the Sunni triangle west of Baghdad. The
American bombing of Imad’s huge main house was based on intelligence
reports that Saddam Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, were holed
up there. Over twenty people, mainly women and children, were killed in
the attack. All were members of Imad’s immediate or extended family, or
were beloved household staff.
My first question for Dan was whether Saddam and his two sadistic
sons really were hiding out at Imad’s family compound. Dan said initial
after-action reports concluded the so-called intelligence was false, and the
bombing had been a tragic mistake. Imad believed that his cousin, a rival
for power within the tribe, intentionally passed the false report to the US
military in order to prompt this deadly strike. Murder by military. If this
were in fact true, Imad’s cousin would not be long for this world. The tribe
would dispense swift justice as it had for centuries.
A year or two later, I heard a different version of events. According to
this new information, Saddam and his two sons were indeed holed up at
Imad’s compound when it was bombed, but they (along with Imad) all sur-
vived the attack, since they were in adjacent buildings or standing outside
the main house, using their Thuraya satellite phones. Also allegedly present
during the attack was Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half brother and
head of the feared Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service. This version
of events has Saddam weeping at the site of the carnage and his son Uday
pulling a child’s body out of the rubble in the aftermath of the bombing.
Either way, the attack on Imad’s family compound in Ramadi pro-
duced outrage in Iraq’s Sunni heartland and jump-started the deadly
Sunni insurgency that continues to this day, spreading as far as Syria and
beyond, in the form of ISIS.