AS-SALIYAH, Qatar, 12 April 2003 — Determined to crush the remains of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the United States released yesterday a hit list of 55 key Iraqi individuals it wants to track down and kill or capture.
Hoping Iraqis will help them hunt for the former officials, US troops are putting the list on posters and handbills.
And to make sure US-led forces in Iraq will recognize them, the faces of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis appear on decks of cards that also have a brief description of their occupations. “The key list has 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed, or captured,” Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at the war command headquarters in Qatar, holding up a deck of cards.
US Central Command did not immediately say who was on the list, but the top card on the deck Brooks showed had an ace of clubs with a photograph of Saddam’s younger son Qussay. Long considered Saddam’s heir apparent, Qussay, 36, is the number two in the Baath Party, and controls most of Iraq’s military, security and intelligence units.
Brooks declined to say on which card Saddam’s photograph appeared, and laughed when asked if the joker was former Information Minister Mohammed Said Al-Sahhaf, who denied US forces were anywhere near Baghdad even as their tanks rumbled through the capital.
Saddam’s oldest son Uday, who heads the paramilitary Fedayeen fighters, also is certain to figure on the list, as is the president’s half-brother Barzan Al-Takriti, a former intelligence chief thought to have died yesterday in a US bombing of his farm.
Brooks said some of those on the list were probably already dead, and that top commanders hoped the photographs and descriptions would help confirm that.
“The intent here is to help the coalition glean information from the Iraqi people so they also know exactly who it is we seek,” Brooks told a news conference.
More than three weeks after the war started the US commanders had no clue where Saddam was but officials insisted that finding him was not a priority at this stage.
Brooks stressed that Saddam was just one of many Iraqis the US wants to remove from power. “We have been consistent in saying we’re after removing the regime, taking away its capabilities, taking away its decision makers,” the general said. “We consider them all to be legitimate military targets.”
