WASHINGTON - For the second time in the 3-week-old Iraq war, an air strike on one of Saddam Hussein's reported meeting sites has left the world wondering whether the Iraqi president is alive or dead.
A B-1 bomber dropped four precision bombs in an upscale Baghdad residential neighborhood Monday afternoon. Afterward, Al Jazeera television broadcast scenes of smoldering rubble from where the bombs landed.
But, as with the first so-called decapitation strike that launched the war last month, it remained unclear Tuesday whether Hussein and his sons, who also were reported to be in the building, had been killed.
Iraqi rescue workers using a bulldozer to search the rubble said Tuesday that three bodies had been recovered - those of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man - and that the death toll could be as high as 14.
Over the next several days, U.S. officials are expected to tap all of the intelligence channels at their disposal to determine whether Hussein or his sons, who were reported to be with him in the building, survived the attack.
Spies will press their human sources inside Baghdad for information, including possible eyewitness accounts, officials said. American eavesdroppers also will scour the electronic communications of people inside Hussein's government and of others who may be close to him, including family members. The communications will be monitored for signs of Hussein's well-being, including whether people close to him are in mourning, one official said.
The most powerful tool for identifying the dead in the rubble - forensic analysis of human remains recovered from the scene - will be difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. forces to employ.
The ideal situation, intelligence officials said, would be to have U.S. personnel hunt for forensic evidence inside the 60-foot crater left by the attack. But U.S.-led forces do not control the area in Baghdad where Monday's strike occurred.
In addition, one U.S. official said he did not believe Americans have access to a sample of Hussein's DNA. Even if they could recover remains from the site, "You have to have something to compare it to," this official said.
Reports from journalists in Baghdad suggested Iraqi rescue workers were removing remains from the site before anyone else would have had a chance to move in.
"You know, I don't know whether he survived," President Bush said Tuesday at a joint news conference in Belfast with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "The only thing I know is he's losing power."
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed al-Douri, said that although he has no communication with Baghdad, the Iraqi government is in control of the country and he believes Saddam Hussein is alive. "I think that the president is in Baghdad and all the people are there fighting, and it's OK," al-Douri said.
Monday's attack began after an AWACS observation aircraft told the B-1 crew they had been assigned to strike a "high priority leadership target," calling it more colloquially the "big one."
Their target was a compound where Hussein and one or two of his sons were believed to be holed up with top-level Iraqi intelligence and security officers. The meeting had been taking place near a restaurant in the well-to-do al Mansour neighborhood on Baghdad's west side, U.S. officials said.
The crew had just 12 minutes to ready their deadly payload of four precision bombs while zooming at nearly 30,000 feet from western Iraq to Baghdad.
"When we got the word that it was a priority leadership target ... you get kind of an adrenaline rush," Air Force Lt. Col. Fred Swan, a weapon systems officer and one of a four-man crew onboard the bomber, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday.
"But then you fall back to your original training that says, `Hey, let's get the job done.' And we knew we ... had to react quickly to it."
Crew members pulled up high-definition satellite images of the target to make sure it matched the physical description.
Following procedure, they wrote down the GPS coordinates received over a radio and repeated them back to the AWACS controller. Then they programmed the coordinates into the bombs targeting system and checked the numbers one last time.
"We got the coordinates in, assigned the weapon, turned towards the target area and (went)," Swan said. "There wasn't a lot of time for reflection as we were doing the bomb run."
But he said he had one overriding thought: "Well, you know, this could be the big one. Let's make sure we get it right."
Meanwhile, the B-1 and other aircraft in the neighborhood were watching for threats from the ground. F-16 fighter jets were on hand to attack Iraqi air defense units and an EA-6 Prowler jammed surface-to-air signals.
The bomber released two 1,000 pound ground-penetrating "bunker busters" followed three seconds later by two 2,000-pound bombs designed hit the ground and explode milliseconds after impact - a characteristic intended to minimize damage to surrounding buildings.
Defense officials said that, regardless of Saddam's fate, strikes against top regime leaders will be launched as opportunities arise.
"We believe that the attack was effective in causing destruction of that facility. As to who was inside and what their conditions are, it will take some time before we can make that full determination," said Army Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, deputy director of operations, at a briefing in Qatar. "But our efforts remain focused on regime leadership whenever we find it."
© 2003, Chicago Tribune.
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