Saddam's noose tightens in raids

Military leaders say they missed Saddam by less than 24 hours in each raid.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saying that "the noose is tightening" around Saddam Hussein and his top aides, U.S. forces raided suspected safehouses in Baghdad and northern Tikrit and said the deposed dictator is unable to mount a resistance because he's too busy "trying to save his own skin."
In the center of the capital today, witnesses said at least three U.S. soldiers were injured in an attack on their convoy. Other witnesses claimed the U.S. soldiers were killed. The military confirmed an incident had occurred but had no information on casualties.
"I saw at least two injured soldiers, then I saw the third one who was thrown out of the car. They [other soldiers] pulled him under the car," said Alim Naati, one of the witnesses.
Shihab Ahmed, who owns a nearby flower shop, said he was told the soldiers died.
The witnesses said three soldiers were thrown from the canvas-top Humvee when a bomb was detonated as the convoy passed along Palestine Street in central Baghdad.
Bridge bombing
North of Baghdad, on the road from Baqouba to Tikrit, insurgents floated a bomb down the river on a palm log and detonated it under a bridge the military had been repairing.
It was believed to have been the first such attack by insurgents on a bridge. The structures are vital to a country with two major rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The military closed a pontoon crossing down river that had been open for civilian traffic during the repairs.
"Because of this damage we've got to shut it to all the civilian traffic effective today," Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, a 4th Infantry Division commander, said.
The bridge was a major link over the Diala River, a Tigris tributary, carrying traffic between the restive cities of Baquoba and Tikrit, both hotbeds of resistance in the so-called "Sunni Triangle." The region, stretching north and west from Baghdad is a major center of support for Saddam.
In Tikrit, U.S. forces dug up freshly buried weapons, found outside an abandoned building that once belonged to Saddam's Fedayeen militia. The munitions were sufficient for a month of guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops, said Maj. Bryan Luke, 37, of Mobile, Ala., whose patrol found the cache.
The discovery "saved a few lives out there," Luke said. "Forty mines could have caused a lot of problems for U.S. forces here in Tikrit."
'Murky' information
In Washington, the Pentagon's second-ranking official said the United States must be prepared to act on less-than-perfect intelligence in a world where the main threat is terror, even though information about terrorism is inherently murky.
"If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear, you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"And we went to war, and I believe we are still fighting terrorists and terrorist supporters in Iraq, in a battle that will make this country safer in the future from terrorism."
Making the rounds of television talk shows, Wolfowitz told "Fox News Sunday" that "Iraq now is the central battle in the war on terrorism."
He similarly linked the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath to President Bush's war on terror. At the same time, he emphasized that intelligence dealing with terrorists is intrinsically "murky."
On CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he was struck by Wolfowitz's use of the word.
"Boy, it sure didn't sound murky before the war," Levin said. "There were clear connections, we were told, between Al-Qaida [terrorists] and Iraq. There was no murkiness, no nuance, no uncertainty about it at all. ... That's the way it was presented to the American people."
Critics of the Bush policy of pre-emptive attack based on intelligence revealing a threat to U.S. security, on which the Iraq invasion was based, have contended that spying is too uncertain to support such a policy.
Wolfowitz did not say specifically that the Iraq campaign resulted from murky intelligence. But he said a congressional intelligence report released last week blamed the administration for not discerning, from bits of evidence, the terrorist threat that was borne out on Sept. 11, 2001. Critics are trying to have it both ways, he said.
House raids
Iraqi contractors hired by the 101st Airborne Division, meanwhile, began to demolish the house in northern Mosul where Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai were killed in a firefight with U.S. troops.
At least twice in the past week, American soldiers have raided houses where they believed they may have missed Saddam by less than 24 hours -- once in the northern city of Mosul and once at a farmhouse near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and power base.
The U.S. military would not confirm a raid in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood Sunday evening. Witnesses said soldiers shot their way into the home of Prince Rabiah Muhammed al-Habib, one of Iraq's most influential tribal leaders.
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