Saddam survives bid on his life in botched air strike  
 
 KUN0019 4 GEN 0259 KUWAIT /KUNA-EFF4  
 SEC-SADDAM-ASSASSINATION-BID  
 Saddam survives bid on his life in botched air strike  
   
 KUWAIT, Oct 8 (KUNA) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has recently escaped  
 an assassination attempt when a military pilot flying a Soviet-made warplane  
 made a botched bid to bomb a presidential palace where the leader was present,  
 a Kuwaiti daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.  
 Citing "well-informed Iraqi sources," the Arabic-language daily, Al-Qabas  
 said air defenses of Saddam's personal guards shot down the warplane when the  
 pilot tried to bomb Al-Tharthar palace last week.  
 The Mig-23 had taken off from Al-Bakr base, 50 kilometers from Baghdad on  
 Monday to take part in a bombing drill on targets east of the Tigris river,  
 but the airman veered off the aircraft immediately when the drill started,  
 speeding toward Saddam's palace, located on Al-Tharthar lake.  
 The airman, whose name and rank were not mentioned by the Kuwaiti  
 newspaper, succeeded in reaching the target zone, but the aircraft was struck  
 with a Strella missile that was fired from a ground emplacement.  
 Al-Qabas indicated that the warplane crashed and the pilot, who suffered  
 various wounds, was arrested.  
 The sources said Saddam was in the palace when the botched air strike  
 occured and left it immediately to an unknown place, before he personally  
 supervised interrogation of the airman.  
 Two hours after the incident, regime troops arrived at the lake region  
 aboard helicopter gunships, immediately opened fire at fishermen before  
 arresting scores of them. (more)  
 Simultaneously, Al-Bakr air base, where the plane had taken off,  
 was shut down and several air force officers were arrested for interrogations.  
 Two officers, who were with the airman who made the futile bid to kill Saddam  
 the night before the attack, were kept behind iron bars.  
 The sources said the authorities suspended the military exercise and the  
 pilot was burned to death in front of his fellow personnel of the air force.  
 Al-Qabas added that this was one of the major bids on Saddam's life since  
 1973.  
 Meanwhile, the same newspaper quoted unidentified travellers, who were  
 recently in Baghdad, as saying that a state of high confusion was prevailing  
 in the ranks of the regime's personnel as a result of deep concern over a  
 prospected internal uprising to oust the regime.  
 Up to 30,000 special personnel have been deployed in areas where the regime  
 fears a prospected rebellion, it said, adding that five brigades of the  
 presidential and republican guards have been stationed in Baghdad, as part of  
 special measures to forestall possible popular action.  
 Al-Qabas said that the regime troops have repeatedly combed low-income  
 districts of Baghdad in search for hidden weapons and special units have been  
 stationed at statues of the Iraqi ruler after several of them were sprayed  
 with anti-regime slogans.  
 Saddam is said to have escaped several bids on his life. He has expressed  
 defiance in the face of the United States, which threatens to carry out a  
 wide-scale military operation to topple his regime if he continues to defy  
 will of the international community. (end)  
 rk  
   
   
 

Crap.

But at least it shows that there are a handful of patriotic Iraqis left even after 30 years of his crap.

Whoever he is, that Pilot is surely fucked.  He'll be a long time dying and a long way from being dead.

SJSAMPLE

The sources said the authorities suspended the military exercise and the
pilot was burned to death in front of his fellow personnel of the air force.

Yeah, he WAS fucked...not any more.

do you have a link to the story.

http://www.kuna.net.kw/Story.asp?DSNO=457969

Sounds plausible to me. Let me do some wild-assed speculation here. Somebody has to know where Saddam is. They probably make the area where he is staying a no-fly zone (with 80 palaces, it would be hard to make them all no-fly zones all the time). When I was in the Army, the enlisted men knew what was going on before anybody else did. Somebody or something would show up, and the Division Commander shows up 12 hours later. After this happens a few times, if you are in the loop, you know where he will be before he does. Word travels fast.

Sounds like the message GW put out is getting through to some of the Iraqis.

Yeah it would be nice if Saddam got whacked, but he's got two sons he's been grooming to become his successor. The eldest son, Uday, is a real piece of work:

[b]In an example of Uday's brutality, in an interview with Newsweek, Latif Yahia, an Iraqi exile who claims that he was for several years pressed into service as a body double for Uday, described an encounter where Uday spotted a young couple strolling through a park. He called out to the woman, but they walked on, pretending not to notice. Uday grabbed her by the arm and declared, "You're much too good for this simple man." (Her companion was wearing the uniform of an Army captain). The woman stammered that she had been married only the day before.

Uday's guards dragged her to a hotel room, where Uday raped her as his guards watched from the next room. Latif, who says he witnessed the scene, says he heard the woman scream and then went to the balcony and saw her half-naked figure laying in front of the hotel entrance six floors below. Her husband, who cursed Uday, was executed for "defamation of the president." It is impossible to confirm Latif's story, but Iraqi media reported the execution of the husband, Saad Abd al-Razzek.[/b]