Operation Tapeworm: How the US Army’s most elite hunted down Saddam’s sons

Uday and Qusay Hussein were hunted by Army Special Forces.

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The Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein may have fallen on Mar. 20, 2003, but the hunt for its leadership would take much longer. The dictator and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, were still out there.

Finding Saddam would take nine months, while his sons were tracked to their hideout in just a few weeks. And they would be found by the U.S. Army’s most elite soldiers.

Also Read: Why Saddam Hussein buried Iraq’s air force in the desert

Task Force 20’s mission in Iraq was to capture or kill the high-value targets, or HVTs. These included Iraqi jihadists and former Ba’ath Party members. To accomplish this mission, elements of Delta Force and other Army Special Forces were assigned to the task force. When it actually found Udau and Qusay, the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne would join the “D-Boys” and “Snake Eaters.”

During Saddam Hussein’s 24 years in power, his sons enjoyed every pleasure they desired as heirs to the regime. While both of Saddam’s sons were equally ruthless and perhaps even psychotic, Uday was known to be the most unhinged of the two brothers.

Uday himself even once noted that he and Qusay were shown around Baghdad’s torture chambers before they’d reached their teen years.

Uday Hussein (left) with Saddam and Qusay.

His destructive appetite knew no bounds. He and his crew drove the streets and scoured the nightclubs of the Iraqi capital, searching for beautiful women for him to rape. When Uday was put in charge of the Iraqi Olympic teams, he tortured them for poor showings. He beat an aide to death in front of the First Lady of Egypt, executed his brothers-in-law, and sent numerous Iraqis through a wood chipper, feet first.

Qusay was cold and calculating, and some even believe he was behind the 1996 assassination attempt against Uday that sent his brother over the edge. As the heir apparent, he controlled the secret security services and the most elite units of the Iraqi military.

All this is to say that there is no reason to feel sorry for how Saddam Hussein’s son met their untimely end at the hands of the U.S. Army’s elite.

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When the Hussein boys fled in the wake of the U.S.-led Invasion of Iraq, they went to the outskirts of Mosul to hole up at the home of Nawaf al-Zaidan, a local tribal chief and prominent businessman.

For about three weeks, the brothers, along with Qusay’s son, Mustafa, and the family bodyguard, Abdul-Samad. Al-Zaidan stayed in the mansion. They had only a tribal relationship, but claimed to be a cousin of Saddam for clout.

When the Hussein family disappeared, the United States had little in the way of information to track them. To aid in the search, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency developed and distributed the “Iraq’s Most Wanted” decks of cards throughout Iraq with the identities of 55 of the regime’s remaining heavy hitters.

Hussein was the Ace of Spades, Uday was the Ace of Hearts, and Qusay was the Ace of Clubs. But even then, the Hussein brothers remained out of sight.

The Army only learned about their location through an “anonymous” tip. It’s widely believed that al-Zaidan got wind of the $30 million bounty on their heads, forgot about loyalty, and snitched. On Jul. 21, 2003, he traveled to a nearby camp manned by the 101st Airborne.

After several hours of debriefing, physical descriptions of the brothers, and passing a lie detector test, the intel folks were confident al-Zaidan was telling the truth. He and his family ended up in U.S. protective custody while American intelligence began focusing on his mansion.

The operation to apprehend the brothers began the very next morning. Army Special Forces soldiers with Task Force 20 and infantry from the 101st Airborne surrounded the house. They made a demand for the brothers to surrender over a bullhorn, but there was no response.

A Special Forces team then approached the house and knocked on the front door. When they received no response, they breached the door. That’s when the defenders started shooting.

Soldiers of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) fire a TOW missile at a building suspected of harboring Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay in Mosul, Iraq.(U.S. Army/Sgt. Curtis G. Hargrave)

The breach team was met with small arms fire from fighters barricaded on the second floor. As the Americans attempted to retreat from the building, the fire continued, wounding three. As they left the house, the defenders began shooting at the Americans outside, wounding another soldier. The four wounded were evacuated.

Soldiers from 101st were displeased (to put it mildly), and now there would be hell to pay. As word of the operation spread, over 200 soldiers joined the fray, returning a barrage of small fire with everything the U.S. Army had on hand.

The 101st fired AT4 rockets, Mk 19 grenade launchers, and the ever-faithful Ma Deuce, steadily dispensing .50-caliber anger into the Hussein brothers’ hideout. At approximately 1145 that morning, Kiowa OH-58 Helicopters arrived and joined in with machine gun fire and 10 2.75-inch rockets.

Despite the lopsided return fire, resistance from the second floor continued. Iraqis on the roof of the house began to lob grenades down onto the American force, along with more small arms fire. There was talk of calling up Apache gunships, but that idea was squashed out of concerns for civilian casualties.

Then, at around 1300, the Army decided to hit the residence with Humvee-mounted BGM-71 TOW missiles—10 of them. When the smoke cleared, units entered the house and found Uday and Qusay’s bodies amongst the rubble.

As soldiers continued to clear the building, AK fire rang out from a second-floor bedroom. The entry team returned fire and discovered the body of Qusay’s son, Mustafa.

A cloud of dust and smoke billows out from a building hit with a TOW missile launched by soldiers of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). (U.S. Army/Sgt. Curtis G. Hargrave)

The Americans removed and transported the bodies to Baghdad for identity confirmation. The brothers made changes to their appearance to avoid capture, but morticians reconstructed the corpses and confirmed their identities through dental records, X-rays, and identification by regime members.

After confirmation, the U.S. military released photos of the bodies to underscore American resolve to capture the tyrants who terrorized Iraq for most of their lives. Many Iraqis cheered when the images confirmed their deaths.

Even with his sons deceased, the former dictator remained at large. Saddam stayed in hiding for nine months. Task Force 20 was merged with Task Force 5, a similar unit with the same mission. As Task Force 121, it hunted Saddam Hussein to the town of Ad-Dawr, a remote area south of Tikrit.

After 12 unsucessful raids, Operation Red Dawn finally managed to capture the dictator on Dec. 13, 2003. He was held as a prisoner of war with 11 other Ba’athist leaders, handed over to a special Iraqi tribunal to be put on trial for the 1982 Dujail Massacre. He was found guilty on Nov. 5, 2006, and sentenced to death. Saddam Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006.

A view from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter shows all that’s left of the Uday and Qusay house in after Iraqi engineers were hired by the 101st Airborne Division to demolish the building. (U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. William Armstrong)

Although the U.S. military has never confirmed that the informant was al-Zaidan, he and his family were never seen in Mosul after the morning of the shootout at their house. The U.S. has made statements that imply the owner of the house was the informant.

Whether al-Zaidan snitched or not, everyone assumed he did. He and his family immediately had a bounty on their heads. His brother, Salah, was assassinated in 2004 as retribution. The rest of the family relocated to the United States, $30 million richer.

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