Peter Arnett: BOMBS BLAST HOMES INSTEAD OF SADDAM

Multiple U.S. intelligence sources saw Saddam Hussein enter a building in Baghdad on Monday and not emerge before four 1-ton Air Force bombs destroyed it, government officials said yesterday.
One official said some analysts believe the multiple eyewitness accounts suggest the Iraqi dictator is dead. The penetrating bombs reduced the building near the popular al Saa restaurant to rubble.
The official described the CIA yesterday as being "in a state of euphoria."
"They say there is no doubt he is dead," said a U.S. military official on the condition of anonymity.
But an intelligence official cautioned yesterday that Washington has not made a final determination on whether Saddam was killed in the strike. This official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there is no doubt senior Ba'ath Party and Iraqi intelligence officials were killed, but "in terms of knowing who was killed, we just don't know."
The bombs — four GBU-31s, two with delayed fuses to maximize damage inside a bunker — demolished a row of homes and businesses, and left a deep crater in the Baghdad center-city neighborhood of Mansur.
It took 45 minutes in all to hit the building once the intelligence was received. It took a B-1B crew 12 minutes to reprogram the four satellite-guided bombs, fly to the target and release the weapons.
The conclusive evidence could come in the form of DNA from the site, or monitored communications of "chatter" to confirm a death that might bring the collapse of the Ba'ath regime and a speedy end to the war.
The bombing culminated a fairly complex operation of tracking Saddam's movements. His youngest son, Qusai, the heir apparent and the director of Baghdad's defenses, also may have been seen entering the building.
The hunt for the Iraqi leader intensified after his regime broadcast Friday on state-run television a videotape of Saddam suddenly emerging in the Mansur neighborhood, greeting a crowd of well-wishers. He may have felt relatively safe there on Monday. He also had taken a walk there and not been harmed. The area is a Ba'ath stronghold. In addition, allied forces have sought to avoid bombing such residential areas.
One U.S. official said the fact that Saddam had been in the neighborhood during the war meant he might return — which he eventually did.
The CIA determined the videotape was that of Saddam, not a double, and was fairly recent. The assessment meant Saddam had survived a March 19 bombing similar to the strike Monday. The Air Force put four "bunker buster" bombs on his underground safe house in south Baghdad, and there were reports later that he may have been killed.
The United States stepped up surveillance in the Mansur area, using Iraqi spies, CIA officers, and Army Delta Force commandos who wear disguises to appear as Iraqis.
Intelligence officials declined to say how they learned of the meeting Monday. But an estimated 30 persons attended, including officials of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, or the Mukhabarat, and senior Ba'ath members.
An intelligence report reaching Washington said the meeting would take place near a well-known landmark — the al Saa restaurant, a popular eatery for the upscale inhabitants of Mansur. The Washington Times reported yesterday that Saddam's meeting place was under or behind the restaurant. An official said yesterday that the target was in a bunkered house behind the restaurant.
On Monday afternoon, Saddam showed up with his bodyguard entourage and entered the building, the eyewitnesses said. The dictator was being tracked by the CIA, a CIA-recruited spy and a Delta commando. One of them communicated on a secure line to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, which alerted the U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
Central Command gave the order to an airborne B-1B bomber crew, armed with 2,000-pound penetrating bombs for just such an opportunity to kill a high-value target in a bunkered building.
In minutes, the four-seat Air Force bomber was over Baghdad, and released four of the satellite-guided GBU-31s. They obliterated a block of businesses and residences. One resident said 14 bodies were seen at the site during the ongoing rescue effort, including children.
"What we have for battle-damage assessment right now is essentially a hole in the ground, a site of destruction where we wanted it to be, where we believe high-value targets were," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Staff, said at a Pentagon press conference. "We do not have a hard and fast assessment of what individual or individuals were on site."
U.S. informants did not see Saddam leave the building before the bombs hit.
The B-1B crew told their story yesterday in a telephone call to Pentagon reporters from their undisclosed base in the region. They said they had just completed midair refueling over western Iraq when the call came.
An AWACS airborne control aircraft radioed the B-1B that it had a new target — senior Iraqi leadership officials in Baghdad.
"At the time, for me, what I was thinking was, 'Well, you know, this could be the big one,' " said Col. Fred Swan, the bomber's weapon system officer. "Let's make sure we get it right."
Col. Swan said it took 12 minutes — from the time they got the target coordinates and plugged them into each bomb's global positioning system (GPS) guidance — to the time the four munitions were dropped.
"That's how quick the system can work," Col. Swan said. "We confirmed the coordinates and then that took about 12 minutes to fly to the target and release the weapons."
He added: "There was a lot of time to reflect on the two-hour drive back to our base, and at that time, again, just everybody's proud to be doing their job and making it happen."
Col. Swan said that to make the mission work someone had to be on the ground in Baghdad giving the building's coordinates.
"In this case, you know, I don't have any particulars of who was down there or what, but it obviously had to happen that way to be able to get the coordinates to us," he said.
Central Command said yesterday it would like access to the bomb site to determine who was killed. But allied forces do not yet control Mansur.
While U.S. intelligence has picked up communications "chatter" that Qusai is still directing troops, it has heard nothing from Saddam's other son, Uday. There are unconfirmed reports that he was killed in the March 19 bombing from which Saddam had managed to escape.
In Belfast, at a war-strategy meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush said he did not know whether Saddam was killed.
"The only thing I can tell you is that that grip I used to describe that Saddam had around the throats of the Iraqi people [is] loosening," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference. "I can't tell you if all 10 fingers are off the throat, but finger by finger's coming off."

A young woman's severed head and torso and a small boy's body were pulled Tuesday from a smoking crater carved into the earth by four U.S. bombs.

When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then the head her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed. She was helped into a car by two male relatives.