And Then There Was One

AP
A Dictator and His Boys: Saddam with Uday and Qusay

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U.S. commanders felt better too. Just three days before the raid, Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition ground troops in Iraq, had looked glum as he briefed reporters, pleading with an Iraqi journalist that he needed local intelligence about where to find fugitive regime leaders. The day after the raid, he was radiant, announcing, "Yesterday was a landmark day for the people and for the future of Iraq."

And yet for the U.S. in Iraq, there are few clean victories. Many Iraqi skeptics refused to believe the brothers were truly dead, even after the U.S. released grisly photos of Uday's and Qusay's bearded corpses as they were found, and then let reporters film the bodies cleaned up, retouched and shaved. "We have to see it with our own eyes," said Ahmed Ismail, a kabob-shop owner in Tikrit. He was among a minority who expressed hope that the brothers were still alive. Another merchant, Fadhil Awda, who had dropped by for lunch, also doubted that the sons were dead. "And if it is true," he said, "then we will be more proud because they resisted for hours, and they were only four, while the Americans were 400."

As American commanders had anticipated, the brothers' deaths were followed by a step up in guerrilla attacks. Last week eight more U. S. soldiers died from hostile fire. U.S. officials hope the uptick, perhaps driven by revenge for the deaths of Uday and Qusay, will be temporary. But TIME spoke to members of a Fedayeen Saddam cell who said their support for the Husseins is not what motivates their attacks on the Americans. "We do it because they degrade us, they occupy our area," said a tribal elder sitting at the head of the gathering. The cell members said they operate autonomously, selecting their targets and timings without orders from any kind of hierarchy. The morning after the Mosul siege, when a makeshift explosive device detonated under a military convoy as it passed through the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier, the cell sent word to TIME: "We did it."

Even among Iraqis relieved to hear of the brothers' deaths, there was grumbling last week that U.S. forces should have endeavored to capture Uday and Qusay alive, which might have produced leads on Saddam's whereabouts and enabled a public accounting of the brothers' crimes. Plus, seeing them alive and in custody might have convinced more Iraqis that the brothers were truly a spent force. "I wanted them arrested so we could see them on TV," says Hassanin Mohammed, 23, who runs a tiny store that sells fans in the Karrada district of Baghdad. "Most people around here don't believe they're dead." But the ferocity of the resistance mounted inside the mansion suggested that the brothers had no interest in giving up. Sanchez said the option of pressing harder for a surrender was considered and rejected by commanders on the spot, without intervention from senior officials at Central Command or in Washington. "You could say we should have got them alive," says Russell. "But this way it's clean. There's a finality to it."

Mosul might have seemed an odd place for the brothers to take refuge, given its sizable Kurdish and Turkoman minorities, populations that are not favorably inclined toward the former regime. The area has not been a center of active resistance against occupying U.S. forces. But in other ways, Mosul was a comfortable fit for the brothers, because key elements of Saddam's top officer corps came from there. At what point the brothers arrived in Mosul, a scenic city that is a popular family holiday destination, remains unclear. As TIME reported in the June 2 issue, in late May Uday dispatched a relative to try to negotiate the terms of a surrender to U.S. forces, according to a source familiar with the communications. The U.S., of course, never had any intention of offering Uday the amnesty he sought.

Al-Zaydan's house, according to Uday's former butler, was a center for Fedayeen money and rations, so it made sense for Uday and Qusay to wind up there. Qusay took his son Mustafa to the house, says the butler, "because he depended on him. He could go and switch on the generator or go shopping. His face is not very well known." Abdul Jabar Mohammad Arif, who owns a bread shop opposite the mansion, says he noticed nothing unusual until the night before the raid, when al-Zaydan came by to pick up 60 loaves of flatbread. Normally, his wife bought just four or five each day for the immediate family. "I thought he had some party or guests," Arif says.

In Mosul, residents believe that al-Zaydan was the informant who sold the brothers out. Early on the morning of the raid, neighbors say they saw his wife and daughter leave the building; later, when al-Zaydan and his son surrendered, U.S. soldiers did not handcuff them or cover their heads with canvas bags, as they typically do to Iraqi detainees. The U.S. did not say al-Zaydan was the informant. Whoever it is, the informant is being kept in U.S. custody out of fear of assassination. But al-Zaydan did have the incentive to cooperate: in addition to the American offer of $15 million for information leading to the arrest of either brother, there was a personal score to settle. Saddam had once jailed al-Zaydan's brother for claiming he was a blood relative of the President's family.