Saddam avoided telephones

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein avoided telephones, had a special laboratory test his food and
went on a palace-building binge, all in a bid to shore up his personal security, a U.S. report says,

The comprehensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq portrayed the deposed Iraqi leader as a
typical dictator who ruled by fear, but who became increasingly paranoid and isolated in the years before his
2003 capture.

"By Saddam’s own account, he had only used a telephone twice since 1990, for fear of being located for a
U.S. attack," said Wednesday’s report by Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led a hunt for weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq that failed to find any stockpiles.

Saddam went on an "extravaganza" of palace- and mosque-building in the late 1990s, even though "much of
the economy was at the point of collapse," the report found.

"He stated that by building many palaces, the U.S. would be unable to ascertain his whereabouts and thus
target him.

Saddam was often inaccessible even to his own senior aides, and one of them told interviewers, "Sometimes
it would take three days to get in touch with Saddam."

However, one of his aides noted the Iraqi government got information for strategic operations planning from
the Internet as well as from its military attaches at various embassies.

"Another source is the Internet — it has everything," the former director of the Directorate General of Military
Intelligence was quoted as saying. "For example, the attache in Qatar reports that the coalition (as it prepares for
war) has 15,000 to 18,000 (troops) arriving. We could see it on the Internet as well — it was all there."

Although he surrounded himself with family and high-ranking officials, Saddam claimed he regularly met with
the Iraqi people, especially women, as he found them to be the best source of information.

One retired defence scientist said Saddam was "like a computer" in processing information. The report said
this meant that if Saddam received reliable information he would make good decisions, but if the inputs were
flawed, the resulting policies would suffer.

Reuters

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5260594