'Saddam will be ousted before US attack'
Agence France-Presse
Washington, October 06
US intelligence experts believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will be ousted by members of his inner circle before US forces launch a major ground attack, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
Faced with a US military assault and the choice of either being Saddam's successors or being imprisoned or killed in the fighting, top-ranking military officers or senior Iraqi officials likely will try to eliminate the Iraqi leader, several current and former US officials and intelligence experts told the daily.
"Someone will take action and cause it to happen," said one former high-ranking CIA officer.
Senior US officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have recently spoken publicly about Iraqis eliminating Hussein themselves, either through assassination or by sending him into exile.
Late last week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer made similar comments.
"The cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than (the cost of war)," Fleischer said.
"The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that," he said at a press briefing late last week.
Earlier this year, US President George W. Bush directed the CIA to undertake a comprehensive covert program to topple the Iraqi leader, including authority to use lethal force.
The intelligence agency was instructed to increase support for and contacts with opposition groups inside and outside Iraq, and to expand efforts to collect intelligence about pockets of anti-Saddam sentiment within the Iraqi government, military and intelligence services, the Post wrote.
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