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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (166260)	3/30/2003 1:58:51 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583713

Engineer: Saddam's Bunker Should Survive 1 hour, 40 minutes ago By TONY CZUCZKA, Associated Press Writer BERLIN - A German trained as a civil defense engineer said Sunday he helped a company design a bunker under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baghdad palace in the early 1980s that is likely to withstand even the newest non-nuclear bombs. Karl Esser told The Associated Press that the shelter was also built to survive, from 650 feet away, a nuclear blast from a bomb like the one dropped at Hiroshima, and temperatures of more than 570 degrees Fahrenheit. "It's very, very difficult to crack unless you hit it directly with a small atomic bomb," he said in a telephone interview. The bunker under the presidential palace near the Tigris River is believed to have survived the 1990-91 Gulf War (news - web sites). Since then, the United States has developed precision-guided "bunker-busting" bombs designed to penetrate deep into such reinforced concrete shelters. But Esser said he doubts they can breach the bunker, which extends more than 19,400 square feet, has a ceiling up to 6 1/2 feet thick and two exit tunnels, and was designed to Western military standards. "I don't believe that the bombs the Americans have will be enough," he said. "Normally such bunkers can only be taken by ground troops." Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. war in Iraq (news - web sites), said Sunday he did not know whether Saddam was dead or alive after days of allied forces bombing Baghdad. Esser, 45, said he was designing secure shelters for civil defense authorities in Munich in the early 1980s when a now defunct architectural firm, Vereinigte Werkstaetten, approached him to work as a consultant on the Iraq project. At the time, Western countries were freely doing business with Iraq and Saddam was considered a bulwark against Iran. Esser said the Munich firm was a subcontractor for the lead contractor, Boswau & Knauer, which became part of German construction giant Walter Bau AG after a series of mergers in the 1980s. Walter Bau has found financial records confirming Boswau & Knauer's role, company spokesman Alexander Goerbing said. Esser said he planned most of the bunker, organizing the delivery of equipment such as the air supply system, power generators and heavy doors used to seal off different parts of the shelter. The shelter was completed in 1984 and cost about $60 million, he said. Esser said he did not supervise the actual construction and never saw the finished shelter. He said he met Saddam in spring 1984 when he was invited to Baghdad around the time the bunker was completed to brief Iraqi officials on its technical details. Saddam was in civilian clothes and appeared "quite unspectacular" during the 1 1/2-hour meeting, Esser said. "He asked me questions and I answered them matter-of-factly," he said. Saddam, concerned for decades about attempts to kill him by enemies at home and abroad, is known to have hidden bunkers and underground tunnels scattered throughout Iraq. But Esser said he worked on only one other project in Baghdad — a bomb shelter for a residential building. He said he has not been back since 1984. Esser said he still has the bunker's plans, but no authorities have asked to see them or questioned him. He expressed no reservations about helping Iraq, which later came under U.N. trade sanctions after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait that triggered the first Gulf War. "It was a job," Esser said. "It was well paid."