One of the things that has made the guerilla attacks in Iraq so damn scary is that the peo­ple behind them has been a mys­tery. There’s no Osama, no Arafat to blame for the car­nage.
Now, CNN claims to have found a mas­ter­mind: General Izzat Ibrahim al-​​Duri, the north­ern regional com­man­der in Saddam’s mil­i­tary.
“Al-​​Duri, the ‘King of Clubs’ in the U.S. military’s ‘most wanted’ deck of cards, is the highest-​​ranking mem­ber of the Saddam Hussein regime still at large, except for Saddam him­self,” CNN notes.
The net­work says “Pentagon offi­cials” — rely­ing on con­fes­sions by freshly-​​captured mem­bers of the Ansar Al-​​Islam ter­ror group — have fin­gered Al-​​Duri as the king­pin.
It’s a big break­through, if true. But, as with all “first reports,” take this one with a grain of salt…
THERE’S MORE: “Senior American offi­cials” now say there’s evi­dence that Saddam may be behind the insur­gency.
Of course, this “role by Mr. Hussein could not be cor­rob­o­rated, and one senior offi­cial cau­tioned that recent intel­li­gence reports con­tained con­flict­ing assess­ments,” accord­ing to the Times.
Hmm… Front page claims, backed by hazy intel­li­gence… This all sounds so famil­iar, some­how…
AND MORE: “Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Friday that he saw no signs that Saddam Hussein was active in coor­di­nat­ing attacks on American forces in Iraq,” Reuters reports.

“I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, but we really don’t have the evi­dence to put together a claim that he is pulling all the strings among these rem­nants in Baghdad and other parts of the coun­try that are caus­ing us the dif­fi­culty,” Mr. Powell said on the ABC News pro­gram “Nightline,” accord­ing to a tran­script.
He also cast doubt on reports that one of Mr. Hussein’s deputies, Izzat Ibrahim, was behind the attacks, say­ing, “I see no evi­dence to sup­port that.” 

Details are emerg­ing from the weekend’s deadly attack on the al-​​Rashid hotel in Baghdad that injured 16 peo­ple and barely missed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz:

The mis­siles were launched from an impro­vised mul­ti­rocket plat­form, a home­made ver­sion of the Katyusha sys­tem used by Russia, mil­i­tary offi­cials said. The Irish Republican Army has used sim­i­lar sys­tems.
The launcher was hid­den in a blue trailer made to resem­ble a mobile elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tor, a ubiq­ui­tous item in Baghdad, where elec­tri­cal ser­vice is unre­li­able. In the quiet of early Sunday morn­ing, a white pas­sen­ger vehi­cle towed the trailer down a major street that runs between the hotel and a large park. It was then unhitched at a clover­leaf that had been closed by the Americans for secu­rity rea­sons. The car pulled away. Soon after, at 6:08 a.m., 8 to 10 mis­siles thud­ded into the hotel, about 450 yards away, offi­cials said.
The casu­al­ties could have been higher; 11 mis­siles failed to fire because of elec­tri­cal or mechan­i­cal mal­func­tions. In addi­tion, the wheel base of the trailer had been booby-​​trapped with explo­sives, which American sol­diers deac­ti­vated.
Altogether, the launcher held 40 mis­sile pods, said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, com­man­der of the First Armored Division, whose respon­si­bil­ity is the secu­rity of Baghdad. General Dempsey spoke Sunday evening at a news con­fer­ence held in a build­ing in a com­pound near the Rashid Hotel.
Half the mis­siles were 68-​​millimeter, which have a range of two to three miles; the other half were 85-​​millimeter, with a three– to four-​​mile range, he said. The smaller ones were French-​​made, and designed for use by heli­copters. The oth­ers were Russian. The French rock­ets, offi­cers said, were quite new, and were prob­a­bly pur­chased after the arms embargo was in place. They were in pris­tine con­di­tion,” said one mil­i­tary offi­cer who inspected the rocket tubes and assem­bly.
Mr. Hussein had weapons of that type, but General Dempsey said he did not know if the mis­siles used the hotel attack came from Mr. Hussein’s arse­nal.
General Dempsey described the device as clever, but not sophis­ti­cated.” He called it a sci­ence project in a garage with a welder and a bat­tery and a hand­ful of wires.”
That such an unso­phis­ti­cated device could be used against one of the most for­ti­fied and well-​​guarded sites in Baghdad raised ques­tions about the military’s abil­ity to secure any major site in Baghdad. The com­pound is sur­rounded by high con­crete walls, but the mis­siles were fired over them…
A New York Times reporter trav­el­ing with Mr. Wolfowitz was a few rooms from where one of the rock­ets hit. Looking across the street, he saw the trailer from which the rock­ets had been fired, and saw one pro­jec­tile com­ing at the hotel, trail­ing sparks. 

The Times also reports that bomb­ings at five police sta­tions and the Baghdad office of the Red Cross have killed 34 peo­ple and wounded 224 more.
“It puts us back into com­bat oper­a­tions,” Lt. Col. Eric Nantz, a bat­tal­ion com­man­der with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, tells the Washington Post. “It’s not where we want to be. It’s not where the Iraqi peo­ple want us to be.”