Baghdad, Iraq ? Five or six days after U.S. troops seized this city in April, Saddam, Odai and Qusai Hussein gathered secretly with a handful of aides at a house in the Adhamiya neighborhood.

The men were shocked at their defeat, having been convinced that Iraq’s military would keep U.S. forces out of Baghdad. They had not planned for any kind of underground, guerrilla resistance to what they now saw would be a U.S. military occupation.

But Saddam and his sons had been moving freely around Baghdad, often with astonishingly little effort to hide themselves. Odai had driven right past a convoy of U.S. soldiers, looking at their faces and quietly insulting the men who now controlled his country. And while disoriented, the Husseins concluded that fighting the Americans was still possible.

The meeting to plan a guerrilla war was restricted to a handful of Saddam’s top loyalists “so that no one would know the details of the resistance,” said one of Odai Hussein’s bodyguards Thursday. The bodyguard agreed to an interview after Tuesday’s death of his former boss, but he insisted that he be identified only by a nom de guerre, Abu Tiba.

An insider look

Abu Tiba, whose father had served as a bodyguard to Saddam, worked for Odai from 1997 until the first days of the U.S. occupation. A cousin of his who is distantly related to Odai served as an intermediary, driving with a reporter to Abu Tiba’s home. Abu Tiba was interviewed without forewarning, and many of his details of Odai’s private life meshed with information from independent sources.

In the interview, Abu Tiba provided previously undisclosed details of how Iraq’s ruling family fought the war, eluded the victorious U.S. troops and grappled with the shock of falling from power.

Challenging saddam

Saddam Hussein’s own astonishment was obvious on Friday, April 11, Abu Tiba said, 48 hours after U.S. troops toppled Saddam’s government and his most prominent statue in Baghdad. Saddam and his sons attended Friday prayers at the Abu Haditha mosque in Adhamiya. Word spread quickly among the worshippers, and a crowd gathered around them outside after prayers were over.

Former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, center, poses with his two sons Odai, left, and Qusai in this undated file photo. Saddam's sons died in a blaze of gunfire and rockets Tuesday when U.S. forces, acting on a tip from an Iraqi informant, stormed a palatial villa in northern Iraq.

An old woman in a black abaya walked up to Saddam and berated him with a boldness that, days earlier, could have gotten any Iraqi killed.

“What have you done to us?” she demanded.

Iraq’s once all-powerful leader smacked his forehead with his open palm and pleaded for understanding.

“What could I do?” he asked the woman. “I trusted my commanders. … They have broken the oath they took upon themselves to protect Iraq. We hope we will be back in power and everything will be fixed.”

Saddam’s protestations were genuine, Abu Tiba said. “They never planned to leave because they had a very good plan to prevent the Americans reaching Baghdad,” he said.

Abu Tiba, 28, who has a black crewcut, thick eyebrows and stubble in the style of his former boss, spoke matter of factly about Iraq’s defeat in the combat of spring, and about his former boss’ violent death Tuesday at the hands of U.S. troops. The killing of Saddam’s sons will not end the resistance, Abu Tiba suggested, because it is decentralized, a point underscored by the deaths Thursday of three more U.S. soldiers in attacks by guerrillas.

Abu Tiba provided new details about the movements of Saddam and his sons during and just after the war. Among them:

• The initial U.S. missile attack of the war — a March 20 strike intended to kill Saddam and his top aides in a farmland area in the south of Baghdad — missed badly. The intended targets were nowhere near, staying in private houses scattered around the city.
• A U.S. attack April 7, in which four tons of bombs were dropped on Mansour, a residential neighborhood, came close to killing Saddam and his sons, destroying homes and killing a reported 14 civilians only 10 minutes after the Husseins left the area. But the incident was a sting by Saddam against one of his own officers, whom he executed for allegedly helping the Americans target the Iraqi leader.
• Video on Iraqi state television of Saddam and his sons during the war, including a startling April 4 broadcast of Saddam greeting the public on the streets of Adhamiya, was genuine.

Like his brother and his father, Odai moved every two or three days from one private house to another. Sometimes he stayed at one of the more modest of his many homes in regular residential neighborhoods. Sometimes he stayed with friends.

The deaths of Odai and Qusai will be hitting Saddam hard, said Abu Tiba’s father, Abu Jassim, 49.

“If he had a weapon that would do it, he would destroy all of Iraq for his sons,” Abu Jassim said. “He will be more determined to avenge them now.”