The mission to get Saddam Hussein could have gone a totally different way!
I recently sat down with former Delta Force member Chris VanSant for a lengthy interview about a bunch of subjects, and he touched on the rules of engagement. Specifically, he noted that the initial thought was that Saddam wouldn’t be taken alive.
“Saddam was actually a kill mission. We weren’t supposed to bring him back…We pulled an unarmed old man out of a hole. There’s not a man in that unit that would have put a bullet in the guy at that point. It was what it was. It was the way it unfolded,” VanSant explained.
You can watch him break down the whole situation, discuss the rules of engagement as a whole and his first contact with foreign troops in Iraq below.
That entire segment is one of my favorite parts of the interview. He talked about foreign fighters, nabbing Saddam and getting into a massive gunfight during their first contact with foreign fighters.
The whole thing was fascinating to me.
Is Black Hawk Down the best modern war movie ever made?
I asked former Delta Force Operator Chris VanSant – who served with many veterans of the Battle of Mogadishu – and he said no other movie captures true chaos and carnage like Black Hawk Down. pic.twitter.com/5EMqNGbHtC
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) January 27, 2022
Again, if you haven’t checked out the whole thing, I suggest you do! It’s a great interview!