The NYT says that the terrain of Baghdad does not pose the same dangers as Grozny of Mogadishu.
“The old city in Baghdad does have narrow roads, but most of the city, especially the parts around many of Mr. Hussein’s compounds, is crisscrossed with wide boulevards that would be harder to block.”
Saddam, like many dictators has really bad taste, – from giant monuments with bronze castings of hands holding massive ceremonial swords (made in Basingstoke in England) to huge sterile avenues created by tearing down historic prototypical arab courtyard houses along a labyrinth of narrow streets. The shelter that these alleys would have provided could have saved him.