Time for a Saddam Rally????????
Saddam Hussein Captured in Iraq Hideout
2 hours ago
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Without firing a shot, American forces captured a bearded and haggard-looking Saddam Hussein in an underground hide-out on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, ending one of the most intensive manhunts in history. The arrest was a huge victory for U.S. forces battling an insurgency by the ousted dictator's followers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer told a news conference Sunday, eight months after American troops swept into Baghdad and toppled Saddam's regime.
"The tyrant is a prisoner."
In the capital, radio stations played celebratory music, residents fired small arms in the air in celebration and passengers on buses and trucks shouted, "They got Saddam! They got Saddam!"
Washington hopes Saddam's capture will help break the organized Iraq resistance that has killed more than 190 American soldiers since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1 and has set back efforts at reconstruction. U.S. commanders have said that while in hiding Saddam played some role in the guerrilla campaign blamed on his followers.
"A significant blow has been dealt to former regime elements trying to prevent coalition progress in Iraq," said Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of 4th Infantry Division. He was speaking at a news conference in Tikrit.
Saddam's capture comes almost five months after his sons, Qusai and Odai, were killed July 22 in a four-hour gunbattle with U.S. troops in a hideout in the northern city of Mosul. There was hope at the time that the sons' deaths would dampen the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. But since then, the guerrilla campaign has mounted dramatically.
In the latest attack, a suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 more, the U.S. military said. Also Sunday, a U.S. soldier died while trying to disarm a roadside bomb south of the capital _ the 452nd soldier to die in Iraq.
Saddam was one of the most-wanted fugitives in the world, along with Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network who has not been caught despite a manhunt since November 2001, when the Taliban regime was overthrown in Afghanistan.
Saddam was captured at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in a walled farm compound in Adwar, a town 10 miles from Tikrit, said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. The cellar was little more than a specially prepared "spider hole" with just enough space to lie down. Bricks and dirt camouflaged the entrance.
A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 6-foot-deep vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air. The entrance to the hide-out was under the floor of a small, walled compound with a room in one corner and a lean-to attached to the room. The tunnel was roughly in the middle of the compound.
A U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saddam admitted his identity when captured.
Sanchez, who saw Saddam overnight, said the deposed leader "has been cooperative and is talkative." He described Saddam as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate."
"He was unrepentant and defiant," said Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior official of a Shiite Muslim political party who, along with other Iraqi leaders, visited Saddam in captivity.
"When we told him, 'If you go to the streets now, you will see the people celebrating,'" Abdel-Mahdi said. "He answered, 'Those are mobs.' When we told him about the mass graves, he replied, 'Those are thieves.'"
The official added: "He didn't seem apologetic. He seemed defiant, trying to find excuses for the crimes in the same way he did in the past." |
