MERGED: Please Place All Comments on Hussein's Capture Here

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nbcrusader said:
I have heard in a number of places that Saddam will soon be on "Queer Eye for the Captured Dictator Guy"

Can you imagine poor Kyan having to "zhooze" that hair? :yuck:

I bet Carson could make him look pretty harmless in a little something pink :D
 
nbcrusader said:
I have heard in a number of places that Saddam will soon be on "Queer Eye for the Captured Dictator Guy"

*Thinks back to picture of Saddam on front page of paper*

Looks like the men have their work cut out for them.

:p.

Originally posted by Headache in a Suitcase
7. "Is this about the illegal music downloads?"

6. "Am I going to be on 'Cops'?"

1. "Will you go easy on me if I tell you where Martha Stewart is hiding?"

:lmao:!

Angela
 
sulawesigirl4 said:
just an observation from my corner of Africa. I was sitting with Malian friends having my hair braided when we heard the news on Radio France. The general feeling was one of disbelief. As the girl braiding my hair told me, "Saddam is a bad man, but Bush is also very bad and the war was wrong." This morning at work people were looking at the photo printed in the newspaper and saying that they didn't think it was really him. Essentially, the mood is that the US was the aggressor and that they think they can do anything they want. I don't know how many times I have been asked "Why did you elect Bush? He likes violence too much. He thinks America is the only country in the world."

So there are some reactions from a third-world country with a majority moderate Muslim population. Not that anyone will care, but it never hurts to get a look at the outside world, n'est-ce pas?

That's interesting Sula, and I can understand that some people across the world don't like Bush, but what has he done to be called "very bad" and Sadaam (who has caused the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people) only a "bad man". To me, it sounds absolutely irrational. I find it quite scary that anyone should feel that Bush is worse than Sadaam, or even equal in evilness.
 
Pfft. I deserve this 25 mil. When Bush announced to Saddam he was going to go over there and **** him up I said "Onya Saddam, you gone and dug yourself a hole now haven't ya"

Where is my money?
:angry:
 
Angie Angie ever the deluded...

Hm, the first time I saw that evil old bearded chap on tv, first thing I thought of were the sexy Britney pictures in his mansion :huh:

f
 
Dreadsox said:
I agree with the poster above......

These people deserve the right to put him on trial in their country, under their own laws.

So sorry UN.

I agree with Sting2 and you, but because it takes some time that the iraqi people can put him on trial i see a role for the ICC.
They could keep him in jail for these years.

Just imagine if Saddam would commit suicide or die because of a heartattack in a US military prison, lots of people wouldn't believe that it was just suicide

Klaus
 
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did you see what letterman did on the late show the other night...

they put that santa hat on saddam during an add and the voice said "did george bush really capture santa?"

:lmao:
 
ICC vs Trial in Iraq

US says Saddam was an international threat and had done much damage internationaly and it should be dealt with internationaly. Now says it's a domestic thing and he should be tried in Iraq and not internationaly by the ICC.

Elsewhere people said Saddam was only a domestic threat to his own people and not an international threat at all and he should be dealt with domesticaly, the world should stay out. Now say its an international thing and he should be tried internationaly by the ICC not domesticaly in Iraq.

Everyone is a bit confused.



But there is NO WAY in high hell he would ever go to the ICC. The way those trials work, Saddam could subpeona whoever he wanted as a witness. You'd see people like Rumsfeld in there getting grilled as well as who knows else. The sh*t he could do, so, so many people would be afraid of him going there, not the least of which the US, it'd never happen. In a sense it's a shame because as much as I want to see the Iraqi's be the ones to stick it to him, it will still be a monkey trial (they'll just want to get to the sentencing part a.s.a.p), and I think alot of the dirt in Saddams closet should be aired, I think a number of Western countries should be held accountable in public for a*hole behind the back dealings with dictators, and this would be the opportunity for that, because goodness knows Saddam wouldn't go down without trying to take as many with him as possible.

A lot of people have a part of the blood on their hands, whether it was the US and British (and others) for turning a blind eye in the 80's in the name of the cold war, or the French and Russians (and others) for profiteering in the 90's it would be good if they knew they could be held accountable in the future and learn a little lesson there.
 
Saddam and his military power in the 1980s came primarily from the Soviet Union. Take a look at what any Republican Guard Unit was armed with. Also, who trained them and what tactics and doctrines did they use. Guess which country maintained 1,000 military personal(far more than any other country) in Iraq every year during the 1980s?
 
Interesting, Mrs. S. It's so hard to tell what's fact these days, and what isn't. :mad: I remember hearing on the day he was caught that the Kurds had had a large role to play. Will the public ever know for sure? :rant:

Anyway, thanks!

SD
 
We'll never know for sure. But the Kurds certainly wanted him out of power. There may be a grain of truth to the story. Yeah, I'd love to know for sure too. But it's not going to happen.
 
My take is there are a lot of people who can stand the fact that the USA accomplished this, hate the USA/Bush etc. and then we get some unsubstantiated report like this. I more likely to believe there really is a Ghost in that British Castle than this. Will see if this little tabloid gets any traction in the days to come.
 
That might be their motive, Sting. They could also be trying to cash in on an "interesting" story. It's amazing what people will do to sell newspapers, books and magazines.
 
I'm not so sure. It's being written in ever growing numbers.

A few links. The first is the best I think. I don't think it's so much not wanting the US to be right , but the Kurds wanting the glory, not to mention money. It also mention Uday and Qusay.

http://www.sundayherald.com/38816

...

Enter one Qusrat Rasul Ali, otherwise known as the lion of Kurdistan. A leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Rasul Ali was once tortured by Saddam?s henchmen, but today is chief of a special forces unit dedicated to hunting down former Ba?athist regime leaders.

Rasul Ali?s unit had an impressive track record. It was they who last August, working alone, arrested Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan in Mosul, northern Iraq. Barely a month earlier in the al-Falah district of the same town, the PUK is believed to have played a crucial role in the pinpointing and storming of a villa that culminated in the deaths of Saddam?s sons Uday and Qusay.

In that mixed district of Mosul where Arabs, Kurds and Turkemen live side by side, PUK informers went running to their leader Jalal Talabani?s nearest military headquarters to bring him news on the exact location of the villa where both Uday and Qusay had taken shelter.

Armed with the information, Talabani made a beeline for US administration offices in Baghdad, where deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was based for a week?s stay in Iraq at the time.

The Kurdish leader and US military chiefs conferred and decided that PUK intelligence would go ahead and secretly surround the Zeidan villa and install sensors and eavesdropping devices. The Kurdish agents were instructed to prepare the site for the US special forces operation to storm the building on July 22.

American officials later said they expected that the $30m bounty promised by their government for the capture or death of the Hussein sons would be paid. Given their direct involvement in providing the exact location and intelligence necessary, no doubt Talabani?s PUK operatives could lay claim to the sum, but no confirmation of any delivery or receipt of the cash has ever been made.

The PUK and Rasul Ali?s special ?Ba?athist hunters? have, it seems, been doing what the Americans have consistently failed to do. In an interview with the PUK?s al-Hurriyah radio station last Wednesday, Adil Murad, a member of the PUK?s political bureau, confirmed that the Kurdish unit had been pursuing fugitive Ba?athists for the past months in Mosul, Samarra, Tikrit and areas to the south including al-Dwar where Saddam was eventually cornered. Murad even says that the day before Saddam?s capture he was tipped off by PUK General Thamir al-Sultan, that Saddam would be arrested within the next 72 hours.

Clearly the Kurdish net was closing on Saddam, and PUK head Jalal Talabani and Rasul Ali were once again in the running for US bounty ? should any be going.

It was at about 10.50am Baghdad time on last Saturday when US intel ligence says it got the tip it was looking for. But it was not until 8pm, with the launch of Operation Red Dawn, that they finally began to close in on the prize.

The US media reported that the tip-off came from an Iraqi man who was arrested during a raid in Tikrit, and even speculated that he could get part of the bounty. ?It was intelligence, actionable intelligence,? claimed Lt General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq. ?It was great analytical work.?

But the widely held view that Kurdish intelligence was the key to the operation was supported in a statement released last Sunday by the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, said that Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit had provided vital information and more.

...
was 3.15pm Washington time when Donald Rumsfeld called George W Bush at Camp David. ?Mr President, first reports are not always accurate,? he began. ?But we think we may have him.?

First reports ? indeed the very first report of Saddam?s capture ? were also coming out elsewhere. Jalal Talabani chose to leak the news and details of Rasul Ali?s role in the deployment to the Iranian media and to be interviewed by them.

By early Sunday ? way before Saddam?s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western press ? the Kurdish media ran the following news wire:

?Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat?s team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!?

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the emphasis had changed, and the ousted Iraqi president had been ?captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters.?

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13341763

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/62977/1/.html
 
It's certainly tough to doubt that the Kurds wanted Saddam's ass. They had good reason to want it: they got attacked by chemical weapons from his arsenal. That sucks. :censored: :censored: They are gutsy, strong and enterprising people. The $$ award didn't hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if at least the Kurds had something to do with the capture. Drugs? Strange, but as they say truth is stranger than fiction.
 
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I agree, He did seem awfully subdued in that initial video in comparison to the defiant man we know him to be and as told by others the next day. In fact it had already been supposed that he had been drugged.

I would really like the red cross to have access to him as well as the other members of the deck.
 
He did seem subdued. He'd been in that hole for awhile, right outside his ancestral town, Tikrit. That was a far cry from those palaces. Then he was defiant when he was questioned.......so as we used to say at my hospital workplace "drugs haven't been ruled out". Alot of things are possible. I am glad they got him. I think that's the important thing. What a :censored: :censored: :censored: jerk.
 
Saddam 'caught like a rat' in a hole

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Across the Tigris River from his opulent palaces, Saddam Hussein shuttered himself at the bottom of a narrow, dark hole beneath a two-room mud shack on a sheep farm, a U.S. military official said Sunday.

Having opted not to travel with security forces or an entourage that might bring attention to him, only a Styrofoam square, dirt and a rug separated the deposed Iraqi leader from the U.S. soldiers who routed him from his hiding place Saturday night.

"He was in the bottom of a hole with no way to fight back," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno. "He was caught like a rat."

Saddam's capture was based not on a direct tip, but a collection of intelligence gathered from the hostile questioning of Saddam's former bodyguards and family members, U.S. officials said.

That intelligence prompted U.S. soldiers to go to Adwar, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Tikrit, Saddam's ancestral home.

'We realized early on in the summer... the people we had to get to were the midlevel individuals, his bodyguards... We tried to work through family and tribal ties that might have been close to Saddam Hussein," Odierno said.

"Over the last 10 days or so, we brought in about five to ten members of these families, ... and finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."

After they received the "actionable intelligence" earlier Saturday, the 1st Brigade Combat team of the 4th Infantry Division, the Raider Brigade, was given the assignment to kill or capture Saddam in a mission dubbed Operation Red Dawn.

Hideaway uncovered
Six hundred soldiers from the Raider Brigade prepared to move on two locations. They included cavalry engineers, artillery, aviation and special operations forces.

Even with reliable information, U.S. forces initially failed to grab Saddam in raids on two targets near Adwar.

But a subsequent cordon and search operation in the same area unearthed the ragged, bearded fugitive.

Troops converged on a two-room mud hut squatting between two farmhouses with sheep penned nearby.

One room, which appeared to serve as a bedroom, was in disarray with clothes strewn about the area.

The other room was a crude kitchen, Odierno said.

Inside that shack, a Styrofoam plug closed Saddam's subterranean hideaway. Dirt and a rug covered the entryway to the hole, he said.

U.S. forces encountered no resistance during Red Dawn.

"I think the pressure had become so tight on him, (Saddam) knew he couldn't travel in large entourages so he didn't have any men with him, didn't have much of a security force," Odierno said.

Saddam was armed with a pistol, but showed no resistance during his capture.

"He was a tired man and also a man resigned to his fate," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces, told a news conference in Baghdad Sunday.

Soldiers also recovered two AK 47 rifles, $750,000 in $100 denominations and a white and orange taxi in the raid.

Troops took two other unidentified Iraqis affiliated with Saddam into custody.

By 9:15 p.m., Saddam was moved to an undisclosed location and soldiers continued to search the area.

"If you could see where we found him, he could have been hiding in a hundred different places, a thousand different places, like this all around Iraq," Odierno said.

"And it just takes finding the right person who will give you a good idea where he might be, and that's what happened."
 
How Saddam Hussein was captured

BBC News Online looks at how the operation to capture former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein unfolded.

Saddam Hussein was captured after a tip-off led American troops to a small, underground hole concealed next to farm buildings near the former leader's hometown of Tikrit.

Soldiers were seconds away from throwing a hand grenade into the hole, when Saddam Hussein emerged and surrendered, Colonel James Hickey who led the raid said.

The critical piece of information, obtained at 1050 local time on Saturday, came from an individual who had been arrested the previous day in Baghdad, he said.

By 1800, under the cover of darkness, some 600 troops from the US 4th Infantry Division began moving towards two locations considered likely hide-outs near the town of al-Dawr.

Their mission to kill or capture Saddam Hussein, they assaulted the targets - codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2 - at about 2000 but did not find the former leader.

They then sealed off the area and conducted a wider search, discovering a small walled farm compound containing a metal lean-to structure and a mud hut.

Underground hide-out

Searching the compound, troops discovered a so-called "spider hole", camouflaged with bricks and dirt and covered with polystyrene and a carpet.

Colonel Hickey said that the soldiers looked into the hole and saw a figure inside it.

"Two hands appeared. The individual clearly wanted to surrender," he said.

Saddam Hussein was pulled out at 2036, "disoriented" and "bewildered", according to Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division.

He put up no resistance although armed with a pistol.

"My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate," he told the US troops in English, according to Major Bryan Reed, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.

"Regards from President Bush," US special forces replied, Major Reed recounted.

Two other people, believed to have formed Saddam Hussein's small entourage, were also captured and taken away for interrogation.

'Very rudimentary'

The underground chamber the former Iraqi leader had secreted himself in was six-to-eight feet (1.8 metres - 2.4 metres) deep, with enough space for a person to lie down, and an air vent and extractor fan.

Major General Odierno said the farm where the former leader was found consisted of "two very small rooms in an adobe hut".

He said one was a bedroom that was cluttered with clothes, including new T-shirts and socks and a "very rudimentary" kitchen, with running water.


Saddam Hussein would have moved from the building into the hole whenever coalition forces were in the area, Major General Odierno added.

He said the hole was very close to the Tigris river, within view of some of the captive's palaces.

"I think it was rather ironic that he was in a hole in the ground across the river from these great palaces that he has built, where he robbed all the money from the Iraqi people," Major General Odierno said.

'Ultimate information'

Although the area had been searched before, it was likely Saddam Hussein had not been there, as he was thought to have moved often and at short notice.

The spokesman said it was likely he had been there for a short time when the "ultimate information" came from a member of a family brought in for questioning.

No mobile phones or other communications equipment were found, suggesting that Saddam Hussein was providing "moral support" and was no longer co-ordinating the Iraqi resistance, Major General Odierno added.

Top US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said the former dictator was "talkative and co-operative", had no injuries and was in good health.

Endgame

Along with the former Iraqi dictator, troops discovered $750,000 cash in $100 bills, two AK-47 machine guns and a briefcase of documents.

A white and orange taxi was parked near the compound.

The former Iraqi leader was removed at 2115 and taken to an undisclosed secure location, General Sanchez said.

He showed a news conference a videotape of a dishevelled and heavily-bearded Saddam Hussein being examined by an American doctor.

The mission came after a intense intelligence-gathering operation in the Tikrit area over several months.

American forces gradually built up a picture of Saddam Hussein's likely whereabouts through tip-offs, interrogations of detainees and rigorous analysis of information.

The tip-off on Saturday came as the first piece of so-called "actionable intelligence", pointing troops to a specific location.

Analysts have suggested that Saddam Hussein hid near his home town Tikrit - his political and tribal powerbase - in the hope that remaining local supporters would shelter him from coalition forces.

But it must be speculated that the $25m reward offered by the US for information leading to his capture may well have played a part in undermining these traditional loyalties - and sealing his fate.
 
I've been looking at Kurdish web sites and I can't find anything about the capture of Saddam other than they were very pleased. The Kurds have a social system which has been compared to that of pre-Colludon (pre-1745) Scotland. As I am part Scottish and part German, I am familiar with this system. They are very decentralized, with over 800 tribes and thus basically 800 governments!! They don't have any centralized authority. Systems like this generally screw the population because they can't unite against their enemies. I wonder how unified they actually were against Saddam? Their leaders spoke out, but I wonder if those leaders were really united in their goal? The Scots used to all claim that they were united against England, but hell, enough chiefs were either in the pay of the English Crown or just plain opposed to each other to screw Scotland.
Not trying to hijack the thread, just trying to figure out the differing opinions here and treading delicately because of the many controversies and disputes over the Kurds.
 
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Egads, Chalabi is saying the Kurds played a big role. He's a U.S. ally, so I don't think he means to slam the U.S. role. The holidays sure are making me scatterbrained.
 
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