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Saddam Wants To Negotiate
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ADWAR, Iraq - "My name is
Saddam Hussein," the fallen Iraqi leader told U.S. troops in English as
they pulled him out of a dank hole that had become his home. "I am the
president of Iraq and I want to negotiate." U.S. soldiers
replied: "Regards from President Bush." The exchange,
recounted by Maj. Bryan Reed, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th
Infantry Division one day after Saddam's capture was announced, suggested
the Iraqi leader would be willing to tell U.S. intelligence everything he
knows. Of the most immediate importance would be any information on the
insurgency responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 American soldiers.
On Monday, a series
of car bombings at police stations around the Iraqi capital left eight
policemen dead and at least 14 wounded, police officials said. The
deadliest attack was a suicide mission at a station house in northern
Baghdad where the eight officers were killed. Two other car bombings at a
west-side station caused four injuries. President Bush had
warned attacks would continue as experts pored over documents found with
Saddam and his interrogation got underway. Saddam's exact
whereabouts Monday were unclear. U.S. officials said only he had been
moved to a secure location. The Dubai-based Arab TV station Al-Arabiya
said he was taken to Qatar, though that could not be confirmed.
Eventually, Saddam
could be tried for war crimes by a new Iraqi tribunal. More immediately,
the Americans made clear he faces intensive interrogation - foremost, to
find out what he knows about the ongoing rebellion against the U.S.-led
occupation and later, about any weapons of mass destruction his regime may
have had. The former dictator
- one of the world's most-wanted fugitives was captured by Special Forces
along with the 4th Infantry Division conducting a massive raid on a
farmhouse near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, according to Capt. Desmond
Bailey. The tip off came
from an individual who was arrested in Baghdad Friday and brought to
Tikrit Saturday morning for an interrogation which made clear Saddam was
in the area, according to Col. James Hickey, who led the raid. Soldiers
were seconds away from throwing a hand grenade into the hole when Saddam
surrendered, Hickey said. Saddam was hiding
in a Styrofoam-covered underground hide-out near one of his former palaces
in his hometown of Tikrit late Saturday. He was disheveled and wearing a
thick beard, and though he was armed with a pistol, the man who waged and
lost two wars against the United States and its allies did not resist or
fire a shot. In images broadcast
on television to prove his capture, Saddam resembled a desperate fugitive,
not the all-powerful president who had ordered his army to fight to the
death. "Ladies and
gentlemen, we got him," U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer told a news
conference. "The tyrant is a prisoner." The lack of
communications equipment in Saddam's cramped quarters indicated the ousted
dictator was not commanding the resistance, Odierno said.
"He was just caught
like a rat," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, whose 4th Infantry Division
troops staged the raid. "When you're in the bottom of a hole you can't
fight back." However, during his
arrest U.S. troops discovered "descriptive written material of significant
value," a U.S. commander told The Associated Press, speaking on condition
of anonymity. He declined to say whether the material related to the
anti-coalition resistance. Saddam will now
"face the justice he denied to millions," said Bush, whose troops and
intelligence agents had been searching in vain for Saddam since April. "In
the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over."
The United States
had posted a $25 million bounty for Saddam, as it did for Osama bin Laden,
the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network still at large despite a
manhunt since November 2001. It was not known
immediately if anyone has a claim to Saddam money, though U.S. forces
found him after receiving information from an Iraqi - a member of a family
close to Saddam, Odierno said. Within three hours
of the tip, troops were at a farm in Adwar, 10 miles from Saddam's home
town of Tikrit, where they found Saddam in a coffin-sized hole.
His capture leaves
13 figures at large from the list of 55 most-wanted regime officials; the
highest ranking is Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a close Saddam aide who U.S.
officials say may be directly organizing resistance.
Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, saw Saddam afterward and
said the deposed leader "has been cooperative and is talkative." He
described Saddam as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate."
Eager to prove to
Iraqis that Saddam was in custody, the U.S. military showed video of the
ousted leader, haggard and gray-bearded, as a military doctor examined
him. In Baghdad, radio stations played jubilant music and some bus
passengers shouted, "They got Saddam! They got Saddam!"
But some residents
of Adwar recalled fondly how Saddam used to swim in the nearby Tigris
River and bemoaned the capture of the leader who donated generously to
area residents. "This is bad news
to all Iraqis," said Ammar Zidan, 21. "Even if they captured Saddam
Hussein, we are all Saddam Hussein. We want freedom and independence from
the Americans." Speaking on CBS's
"60 Minutes," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saddam would be
accorded the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, but
added that any participation by Saddam in the insurgency against coalition
troops might lead to different classification. Saddam was captured
almost five months after his sons, Qusai and Odai, were killed July 22 in
a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul. Coalition
officials hoped the sons' deaths would weaken the Iraqi resistance;
instead, the guerrilla campaign escalated. In the latest
attack - before Saddam's capture was announced - a suspected suicide
bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday
morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 and wounding 33, 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.
Soldiers from the
U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, who all but missed the invasion of Iraq
but have been at the front line of postwar hostilities, spent Sunday
afternoon smoking cigars after scoring the allies' biggest triumph since
the fall of Baghdad. "It almost seems
too easy," Sgt. Ebony Jones of Kansas City, Mo., said after his comrades
captured Saddam. "This is the best thing that ever happened to us here."
In the division's
headquarters in Tikrit, two dozen soldiers gathered in front of a
television, cheering as their unit's accomplishment began to ripple across
the airwaves, quickly dominating the news. But no one on the
base said anything about their mission winding down after such a big
catch. Tikrit and the rest of the Sunni Muslim areas north of Baghdad -
the area under the 4th Infantry's control - remain one of the toughest
patches of Iraq, with or without Saddam, they said. "His capture will
show others that they cannot run and hide," said Sgt. Don Williams of
Houston. "Attacks will not stop, but this will have significant impact."
After sunset
Sunday, the streets of Tikrit plunged into darkness and an eery silence.
Soldiers on patrol in the city, recalling the increased insurgency after
Odai and Qusai were killed said they were being extra cautious.
"We must remain
vigilant. We had an increase of attacks after we nailed Saddam's sons, it
could happen again," said Sgt. Cesar Castro. |
