ARAB-US RELATIONS - Dec. 14 - Saddam Captured.

In a press conference attended by senior IGC member Adnan Pachachi and the top US military commander in Iraq Gen. Sanchez, CPA head announces the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein, saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!". The conference turns into a laud rally as a video shows a US medic examining Saddam's dischevelled and long hair and mouth. (In the end, it was Saddam's own circle that "got him". Intelligence officers from the 4th Infantry Division had detained 5 to 10 members of his extended family over the past week. Gradually the prisoners began to lead their interrogators to increasingly precise information about the whereabouts of the fallen dictator. Within days he was betrayed by a member of a family close to him. The commander of the 1st Brigade, Col James Hickey, was soon briefing his division's commander, Maj.Gen. Ray Odierno, about the intelligence. A 600-man task force - complete with helicopters, artillery, armoured vehicles and special operations soldiers - was ready to deploy. The farm they targeted lay 15 km south-east of Tikrit, along the Tigris river, with a large field and an enclosure for sheep - as nondescript as they come). Odierno says: "He (Saddam) could have been hiding in thousands of places like this anywhere in Iraq". Two men armed with AK-47s were seen fleeing from a hut on the farm. The task force found a concrete platform. Under that was a piece of styrofoam. And under that in a narrow crawl-space, just big enough for one person, was Saddam who raised both hands and announced himself to the US troops in broken English: "I am Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq and I am prepared to negotiate". Military intelligence officials believe Saddam had not been hiding there for long. In his small two-room hut - a makeshift bedroom and a mini-kitchen with running water - were unwrapped T-shirts, a sign he had only recently been re-supplied. The rest of the room was a mass of clothes, however, and just outside was a green metal box with 18 packs of $100 bills bound in rubber bands - $750,000 in all. Odierno says Saddam may have been re-supplied by aides travelling up and down the Tigris; boats were found tied up to the nearby riverbank. When finally found at 8.25 pm on Dec. 13, Saddam appeared disoriented, pistol on his hip, groggy from the sudden bright light and the effects of breathing air through a narrow metal pipe. Odierno says: "He was just caught like a rat".