One Down Two to Go

//...Will Saddam be tried in the Hague? Unlikely ..//

Who cares! Saddam was captured - good riddance! Bush did it - give him the credit when it is due.

Real question is: How come they haven`t found Osama yet? Or Mullah Omar? I am sure Saddam has been more resourceful, being the head of a oil-state for so long. And yet he didn`t survive that long out there and was finally captured. So how come Osama is still out there? How is he managing to evade.?

Who is helping Osama?

Extinguished rulers in ``that part of the world`` have traditionally been disposed off without much ado in the past. Often by their own children, siblings, paramours, loyalists, close associates. That this would then be blamed on ``foreign hand`` aka ``colonial rulers/influences`` was also part of the great schemes.

It shouldn`t be very different this time around also, except for the fact that we may get to see more of the action on television.

What do I think? I don`t know, but reading Doonesbury gives persepctive, too.

capture of sadam gives the Junior a window of opportunity to get off the back of the Iraqi tiger with dignity -- by declaring `mission accoplished` -- before it`s too late -- US knows sadam was not in-charge after his overthrow --

the resistance has long been taken over by other forces -- who have some old scores to settle with the US....the killings in all likehood will continue unabated.....sadam or no sadam .....an occupation is still an occupation.......

Thanks for elevating my status to a ``twice quoted`` (two stars) analyst.

I think the whole episode of capturing him turns out as a minor event and likely to not pay any political dividends for dubya. Saddam was reduced to a rodent hiding in a 6 x 8 underground hole in filthy atmosphere. It depicts the picture of a person reduced to a non-entity much before his arrest. He was rendered irrelevent even if he was not captured. He had no power, no bodyguards, no communication equipment, no protection and no organization. He was a man trying to stay alive and nothing more. Any hope for him coming out of the cellar making his presence felt politically was zero with US troops in total control of Iraq. That condition of helpless and hopelessness made him and his arrest almost non-event in real terms.

As far his trail goes, it would be another big disappointment for all. Since the fall of Baghdad, everything is hyped up like WMD before. Most of his associates have been in custody for almost a year now and like the detainees at Guantanamo, no trail is anywhere in the picture. Most likely, his trail will be delayed indefintely. Technically he has committed no crime against US, like involvement in terrorism (OBL) or drug smuggling (Noreiga). His crimes are against his own people, Iranians and Kuwaities. So the best place for trying him is Baghdad or International Tribunal at Hague. He would like Hague because of the absence of capital punishment in EU countries. My hunch is that he will be killed in custody or die of natural causes in few years or less.

However, it must be mentioned here that now a living Saddam is more useful for US interests than a dead one. His alive status provides justification for a longer stay for US troops in Iraq, or indefinitely. The fear of him alive will keep his Iraqi opposition, now in control of Iraq, seeking constant US protection. Shias and Kurds would like to see him dead so that they can plan their future moves without preoccupation with taking revenge from Saddam and Baa`th party for the brutalities of the past. Death of Saddam and subsequent reduction of US troops would have been really a victory for the Iranian interests in the region. That is why extra effort was made to capture him only when he could be captured alive such as sleeping and in an isolated place.

It is very possible that OBL is in similar condition as Saddam was - just trying to stay alive as long as possible more than anything else. His whereabout is likely known to the intelligence services and when time is right to extract maximum benefit, he will be nabbed too.

The serious question would be raised few years from now: was spending tens of billions of dollars to pull out two sleeping bearded powerless individuals, on the run, from underground cellars worth?

#4 by sameerJB
//..was spending tens of billions of dollars to pull out two sleeping bearded powerless individuals, on the run, from underground cellars worth? //

don`t know about Saddam, but it is worth every penny to get Osama!

Do you guys really think that all this publicized is true and not an eye wash? Not something to distract the poor Americans and the whole world from the everyday killings of American soldiers in Iraq and other such issues that have to be submerged? I really doubt that Saddam or Osama were/are wanted by the US and strongly believe that they were part of the ploy. After 9/11 they have put a ban on publicizing government secrets after a lapse of 20 years otherwise we would’ve known the truth through some CIA diary in the future years.

re: nasah

That was a very cynical but politically a very actute observation. There is a political windfall from the capture of Saddam Hussein for Bush administration. Still, the capture of Saddam Hussein will generate media hype but in the long term analysis, it will create a political diminishing capital for the Bush White House.

The situation in Iraq has moved beyond the issue of Saddam Hussein and in fact, Saddam Hussein was a non-issue the moment the American armor entered and occupied Baghdad. The real questions are how the Shias are going to react and whether the demands for the Americans to evict Iraq will increase in their volume. Remember, the problem right now is the issue of transfering power to the Iraqis and how to attain this aim. The Americans are suggesting that an Iraqi consititution be written first and then power be transfered after an election. Whereas the Shia majority is suggesting that first an consitutuent assembly of Iraqis be elected and then, this assembly will draft the consititution. In any case, the Shias want the Americans to leave Iraq, but the Sunni neighbors of Iraq are not too keen on the Americans leaving lest Iraq drifts into the political oribit of Iran.

The question is what sort of political pressure is going to be exerted on Iran to keep out and away from influencing the Iraqi politics; this issue is about the emergence and denial of a regional power - Iran - in the absence of Iraq acting as a regional influence. The sanctions might have been heaped upon Syria, but Iran will play a much more critical role as the months unfold and we head towards the presidential elections in November 2004.

It will be interesting to see how Iran plays its cards, because it has potential to emerge as a very power regional player and this will be determined by Iran plying its diplomacy in Afghanistan and Iraq; two nations, which are existing in a political vacuum presently. Iran would like to fill that vacuum, but the Americans will be loathe to see Iran, a Shia nation, emerging as a regional power since they had traditionally supported Iraq in the post 1979 period as a bulwark against Iran and in this, Iraq was supported by all the Sunni nations in the Gulf.

Are we seeing a realignment towards that political consideration again or not will determine the future of the American occupation, the nature of the Iraqi democracy in the post-Saddam Hussein period and the emerging political landscape of the Middle East.

Saddam Hussein`s capture though a highly symbolic act in the pursuit of perceptional politics means nothing in terms of the real political maneuverings for power which are occuring in Iraq and are creating ripples in the region.

The other question which will be answered id whether the resistence to the American occupation was Saddam loyalist based or it was a popular nationalistic resistence movement? If it was the latter, then the resistence will intensify with the demands for the Americans to leave Iraq since Saddam Hussein has been politically neutralized and the Sunnis in Iraq have been marginalized.

Will the Kurds favor a political compromise with the Shias or seek an independent state and if the latter, how will Turkey react? If Turkey reacts, how it will influence the politics of NATOs southern command and influence the United States` political interests in the region? Turkey wants to join the EU and if this situation unfolds, will Turkey distance itself from NATO and support an EU joint defence command/control arrangment to leverage influence with the Americans and as a means to gain entry into the EU?

The capture of Saddam Hussein did not solve any problems, but rather it forced the problems to the fore and therein lies the problems for the future. The Americans were right in their pronouncement; the catpture of Saddam Hussein was indeed a turning point for Iraq, Iraqis and for the region, but which way the hinge of fate will turn, for worse or for better, still remains to be determined. Like the Chinese curse, we will be living in interesting times.

Ciao

It is good to see Saddam being caught. That is something everyone can agree on.

I think the USA must be in a dilemma on where and how to try him. The guy must have so many secrets, that he could be a liability to the USA.

I hope there is a public trial, held by the international courts, within Iraq. Or held by Iraqi courts, but not those appointed by the Iraqi Governing Council, but those appointed by an elected Iraqi govt.

If elections are held today in Iraq, I think the Shia clerics will win in a land slide. That is another dilemma for the USA. Saddam was one of the most secular Arab leaders in history. He may well be replaced by an elected religious govt.

Those of us who have been opposing Saddam, from the days when the USA was allied with him, against Iraq, would like to know a few things:

1) What did Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam discuss, when they sat on the same sofa, during the 1983 meeting. Saddam obviously did not chose his friends carefully. The same Rumsfeld has now put him in jail.

2) Did the USA actually encourage Saddam to attack Iran. And the extent of its support.

3) Did April Gillispie, the USA ambassador to Iraq, tell Saddam that the USA would not take any action against him, if he invaded Kuwait.

4) Did UK and USA actually supply parts for the chemical weapon plants that were set up in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

I hope all this comes out in a trial.....

The world works in strange ways. The CIA and USA govt., and specifically Rumsfeld (all one-time allies of Saddam) have him in the slammer. And the people of Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia (three countries Iraq invaded or threatened to invade), not to mention the people of Pakistan (a country which Iraq never supported on its causes) and even the religious folks of Pakistan (who supported Iran`s religious tendencies over Saddam govts.` secular tendencies) are now the ones asking for his fair trial.

I think the main problem the USA has is its extremely low credibility amongst the common Arabs and Muslims on the street. The credibility is so low, that people(s) of these countries (not the autocratic govts., but the people) will support known terrorists and evil dictators, as long as they take on the USA. I have talked to so many Arabs and Muslims (including yuppie teenagers with posters of Britney Spears on their walls), and every single one of them has stated that they consider Osama to be a terrorist, and Saddam to be a thug. Yet they support them, if they take on the USA. Primarily because they consider the USA an even bigger terrorist or thug.

All opinion polls in all Muslim countries indicate this.

If an election were held between Bush and Osama in an Arab country. Who would win. I would vote for neither, but I have a feeling OBL would win big.

The USA, thus, has a huge image problem if people on the street, give it less credibility than a terrorist and a thug. Any well-wisher of the USA should try to bring this up. Rather than encouraging the USA to furthur ruin its image by invading or sanctioning or bombing Muslim countries. One first has to have credibility amongst the people, before declaring one`s self the savior of the people.

If Bush is sincere about democracy in the Middle East, and about not supporting autocratic govts., then he should do one thing:

- Let Saddam speak his mind, during a free and open internationally televised trial. Let him bring up all the facts about the alliance the USA had with him. As well as all the information about supplying parts for chemical weapons etc.

After that the US govt. should take partial responsibility for creating the monster of Saddam to begin with. And promise that it will turn a new page, and not support individuals like him, under any circumstance.

That would greatly assist the USA in improving its image on the Arab streets.

Other than that, I agree with what Sameer has stated. The capture of Saddam isn`t really going to change anything.

To be a savior, one must first have credibility amongst the people, who one is claiming to save.......Saddam Hussain and the USA have both claimed to be saviors of the Iraqis and the Arabs, and both have zero credibility amongst the people whom they claim to want to save......

saw his picture in the paper aaj. he looks awful and for some very strange reason i really feel sorry for him.

Allah reham karay uss parr :(

Sorry for the interjection guys, but this is a notable article by Robert Fisk.

The tyrant is a prisoner
by Robert Fisk
Independent UK

So they got Saddam at last. Unkempt, his tired eyes betraying defeat; even the $750,000 in cash found in his hole in the ground demeaned him.

Saddam in chains; maybe not literally, but he looked in that extraordinary videotape yesterday like a prisoner of ancient Rome, the barbarian at last cornered, the hand caressing the scraggy beard. All those ghosts - of gassed Iranians and Kurds, of Shias gunned into the mass graves of Karbala, of the prisoners dying under excruciating torture in the villas of Saddam`s secret police - must surely have witnessed something of this.

``Ladies and gentlemen - we got him,`` crowed Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq. ``This is a great day in Iraq`s history. For decades, hundreds of thousands of you suffered at the hands of this cruel man. For decades, this cruel man divided you against each other. For decades, he threatened to attack your neighbours. These days are gone for ever ... the tyrant is a prisoner,`` he said.

Tony Blair said: ``Saddam has gone from power, he won`t be coming back. That the Iraqi people now know, and it is they who will decide his fate.``

It took just 600 American soldiers to capture the man who was for 12 years one of the West`s best friends in the Middle East and for 12 more years the West`s greatest enemy in the Middle East. In a miserable 8ft hole in the mud of a Tigris farm near the village of Ad-Dawr, the president of the Iraqi Arab Republic, leader of the Arab Socialist Baath party, ex-guerrilla fighter, invader of two nations, friend of Jacques Chirac and a man once courted by President Ronald Reagan, was found hiding, almost certainly betrayed by his own comrades and now destined - if the Americans mean what they say - to a trial for war crimes on a Nuremberg scale.

For weeks, US forces had prowled the countryside along the Tigris river, arresting former Baathist functionaries, questioning former bodyguards, blasting away at the guerrillas of Tikrit and Samarra and Mosul and killing civilians along with them.

But yesterday was, beyond a doubt, an American military victory - if, and only if, this ends the insurgency against the Americans.

In Baghdad, the occupation authorities showed, over and over again, those images - far more haunting for his victims than for us Westerners - of the Beast of Baghdad.

If they were Che Guevara`s eyes, the beard belonged to Fidel Castro. There was even a kind of crazed Karl Marx in the face. Brutal, of course. They all are, the Middle East`s dictators, in a place where cruelty can be praised as strength. Tribal, most certainly.

But one impression there was that conquered all others. This was revolution gone to seed.

The ironies were extraordinary. In his youth, in 1959, Saddam had tried to assassinate an Iraqi president and, with a bullet in his leg, had hidden in the Tikrit countryside not far from the place where, almost half a century later - this weekend - he was captured by the Americans. He had - the video images at least suggested this - tried to return to his youth. Saddam the Monster had reverted to Saddam the Warrior, fighting against overwhelming odds, an Iraqi patriot rather than an Iraqi dictator.

``Talkative and co-operative,`` the Americans called him after his capture. I`m not surprised. Suddenly, he was important again, a war criminal to be sure - but no longer a man in a hole. And it was difficult yesterday, looking at those pictures of the Lion of Iraq - for this is what he called himself - to remember how royally he had been toasted in the past.

This was the man who was the honour guest of the city of Paris when Mr Chirac was mayor and when the French could see the Jacobins in his bloody regime. This was the man who negotiated with the UN secretary generals Perez de Cuellar and Kofi Annan, who had chatted over coffee to none other than the now US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, who had met Ted Heath and Tony Benn and a host of European statesmen.

But is it really the end of the nightmare? Certainly, the broken creature in the American videotape was not going to run the movie backwards. His days were, as they say, over. There was a kind of relief in his face. The drama had ended. He was alive, unlike his tens of thousands of victims. Was a volume of memoirs in his fatigued mind? The final indignity of having his hair yanked by an American doctor might have been assuaged by the memory of all those French surgeons who once attended to his family`s needs. For no Iraqi doctor ever dared operate on the Tikritis.

Sure, you could watch the gunmen celebrating yesterday, the shoals of bullets soaring into the night sky over Baghdad. The killer of their fathers, brothers, sons, wives, mothers, was at last in chains.

I was amid the slums of Sadr City - once Saddam City - when a cascade of rifle fire swept the streets. I was sitting on the concrete floor of a Shia cleric who had been run down and killed by an American tank, amid Iraqis with no love for the Americans, and the gunfire grew louder. A boy walked from the room and ran back with news that Iraqi radio was announcing the capture of Saddam. And faces that had been dark with mourning - that had not smiled for a week - beamed with pleasure.

The gunfire grew louder, until clusters of bullets swarmed into the air amid grenade bursts. In the main street, cars crashed into each other in the chaos.

But this was momentary joy, not jubilation. There were no massive crowds on the boulevards of Baghdad, no street parties, no expressions of joy from the ordinary people of the capital city.

For Saddam has bequeathed to his country and to its would-be ``liberators`` something uniquely terrible: continued war. And there was one conclusion upon which every Iraqi I spoke to yesterday agreed.

This bedraggled, pathetic man with his matted, dirty hair, living in a hole in the ground with three guns and cash as his cave-companions - this man was not leading the Iraqi insurgency against the Americans. Indeed, more and more Iraqis were saying before Saddam`s capture that the one reason they would not join the resistance to US occupation was the fear that - if the Americans withdrew - Saddam would return to power. Now that fear has been taken away. So the nightmare is over - and the nightmare is about to begin. For both the Iraqis and for us.

I met him once, almost a quarter of a century ago. We shook hands before a Baghdad press conference in which he tried to explain the finer points of binary fission. He was keen, at the time, to develop nuclear weapons. He wore vast double-breasted suits at the time, the kind that Nazi leaders once wore, overlarge, floppy coats that gleamed too much. All I can remember was that his hands were cold and damp.

{Any free vote in Iraq will produce the same result. Maybe that`s why Saddam has not yet been found. So take Bush`s calls for Arab democracy with much salt. The only truly free vote held in the Arab World - most of which is controlled by the US - brought to power in Algeria a moderate Islamic government. It was promptly overthrown by the army, with backing from the US and France.

But Bush dares not withdraw US troops from Iraq so long as the elusive Saddam stays alive. Imagine a triumphant Saddam making rude gestures at Bush from `liberated` Baghdad.}

{Anyone who remembers Vietnam, which Iraq increasingly recalls, knows `Iraqization` won`t work. Meanwhile, Iraq`s Shia majority remains quiet only because it fears Saddam Hussein may return. Ironically, if the US hunts down and murders Saddam, the Shia will rise up and demand an Islamic Republic - just what the White House seeks to avoid.}

This was published in today`s Dawn written by Eric Margolis.

Raises two questions in my mind:

Is US readying itself for a graceful exist?

And the other, will insurgents, especially shiites, will grow bolder now that the fear of Saddam is gone or is it a US ploy to keep Saddam threat alive by keeping him alive?

{Any free vote in Iraq will produce the same result. Maybe that`s why Saddam has not yet been found. So take Bush`s calls for Arab democracy with much salt. The only truly free vote held in the Arab World - most of which is controlled by the US - brought to power in Algeria a moderate Islamic government. It was promptly overthrown by the army, with backing from the US and France.

But Bush dares not withdraw US troops from Iraq so long as the elusive Saddam stays alive. Imagine a triumphant Saddam making rude gestures at Bush from `liberated` Baghdad.}

{Anyone who remembers Vietnam, which Iraq increasingly recalls, knows `Iraqization` won`t work. Meanwhile, Iraq`s Shia majority remains quiet only because it fears Saddam Hussein may return. Ironically, if the US hunts down and murders Saddam, the Shia will rise up and demand an Islamic Republic - just what the White House seeks to avoid.}

This was published in today`s Dawn written by Eric Margolis.

Raises two questions in my mind:

Is US readying itself for a graceful exist?

And the other, will insurgents, especially shiites, will grow bolder now that the fear of Saddam is gone or is it a US ploy to keep Saddam threat alive by keeping him alive?

Saddam is caught, and his condition manifest that cowards prefer to live than to die. The problem US is facing in Occupied Iraq is of instability, who is the man who barbarously maintained stability under his rule over the last few decades(Saddam Hussein). Now the question is how useful is Saddam to the US, a question many of the chicken hawks in Washington must now be considering. This is definately a turning point, the next month or so will decide where the insurgency will lead too. If Saddam was the true leader of Freedom Fighters in Iraq (Highly Unlikely) then it should diminish leading a way to the first successful American Imperialist Conquest in a long time, or the freedom fighters will assume their natural leadership, coming up from the grass roots.

One definitive fact that will transform and manifest itself after saddam`s capture is that this insurgency will become based on religion rather than nationalism. Osama will become the next choice of the chanters in the street of baghdad. And I agree with temporal, Iraq will become the social club for Muslim insurgents from all part of the worlds looking for a Jihad. This will get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.

One thing for sure has cleared up, that is, Saddam had absolutely no role in the on going freedom struggle in Iraq. I have no doubt that the struggle will go on - trial or no trial. The next big question is whether the global resistance to US and west will still go on if OBL is captured as well?

While it is clear now that Saddam was never an ideological figurehead of any movement, but OBL is. Will the ideology survive with loss of figurehead. What is historical precedence in such cases.

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.......... it is amazing how nobody wants to talk about the fact that a mass murderer has been finally cought and will be brought to justice ....... even more important is the fact that it will send a message to other despots like those in tehran, damascus and riyadh ........... the journey to mecca-I started in kabul and is slowly, but surely, making its way to the holy land .............. it is a great day for mankind and george bush - he always had my vote, but now i would support an amendement to the constitution to let him run for a third term!.......... and rumsfield !..... what an amazing old man - as usual he gets the job done while others are flapping their lips ..........