http://musliminsuffer.wordpress.com/
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Malcom Lagauche
<http://uruknet.info/pic.php?f=12saddham.jpg>
12saddham.jpg
Saddam Hussein with colleagues shortly before the airport battle
November 12, 2007
Saddam Hussein was not captured in a "spider hole" in December 2003.
I wrote an article called "Saddam Hussein and Reality" that
chronicled the capture and the following days.
Unfortunately, almost four years after the apprehension of the
president of Iraq, many people still believe the fairy tale version
given by the U.S. Even Fidel Castro recently said that, unlike
Saddam, he would have never allowed his adversaries to capture him in
a hole. He would have shot it out with the enemy.
I admire Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. In fact, parts of the
Ba'ath revolution in Iraq were similar to those in Cuba, such as the
astute medical and education systems. If Fidel Castro believed the
propaganda, then we must be stronger in our attempts to get the truth
out. Saddam was caught doing just what Fidel said he would do:
battling the intruders.
We all saw the photos in December 2003 of a disheveled Saddam Hussein
after he was pulled out of a "spider hole" in a town near Tikrit. The
administration laughed and the U.S. public made jokes about him and
his hiding place.
The room was dirty. There was an empty Spam can. The story was that
he was holed up and was totally irrelevant to Iraq. His day was done
and he was now in the hands of the liberators.
Guess what? Nothing of this scenario was true.
On March 8, 2005, United Press International (UPI) ran a small press
release titled "Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction." Don't
think you are remiss because you did read this, but it received scant
publicity in the U.S. Prior to my writing this article, I have found
only one news outlet that carried the story: WHAM Channel 13 of
Rochester, New York.
The U.P.I. press release consisted of quotes from ex-U.S. Marine
Nadim Rabeh, of Lebanese descent. In addition to the U.S. version of
the capture date being off by one day, during an interview in
Lebanon, he stated:
I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who
searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit,
and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a
hole as announced.
We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of
Sudanese origin was killed.
Rabeh recounted how Saddam fired at them with a gun from the window
of a room on the second floor. Then, the Marines shouted at him in
Arabic, "You have to surrender. There is no point in resisting."
How did we come to see the pictures of the hole and a scruffy-looking
Saddam? According to Rabeh, "Later on, a military production team
fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact
a deserted well."
The former Marine's account mixes with the rendition Saddam Hussein
gave his lawyer when they had their first meeting. Saddam told him
that he was captured in a friend's house and that he was drugged and
tortured for two days. Hence, the pictures of Saddam looking bedraggled.
I went to Google.com and searched for images of Saddam's capture. All
the major news networks and publications showed pictures of the hole
and a beleaguered Saddam: Time Magazine, CNN News, magazines, daily
newspapers, etc. You name it and they published it.
But, they were all wrong. Not one publication took the time to
research the story. Not one. They just took pictures given by the
U.S. military and parroted the lines they were given.
I always wondered how he obtained a can of pork-laden Spam, since no
such product was offered in Iraq. It seems no one asked how a can of
Spam was in the hole. A few years ago, there was a picture on the
Internet that gained much publicity of a bunch of U.S. soldiers
standing next to an Iraqi building on which was depicted the blowing
up of the World Trade Center. The inference was that Iraqis took glee
in the acts of 9-11.
However, I noticed the soldiers were standing on a base path of a
baseball field. There were no baseball fields in Iraq. Then, I looked
at the trees and saw they were typical southeastern U.S. types that I
had never seen in any pictures of Iraq.
The photo was bogus, but the harm had been done. Even mainstream
media picked up and ran with the picture. I wrote to a few agencies
that used it, but received no reply. They were embarrassed.
Now, let's get back to Saddam and his spider hole and other aspects
of his life after April 9, 2003.
When he was captured, U.S. authorities said he was a spent force and
had no say in the ever-growing resistance. Hogwash. Subsequent
information shows that he was heading the Ba'ath resistance and
called many shots. For instance, on Wolfowitz' first visit to
Baghdad, he stayed at the Hotel Al-Rashid. A rocket was fired at the
building and killed a U.S. colonel on the floor just above
Wolfowitz'. Saddam Hussein personally ordered that strike and, for
the sake of about four meters, history may have been changed.
I have heard anecdotal tales of Saddam Hussein taking part in street
battles against U.S. troops. Various sources have told me this. So, I
wrote to an Iraqi contact in Baghdad (a retired colonel) and asked
him. I received a response about that as well as Saddam's capture.
Here are a few items he mentioned.
* Saddam's inside wear was very clean, which gives the impression
he was not in a hole.
* At the time they said they captured him, no dates were
available, but the trees they showed in the films had fresh dates on
the palm trees and this was not possible.
* My house is in the Adhamiya and I can say that I saw Saddam
after they announced the fall of Baghdad. I saw him myself. He was
standing on a bonnet of a car. He was giving smiles to the people
around him who were encouraging him by their loyalty, which they
always had.
* As I know, Saddam was on top of the battle at the airport.
* What I heard was that he was on top of many assaults against
the Americans.
Iraq Screen published an article shortly before Saddam Hussein's
assassination. The author interviewed an Iraqi officer of the
Republican Guard who participated in the battle for the airport in
Baghdad in April 2003. The officer recalled:
While I was busy shooting with my colleagues, all of a sudden, we
found Saddam Hussein with a number of his assistants inside the
airport, we were really surprised because we did not expect such a
thing, but Saddam went forward and took an RPG and put it on his
shoulder and began to shoot by himself. We gathered around him and
begged him to stay aside and leave us fighting because if we would be
killed, we are common officers, but if he is killed, we would lose
our leader. Saddam turned to us and said, "Look, I am no better than
any one of you and this is the high time to defend our great Iraq and
it would be a great honor to be killed as a martyr for the sake of Iraq."
From various sources, we now have a totally different story than the
one force-fed to us by the U.S. administration. Instead of Saddam
Hussein being a coward who fled and was caught in a hole in the
ground, he is the president, who, under siege, met publicly with his
people on April 9, 2003 (we saw video of this on U.S. TV), after
personally being involved with several battles against the invaders,
and who created a network of resistance while tens of thousands of
U.S. military people were looking for him.
One thing is sure. Most 65-year-old men are contemplating retirement.
However, Saddam Hussein lived off his wits, the land, and with
comrades for nine months, all the time coordinating a resistance
against illegal invaders. Most men half his age would not be able to
take the physical challenges of such a routine. This in itself is a
remarkable feat.
Let's look at Saddam's U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush. About the
only military achievement he ever performed was evading drug tests
while in the U.S. National Guard. There, he succeeded magnificently.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government is in possession of all of Iraq's
records prior to April 2003. Not one word will be mentioned that will
contradict the U.S. rewriting of Iraq's history. At best, we will
have to rely on anecdotal accounts and eye witnesses. It is neither
the best nor the most accurate form of history, but it's all we have now.
The full story in
http://uruknet.info/?p=m38091&hd=&size=1&l=e
