"We Got Him"
Inside the daring nighttime raid that nabbed Saddam Hussein—and what it means for George W. Bush and the future of Iraq

Even before he is brought to trial, there was justice in the news that Saddam Hussein had survived by being buried alive. Like a pharaoh in his tomb, he had surrounded himself with symbols of his lost power–two ak-47s, a pistol, $750,000 in $100 bills. The Butcher of Baghdad was nestled underground with pictures of Ben Franklin. The hunt for Saddam that began with a hellfire of bombs eight months ago ended without a shot being fired.

With his capture, we exhale, after a long, deep breath we have held for a year. We can measure the meaning of his capture by the measures we have taken–old alliances and long traditions discarded to go to war to take him out and, in the name of democracy, a war that was opposed by vast majorities in most democracies on earth. Hundreds of soldiers killed, hundreds more wounded, $4 billion a month spent and billions more to come, a country broken in pieces that we will be helping rebuild for years to come. And so what is the gift this capture has brought? Perhaps a true taste of freedom from fear for 25 million people who could never quite have faith that the tyranny was over while the tyrant was still loose. It was an antidote to the contempt expressed by Arab and European commentators who poked the American tiger: See, you can't even catch Saddam.

"The capture of this man was crucial to the rise of a free Iraq," President George W. Bush said in a nationally broadcast address from the Cabinet Room. "It marks the end of the road for him and for all who bullied and killed in his name."

It was a team of 600 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division and U.S. special forces that acted on the tip that Saddam was hiding in a little town called Dawr, 15 miles from his hometown of Tikrit. These soldiers had been scouring the area for months in the belief that he would stay close to home, where loyalty among those who most benefited from his rule still ran deep. U.S. intelligence sources tell TIME that over the past month they were getting better leads.

But it was not until 8 o'clock on Saturday, Dec. 13, with the launch of Operation Red Dawn, that they finally began to close in on the prize. The hunters spread out across two locations, labeled Wolverine One and Wolverine Two. Locals in Dawr say the house is owned by Qais al-Nameq, a personal attendant of Saddam who returned a few years ago. His two sons were arrested along with Saddam. These residents say al-Nameq was arrested and the second location the Americans searched was his farm. At first, the searches of a rural farmhouse turned up little that was suspicious. But after all these years of deception, all these months of hunting, given Saddam's reputation for tunnels and safe rooms and secrets, the soldiers knew to scrape the paint off the walls in the event he was hiding behind them. So they cordoned off the area and began the long process of searching every corner. On the premises was a small, walled compound with a mud hut and a metal lean-to. There they found the entrance to the hole, camouflaged with dirt and bricks, with just enough space to lie down, a fan and an air vent. It appears he had been shuttled around in an orange-and-white taxi. U.S. ground-forces commander in Iraq Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez said Saddam put up no fight, was talkative and cooperated.

President Bush first got word from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of Dec. 13, in a call to Camp David. "We think we may have him," Rumsfeld announced. Bush called Adnan Pachachi, the acting president of the Iraqi governing council, to congratulate him; as they were trying to get him on the cell phone Pachachi was with U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer at Saddam's holding location.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," Bremer, tears in his eyes, told the news conference, which erupted in cheers. From the first moment the American video of Saddam in custody began rolling, Iraqi journalists stood and screamed. Some yelled, "Kill him! Kill Saddam." The people of Baghdad caught the spirit of hope and pain, firing bullets into the sky, throwing candy, and lighting firecrackers in the street. "They got Saddam!" "The devil is gone." It was like a wedding day, or perhaps more a birthday.

Does this mean that the daily attacks on U.S. soldiers, the roadside bombs and downtown ambushes and mortars fired at headquarters would die away? There never was good evidence that Saddam was controlling the insurgency, and the circumstances in which he was found–hiding in a hole, accompanied by an entourage of only two–suggest he was too isolated to play any central role. However, his arrest could still profoundly rattle the resistance. The Pentagon estimated that nine of 10 insurgents were former regime loyalists. To the extent they were driven by a rational agenda–restoring the old regime to power–they are now deprived of their goal. The insurgents are, for the most part, Baathists, and throughout his rule Saddam was the party and the party was Saddam.

At the same time, no one is expecting the conflict to end abruptly, especially the military commanders who work out of one of Saddam's palaces in Tikrit. "We expect a spike in enemy activity," says Captain Mitch Carlisle. "We're not letting our guard down at all."

The news meant that the man George Bush vowed to hunt down was now at his mercy, and so the U.S. President has choices to make. He could declare victory and go home, but nothing in his reflexes or rhetoric suggests that, having placed Saddam in a cage, he is inclined to leave his other promises unfulfilled. And so the latest in the series of tests of a President's instincts and motives comes to this: Does he trust the people he says he went to war to free to do the right thing? If a sense of justice is the necessary rock on which democracies stand, how can anyone other than his countrymen have a greater right to put him on trial? But how would that work, and what laws apply? "There's an Iraqi catharsis that has to take place," says one senior State Department official. "The nation has to see it on their TVs and they have to feel like they did it."

With Saddam at last captured, one mystery is solved, but others now simmer. What happened to his weapons, his money, his remaining allies? Will all the Iraqis who have never learned what happened to their brother, their uncle, their neighbor now get the maps to the rest of the mass graves? Will they find a way toward reconciliation, Sunni and Shi'a, Arab and Kurd? The world waits for a new chapter and history prepares, once again, to turn on a dime.

—from TIME, December 22, 2003

Questions

1. Where and when was Saddam captured?

2. What is the expected impact of Saddam's capture?