Saddam's Capture

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President George W. Bush first got word from Rumsfeld on Saturday afternoon in a call to Camp David. "We think we may have him," Rumsfeld announced, and the President said to keep him informed. The President had already planned to return to the White House early to avoid a snowstorm descending on the mid-Atlantic coast that could have prevented his attending a special Christmas show taping the next day. 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 Bremer at Saddam's holding location. He couldn't take the phone immediately because he was berating the fallen dictator.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, tears in his eyes, told the news conference, which erupted in cheers. "Iraq's future, your future, has never been more full of hope. The tyrant is a prisoner." 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 and throwing candy, lighting firecrackers in the street. "They got Saddam!" "The devil is gone." It was like a wedding day, or perhaps more a birthday. "We will be friends with the Americans because of this," said a delighted Syed Hassan al Naji, the Baghdad commander of gadfly cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia, the Army of Mehdi. In his white turban and long robes, Al-Naji beamed with pleasure in his neighbor's house in Sadr City as the news came out over the Arabic news channels. "This is a great day."

Hashim Kamal al Naami, a 78-year-old political exile living in Ukraine started crying when he heard that the rumors of Saddam's capture were confirmed. "I can't believe it," he said over a satellite phone to his son in Baghdad. A lawyer and retired staff brigadier for the Iraqi Army who was openly critical of Saddam's regime, al-Naami finally concluded that it is now safe to return, after more than a decade of living abroad. "There's no need for me to stay away anymore," he said over the phone. While he was speaking, his Iraqi friends were planning a celebration in the Yalta town hall for the hundreds of Iraqi political exiles who live in the area. "It's not only the living Iraqis that are celebrating," he said. "Even the dead Iraqis are celebrating in their graveyards."

There was no celebration in Tikrit, Saddam's home town, and elsewhere former regime members were sullen and glum, looking for further proof, refusing to believe even when word came that the confirmation went beyond the local authorities, beyond the CIA and the Pentagon, down to the level of his scars and his cells, a DNA test. According to Senator Pat Roberts, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the U.S. had some of Saddam's senior aides driven to Tikrit to view him and confirm it was him. A shopkeeper there named Basim al-Tikriti said, "I am shocked. I cannot move my body. I feel like I am frozen."