Free Republic

The capture of Saddam Hussein draws a line under Operation Free Iraq. It is now possible to concentrate on the task of building the country's future, and discovering whether democracy will take hold in the Arab Middle East, and if so, how and in what form. More than a distraction, as long as Saddam was at liberty he represented the alternative of absolute power, as well as a symbol of defiance. Here was a figurehead around whom those Muslims who hate the United States and its allies could rally. Islamists, Iraqi nationalists, and their supporters on the international left ardently...

Saddam's in the slammer, so why are we on orange? --------------------------------------------------------- Posted: December 30, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 David H. Hackworth Almost daily we're told that another American soldier has sacrificed life or limb in Iraq. For way too many of us – unless we have a white flag with a blue star in our window – these casualty reports have become as big a yawn as a TV forecast of the weather in Baghdad. Even I – and I deal with that beleaguered land seven days a week – was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me...

It was a good day for democracy – Saddam Hussein caught at last. Just weeks ago, though, democracy had a bad day, when a freelance "peace" agreement was unveiled in Switzerland by an unelected Israeli citizen – an instance of anti-democracy abetted by arch anti-democrat, Jimmy Carter. I doubt that anyone would characterize Carter as a mass murderer, though as president he ushered in the era of Islamic fanaticism responsible for more murders than one would care to count. But Hussein and Carter both have a history of treating democracy with contempt – one through violence, the other through a...

The left-wing media have been working overtime to spin news coverage of the Hussein arrest. I was not surprised to see ordinary Iraqis cheering Saddam’s capture and firing rifles into the air. What has been surprising is the negative media coverage and the shameless exploitation of the war for partisan political purposes that I’ve seen since returning from Iraq in September. It’s almost as if what we did over there never happened and doesn’t matter,” one of my staff sergeants told me. “But what we did, and what the U.S. military is still doing, does matter, as the Iraqis whom...

According to a report in last weekend's Sunday Express in Britain, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him. Quoting an unnamed senior British military officer, the Sunday Express recounted that Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud. The intelligence officer told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a...

<p>As we look back on the year 2003 in America, it is clear that many things remained the same. Broadway fell back on revivals, "Gypsy," "Wonderful Town," etc. (again) and Hollywood on blood and guts "Master and Commander," "Cold Mountain," etc. (again). The same names, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, etc. were on the fiction bestseller lists.</p>

TIKRIT, Iraq -- Col. James Hickey is in his element: M-16 in hand, doors off his Humvee, roaring out of his base in a cold rain onto the hazardous highways of "Saddam country." Middle-aged commanders in charge of 4,000 soldiers don't need to roam the roads like this, least of all the Army colonel who just netted the biggest quarry in Iraq. But Hickey's bare-knuckles approach may be precisely what made him the man behind the capture of Saddam Hussein The 43-year-old Chicago native who found Hussein is not an Ivy League Arabist with an intimate knowledge of his secretive...

Another candidate for the position of "The Antichrist" has met his end. It wasn't too long ago that Saddam Hussein was considered by some Bible-prophecy students to possibly be the final "man of sin" and global dictator. As late as March of this year, fundamentalist pastor and "end-times" buff Irvin Baxter insisted that Saddam Hussein was Abaddon, or Apollyon, the "Destroyer" spoken of in Revelation 9:11. "Iraq fits like hand in glove," he claimed, predicting that Saddam's country would soon become the vortex of supernatural evil. Various prophecy-oriented websites explained in elaborate detail how the Butcher of Baghdad might rise...

<p>Al-Graity used to drive his airport shuttle bus with his head low, all business, barely breathing a word to passengers.</p> <p>American Airlines employees who ride his route to and from work know little about him. He makes no eye contact.</p>

She's the firebrand left-wing MP who stunned the Commons into silence when she backed Tony Blair over Iraq. Many said she saved the Prime Minister's skin. After a momentous year, Ann Clwyd talks to Kamal Ahmed Ann Clwyd was in the shower when the news started coming in from Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been captured, dead, alive, no one was quite sure. It was early on Sunday morning, 15 December. She got an excited telephone call from a friend in Iraqi Kurdistan saying, 'Have you heard, have you heard? Saddam has been found'. For Tony Blair's human rights envoy to...

Former US attorney general urges “just” trial for Saddam Baghdad, Iraq Press, December 27, 2003 – Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark wants to see a “just” court to try the ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. US troops have captured Saddam Hussein after an eight-month hunt and Clark believes the current Iraqi interim officials will not administer a “just trial because the America has handpicked them.” In a telephone interview, Clark also expected a rise in attacks against US troops occupying the country. “I believe anti-American operations will continue,” despite the arrest of Saddam Hussein, he said. In the nearly two...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thirteen fugitives remain from the original "deck of cards" of top Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) regime members, but U.S. forces are increasingly focusing on new lists of individuals thought to be taking a more active role in the anti-U.S. insurgency, military intelligence sources say. To create these lists, U.S. military units and their coalition allies have developed computer databases, which they have updated with information on every bomb blast, firefight, suspect detained and tip provided by a local resident. The deck of cards, prepared by U.S. intelligence before the March invasion, contains images of the...

JEDDAH, 27 December 2003 — Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, now being grilled by American investigators, has reportedly warned US authorities that he will expose Washington’s “political games” and its behind-the-scene role in the occupation of Kuwait. “Saddam threatened that if they continue to pressure him he will reveal startling facts — about America’s political games with his country — that would shock the whole world,” Al-Watan Arabic daily quoted a high-level European source as saying. The source said Saddam had stopped answering the investigators’ questions and asked them to “give him enough time to clear his mind.” He did...

TIKRIT, Iraq -- As U.S. forces tracked Saddam Hussein to his subterranean hiding place, they unearthed a trove of intelligence about five families running the Iraqi insurgency, according to U.S. military commanders, who said the information is being used to uproot remaining resistance forces.

TIKRIT, Iraq -- As U.S. forces tracked Saddam Hussein to his subterranean hiding place, they unearthed a trove of intelligence about five families running the Iraqi insurgency, according to U.S. military commanders, who said the information is being used to uproot remaining resistance forces. Senior U.S. officers said they were surprised to discover -- clue by clue over six months -- that the upper and middle ranks of the resistance were filled by members of five extended families from a few villages within a 12-mile radius of the volatile city of Tikrit along the Tigris River. Top operatives drawn from...

Just a collection of toons mostly regarding the capture of one of the guys our troops are after.

Notes from the Post-Saddam JihadBy Robert SpencerJihadWatch.org | December 25, 2003 Freed Taliban "seeking revenge": Although Saddam has been captured, the jihad continues. The jihadis have suffered a huge blow, but the ideological basis of the global jihad movement, which is not based on the charismatic appeal of any leader but on elements of Islamic theology and law, ensures that the movement will go on. Jihadis fought for Saddam despite his dubious piety because Islamic law stipulates that jihad must continue even if a Muslim leader is a tyrant; they certainly won’t be giving up now that he is out...

US military detains Saddam's messenger in Baghdad raid BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US army arrested in Baghdad about a half-dozen Iraqis overnight, some of whom were associates of jailed Iraqi former president Saddam Hussein, a military spokesman said Wednesday. "We captured several individuals last night," said Major John Frisbie of the First Armoured Division. "Some of them were associated wth Saddam Hussein himself." One of the detainees relayed messages between Saddam and the insurgents waging attacks against the US-led coalition, Frisbie said. The other detainees were financiers and bomb makers who were former members of Saddam's ruling Baath party, he...

The headline of the International Herald Tribune screamed: DEVIL IN THE DETAILS: A FIBER BETRAYS SADDAM. The article went on to report how the most wanted man of the year had been found when an American soldier, combing the area for a second time, noticed a tiny tuft of fiber protruding from the dirt. "Only a sliver of a mat was evident under the dirt where he was standing. But the soldier thought it was strange." When he yanked at the mat, he uncovered the hole in the ground where Saddam Hussein was hiding.Reading the account, I was intrigued. Had...

Now that the United States has captured Saddam Hussein, the self-deceiving Islamo-Nazi world was shown what the civilized world has known all long. And if they are smart, they will take this example to heart. Saddam is living proof that everything they believe is not merely a lie, but that their so-called heroes are nothing more than sniveling, parasitic cowards. It was with not some little humor that I read in many Arab papers quotes, as well as editorials, about how the Arabs and Muslims, once again, were humiliated by the big bad West. It seems that every time the...