Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops

Yahoo News ^ | Sat Dec 20,11:00 PM ET | AFP

[Nachum]

LONDON, (AFP) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

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, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq (news - web sites), "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until he negotiated a deal.

The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

[longtermmemmory]

knigw = knight

[elli1]

And anybody capturing Saddam would have gone for the gold- the $25m.

Actually closer to $26 million when you add in the 3/4 mil that Saddam had for pocket change.

[LadyDoc]

they are implying it was a set up...

However, why would those holding saddam lose a couple million dollars? After all, why put him in a hole and let the US find him with $750 000 when you could take him in bound up like a stuffed pig, keep the $750 000 and also get the $35 million in reward money?

I suspect the REAL story is that the Kurds identified where he was hiding, as revenge, but the US had to dig him out...

[steve-b]

I have to doubt that any kurd would have left him alive.

GMTA.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Don't bother posting this again. Thank you

[luvbach1]

Leftists will contort themselves into pretzels in order to view Bush(and US) sucesses as failures. And the irrefutal cabash on the bogus Kurdish capture of Saddam (previously posted)is that he is still alive. Of course mind-numbed denizens of DU and their ilk have bought the lies; in all likelihood, one of them concocted them. But few others are being fooled

[luvbach1]

...would have gone for the gold- the $25m...

Thought at first you meant the gold in his teeth, because they would have gone for that too.

[Fractal Trader]

My apologies.

I used the search feature to check for "Kurd" in the title. I guess it is more specific than most search engines I am faniliar with because it apparently requires and exact match -- "Kurdish" -- in the title in order to find the article.