Posted on 11/04/2006 6:53:15 AM PST by NautiNurse
CAMP TAJI, Iraq - When members of the Army's 4th Infantry Division were called out on extra duty that night in December 2003, they thought it was just another routine mission. By the next day, they had bragging rights as part of the team that caught Saddam Hussein.
As Saddam faces a scheduled verdict and sentencing Sunday in his first crimes-against-humanity trial, many of the soldiers who helped seal off his small riverside compound are back in Iraq on another tour of duty.
The memory of that fateful mission is fading among the new threats they face.
"I wouldn't take it back for nothing. I was in Saddam's hole," recalled Spec. Michael Smithson, 22, from Pittsburgh.
"It didn't stop with him," Smithson said of the insurgency and Saddam's capture. "If it had, we wouldn't be here."
As Special Forces zeroed in on Saddam's hideout leading to his capture Dec. 13, 2003, regular troops from the 4th Infantry Division were ordered to cordon off the surrounding area of Adwar, near the city of Tikrit.
"We did call home and we did brag about it," recalled Anderson, 37, of Wilmington, N.C.
Units of the division have been back in Iraq since December and are now wrapping up this deployment and looking at another one, probably in 2008.
Capt. Jeff Pesek, 28, of Kyle, Texas, recalled the bursts of celebratory gunfire from residents in the area that tipped him off to the magnitude of the mission as word spread of Saddam's arrest.
"(Saddam's capture) is done. Now the fight is turning," he said. "The fight we're fighting today. . . has just as big or more of an effect."
One hell of a disconnect.
And John Kerry's puttanata.
Dear Penthouse Forum,
This sort of thing never happens to me...
lol...funniest line I have read on FR in weeks...grats.
Larry Kaplow's e-mail address is lkaplowcoxnews.com
Well, in the greater scheme of things it would have been better if he was not taken alive, but liquidated during the arrest. His trial makes sense only if, and to the extent, that saddam and saddamism are publicly humiliated - and what one got instead is a circus. Hopefully, when he is hanged, they put some panties instead of a sack on his head.
"One hell of a disconnect."
Jeez, no kidding. Headline skimmer propoganda.
"An impressive disconnect"
You win the Diplomatic Comment of the Day award!
Shameful and disgusting, I'll throw in. Typical leftist media puke.
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