Free Republic

The Hickory Hills native who led the mission one year ago that drew a deflated Saddam Hussein from a hole spent the anniversary training in Texas. "I've been out in the field all day," said Col. James Hickey in a phone interview Monday evening from Fort Hood, Texas. "I've just been doing my duties as a brigade commander." The 44-year-old Hickey, who graduated from St. Laurence High School in Burbank and now commands the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, appraises the effects of Saddam's capture in the same manner: focused, practical and modest. Whether the capture of the...

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of James and Anne Marie Hickey. The couple has been bombarded with around-the-clock phone calls from well-wishers and national and international news outlets. Their Naperville store was besieged, too, by more than a hundred friends, strangers and reporters who stopped by within five hours after the store opened. One of them was Plainfield resident Penelope Gabriele, who had never met the couple. "Let me touch you," Gabriele said as she reached over to shake James' hand. "Congratulations!" The Hickeys have turned into media darlings since news broke that their 42-year-old son, Army Col. James...

<p>Richmond resident Alex H. Weinstein knew Saddam Hussein was going to be captured when he learned that one of his contemporaries at the Virginia Military Institute was in charge of the hunt.</p> <p>U.S. Army Col. James B. Hickey, a 1982 graduate of VMI, commands the 4th Infantry Division brigade that scoured the area north of Baghdad, Iraq, for the deposed Iraqi leader.</p>

<p>ADWAR, Iraq — Special Forces soldiers were seconds away from throwing a hand grenade into a spider-hole at a farm just outside Tikrit, when Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, emerged in surrender, a U.S. officer said Monday.</p> <p>“He was assisted out of the hole,” said Col. James Hickey, commander of the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, the man who led the raid against the most wanted fugitive in Iraq.</p>

ADWAR, Iraq - American forces began last July to assemble the evidence and intelligence that led to Saddam Hussein's weekend capture in a spider-hole dug into a farmyard near his hometown, the U.S. commander who led the raid said Monday. Col. James Hickey, 43, also said Special Forces soldiers were seconds from pitching a hand grenade into Saddam's tiny underground refuge when the fugitive dictator's hands appeared above ground in surrender. "He was assisted out of the hole," said Hickey, commander of the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Saddam was armed with a pistol, but chose to surrender, identifying himself...

When Maureen Hickey saw on television that her husband was in charge of the unit that captured Saddam she jumped up from her sofa so abruptly that she sent the two cats that had been snoozing on her lap flying across the room. Col James Hickey, the Chicago-born son of Irish immigrants, had been leading the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, known as the Raider Brigade, in the hunt around Tikrit for the past eight months. He was the toast of Chicago yesterday, as it emerged that he was in the lead armoured vehicle as commander of the 600 soldiers...