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'We Got Him' - Kurds Say
They Caught
Saddam
By
Paul McGeough
Correspondent in Baghdad
Sydney Morning
Herald
12-21-3
- Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence
work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by
reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set
the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified
by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.
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- The first media account of the December 13 arrest was
aired by a Tehran-based news agency.
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- American forces took Saddam into custody around 8.30pm
local time, but sat on the news until 3pm the next day.
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- However, in the early hours of Sunday, a Kurdish
language wire service reported explicitly: "Saddam Hussein was captured
by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by
Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein
in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace.
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- "Qusrat's team was accompanied by a group of US
soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but
the global Kurdish party is about to begin!"
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- The head of the PUK, Jalal Talabani, was in the
Iranian capital en route to Europe.
- @media print {.nopr {display:none}}
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- The Western media in Baghdad were electrified by the
Iranian agency's revelation, but as reports of the arrest built, they
relied almost exclusively on accounts from US military and intelligence
organisations, starting with the words of the US-appointed administrator
of Iraq, Paul Bremer: "Ladies and gentlemen: we got 'im".
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- US officials said that they had extracted the vital
piece of information on Saddam's whereabouts from one of the 20 suspects
around 5.30pm on December 13 and had immediately assembled a 600-strong
force to surround the farm on which he was captured at al-Dwar, south of
Tikrit.
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- Little attention was paid to a line in Pentagon
briefings that some of the Kurdish militia might have been in on what
was described as a "joint operation"; or to a statement by Ahmed
Chalabi, head of the Iraq National Congress, which said that Qusrat and
his PUK forces had provided vital information and more.
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- A Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald, quoted from
an interview aired on the PUK's al-Hurriyah radio station last
Wednesday, in which Adil Murad, a member of the PUK's political
bureau,
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- said that the day before Saddam's capture he was
tipped off by a PUK general - Thamir al-Sultan - that Saddam would be
arrested within the next 72 hours.
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- An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle
East was quoted in the British Sunday Express yesterday: "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."
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- There has been no American response to the Kurdish
claims.
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- An intriguing question is why Kurdish forces were
allowed to join what the US desperately needed to present as an American
intelligence success - unless the Kurds had something vital to
contribute to the operation so far south of their usual area of
activity.
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- A report from the PUK's northern stronghold,
Suliymaniah, early last week claimed a vital intelligence breakthrough
after a telephone conversation between Qusrat and Saddam's second wife,
Samirah.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/21/1071941612613.html
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