File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2003/anarchy-list.0312, message 44


Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:54:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Ali Kazmi <thekazmis2001-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: ammo for the Dems?


We got him: Kurds say they caught Saddam 
By Paul McGeough, Herald Correspondent in Baghdad 
December 22, 2003 

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.

The first media account of the December 13 arrest was
aired by a Tehran-based news agency.

American forces took Saddam into custody around 8.30pm
local time, but sat on the news until 3pm the next
day.

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.

"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!"

The head of the PUK, Jalal Talabani, was in the
Iranian capital en route to Europe.

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".

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.

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.

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, 

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.

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."

There has been no American response to the Kurdish
claims.

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.

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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