villaevents.blogg.se

The tactical success in nabbing Hussein may have a short-term effect in bolstering the sagging prestige of the occupation. There was some initial speculation that he may have been turned in by hostile elements within his own former ruling Baathist Party. US officials declined to discuss how they learned of his whereabouts and whether anyone would claim a $25 million bounty on his head.

US military sources noted that no communications equipment, even cell phones, were found with Hussein and two companions. He was a hunted individual, apparently moving from place to place and preoccupied with his own survival. The answer is clearly no: Saddam Hussein was not some mastermind coordinating attacks that have risen recently to the level of 55 a day across the entire territory of Iraq. “Was it possible to run the guerrilla war from a hole underground,” he asked. The first was posed by a reporter at the press conference held at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to announce the capture. This interpretation of events evades a number of inconvenient questions. Having demonized Hussein as the equal of Hitler, his apprehension is treated as a milestone in the birth of a “free” and “democratic” Iraq.

There is no doubt that the gloating in both the White House and the media will continue for many days to come. Germany’s chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French president Jacques Chirac wasted little time in sending their craven congratulations to George Bush. The capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, hidden in a hole at a farmhouse outside the central Iraqi city of Tikrit, has been the occasion for full-throated exultation on the part of the Bush administration, the US occupation authorities in Iraq and the American media.Įrstwhile opponents of the illegal US invasion have been swept up in the wave of Washington’s triumphalism.