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Saddam Hussein Captured in Hometown

Aired December 15, 2003 - 11:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The once-defiant dictator seems to have very little to say in captivity. Saddam Hussein is undergoing more questioning today, and officials say he is not being informative. But documents found in Saddam's hideout have been helpful.
Our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is tracking developments since Saddam's capture, and he joins us from the deposed leader's ancestral town of Tikrit.

Nic, hello.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn.

Well, certainly the conditions that Saddam Hussein was living in until the time of his capture were very spartan indeed. The building that he was living in was just two tiny rooms, sort of an asphalt, brick and mud building. One room was a bedroom. There was discarded clothes lying on the floor. The mattress overturned. There was a heater and a refrigerator in that room. There was new clothes lying still in their wrappers on the bed.

In the kitchen next door, there was rotting fruit. There were cucumbers, there were bananas, kiwi fruits, melons, no short of shortage of goods, quality products, not the sort of products that perhaps an average Iraqi would have. There were tins of Spam on the shelf.

But it was the hole in the ground that the soldiers who took us to this site wanted to point out to us today, and explain to us exactly how they found it. They explained that it was covered -- the soldier was even standing right on the top of where Saddam Hussein was hiding before they realized in the dead of night that he was -- that this was actually a hiding hole. When they lifted the lid off, they said they could see Saddam Hussein came out with his hands up at first, and he said, I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate, to which we are told the troops replied, President Bush sends his regards.

And with that, they pulled him out of the hole, talked to him for a few minutes, to make sure that it was him, and then took him on a chopper, waiting to whisk him away.

Very few other details about what was found have been made known here in Tikrit -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic, what about who owns this property where Saddam Hussein was found? And are they facing any consequences today? ROBERTSON: Well, at least one of them is. There were two other men taken into custody along with Saddam Hussein. One of them, we have been told, was the farm owner. There were two farm buildings that were right in the location where Saddam Hussein was found. One of the men owning those farms has been taken into custody. The identity of the other man isn't clear.

What has been interesting, what we have learned from coalition officials, was just how timely the information they got leading to Saddam Hussein's capture. They had literally had somebody picked up in Baghdad around about noon. They had him transported to Tikrit. By 5:00 p.m., they found out from him exactly where Saddam Hussein was hiding, even that he might be in an underground hole.

And by 6:00, they had troops on the ground. By 8:30, they had him in capture.

And we're also told some luck, if you will, played into this. Just before the strike happened, the electricity went out. And the raid was early enough that the moon hadn't come up, so there were very, very low lighting, which again, played to the strengths of the troops with their nightvision equipment -- Daryn.

KAGAN: And back here in the states, we've been seeing a lot of pictures of Iraqis celebrating. But I would imagine the mood in Tikrit, in this ancestral home of Saddam Hussein, might be very different.

ROBERTSON: The mood here is different. There aren't a lot of people on the streets. There has been reports through the day of some trouble, not clear exactly the nature of that trouble in Tikrit, but certainly, the people that we've talked to since Saddam Hussein has been captured have not been particularly happy about it. They have said that Saddam Hussein was much better than the government that's in place right now, and that's really an indication of the depth of loyalty that some people have for Saddam Hussein. This was his hometown. It benefited under this regime -- better roads, better housing, better schools, better health care for people in this city.

But commanders here believe behind this exterior, quietly, people are actually relieved. They think the majority of people are relieved that Saddam Hussein is now gone -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic Robertson, joining us from Tikrit, thank you very much.

And as you hear Nic mention, things have hardly calmed down inside Iraq. There Insurgents kept up their deadly attacks today, despite the capture of Saddam Hussein. Car bombs exploded in and around Baghdad.

Our Jane Arraf joins us from the Iraqi capital with details on that.

Jane, hello.

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn.

Well, no one expected Saddam's capture to lead to an end to these attacks, and it's proof that indeed they are not.

Two car bombs, as you mentioned, both of them in police stations. One killed at least six police officers. The other one, a suicide bomb, badly wounded several others. And U.S. forces, U.S. military officials are warning that the attacks are not expected to decrease against Iraqi targets.

But they are making some headway in the wake of Saddam's capture in cracking down on people who might be responsible for attacks on U.S. targets.

Now here in Baghdad, the top military officials tell us that overnight they have nabbed several people, including one man who is believed to have been a fairly senior figure in possibly orchestrating attacks in the Baghdad area. Those were people they were led to by documents in Saddam's briefcase, including notes of a meeting of insurgents -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Jane Arraf, in Baghdad, thank you for that.

And now to Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Daryn, thanks.

Now that Saddam Hussein's in American custody, what's ahead for Iraq? Let's talk now with Michael Elliott. He's an editor at large for "Time" magazine, joining us here in our studio.

Nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.

You've written about this. Give me a sense how big a deal this is for the region, because some have said, well, the insurgency is not going stop, Saddam Hussein was not found with communication devices, he was not literally calling the shots from inside the hole. But give me a sense what his capture actually does mean.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, "TIME" MAGAZINE: I think it's huge. Everything that you said and everything that everyone has been careful to say since he's been captured, about having insurgency likely to carry on is absolutely true, there's no question about that. But this is part of the world where symbols really matter. And Saddam Hussein had become a symbol, of defiance of coalition forces, and he's become a symbol, if you like, of American failure. So his capture, I think, sends an incredible message, not just in Iraq, but throughout the whole of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), that in the end, the United States and its allies win, and I just think that that's going reverberate in ways that it's hard to predict now. But I think it's a very big deal.

KAGAN: Other symbols? staying in a rat hole.

ELLIOTT: Staying in a rat hole, looking...

KAGAN: Very different scenario than we saw with his sons. ELLIOTT: Absolutely. This is a guy who's hiding, who looks disoriented, he looks bedraggled, he looks as if he's running from place to place. Very skillfully done propaganda effort by the Department of Defense to show this long video.

KAGAN: At the same time, he had a pistol, you know, didn't shoot it.

ELLIOTT: Soledad, it seems to me that in these sort of circumstances one should never predict the Hollywood ending, which is everyone goes down to flames and you have a shootout at the O.K. Corral, is the likely thing to happen. He had a guy who was -- he's human. He was probably frightened, and bedraggled, disoriented and crawled out. But I think as a propaganda coup, the way the Department of Defense has handled this in the last 24 hours. And if you remember, they had all that trouble with his sons. They were shot. They had to reconstruct the bodies. This has been so much more skillfully done.

KAGAN: In the end, you could not move forward, some have said, in rebuilding Iraq, with Saddam still on the loose, yet there are people who felt he might come back.

ELLIOTT: I think that's absolutely right.

KAGAN: Especially given the history. There was 12 years when the U.S. left and he was in charge.

ELLIOTT: I think that's absolutely right. I think those who are interested in throwing in their lot with the coalition forces worried that maybe the Americans would not stay forever, maybe the Baath Party, maybe even Saddam, would come back in power.

Those who were loyal to the regime, must have had in the back of their mind, the possibility that he would come back, that the Americans hadn't caught him. So it was worth remaining in the resistance. I just think this is an enormously significant moment.

KAGAN: At the same time, we still see attacks, this time against Iraqi police officers.

ELLIOTT: Of course.

KAGAN: Many people have said, how long -- are we protecting in the short term, that attacks by the insurgents will increase? How long before those start to decrease?

ELLIOTT: Well, I always try to have I call Elliott's Iron Law of Insurgency, which is that the Irish Republican Army never had more than about 300 men under arms at any one time, and managed to tie up half the British army for 25 years. So you don't need many men with weapons. And in Iraq, you have a country that is absolutely awash in AK-47s, rocket propelled grenades and angry young men. So, obviously, it's not going to happen soon. But insurgents have to have a political goal that they're working toward. And a symbol of that political goal is to continue success of Saddam Hussein and being able to defy American troops. That's gone.

KAGAN: Only a few seconds left. He's been described as being "a wise ass," I have to say a description I haven't heard before ever on television. Do you think he'll talk eventually?

ELLIOTT: Well, I think all the stories that we've had in the last 24 hours about him being defiant and about making these wisecracking comments are inevitably just the kind of first day stories, because one assumes that there's going to be a lot of interrogation of him.

KAGAN: One would imagine. Michael Elliott is editor of large at "Time" magazine. Nice to have you. Thanks so much for talking with us this morning.

ELLIOTT: Good to be here, Soledad.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired December 15, 2003 - 11:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The once-defiant dictator seems to have very little to say in captivity. Saddam Hussein is undergoing more questioning today, and officials say he is not being informative. But documents found in Saddam's hideout have been helpful.
Our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is tracking developments since Saddam's capture, and he joins us from the deposed leader's ancestral town of Tikrit.

Nic, hello.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn.

Well, certainly the conditions that Saddam Hussein was living in until the time of his capture were very spartan indeed. The building that he was living in was just two tiny rooms, sort of an asphalt, brick and mud building. One room was a bedroom. There was discarded clothes lying on the floor. The mattress overturned. There was a heater and a refrigerator in that room. There was new clothes lying still in their wrappers on the bed.

In the kitchen next door, there was rotting fruit. There were cucumbers, there were bananas, kiwi fruits, melons, no short of shortage of goods, quality products, not the sort of products that perhaps an average Iraqi would have. There were tins of Spam on the shelf.

But it was the hole in the ground that the soldiers who took us to this site wanted to point out to us today, and explain to us exactly how they found it. They explained that it was covered -- the soldier was even standing right on the top of where Saddam Hussein was hiding before they realized in the dead of night that he was -- that this was actually a hiding hole. When they lifted the lid off, they said they could see Saddam Hussein came out with his hands up at first, and he said, I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate, to which we are told the troops replied, President Bush sends his regards.

And with that, they pulled him out of the hole, talked to him for a few minutes, to make sure that it was him, and then took him on a chopper, waiting to whisk him away.

Very few other details about what was found have been made known here in Tikrit -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic, what about who owns this property where Saddam Hussein was found? And are they facing any consequences today? ROBERTSON: Well, at least one of them is. There were two other men taken into custody along with Saddam Hussein. One of them, we have been told, was the farm owner. There were two farm buildings that were right in the location where Saddam Hussein was found. One of the men owning those farms has been taken into custody. The identity of the other man isn't clear.

What has been interesting, what we have learned from coalition officials, was just how timely the information they got leading to Saddam Hussein's capture. They had literally had somebody picked up in Baghdad around about noon. They had him transported to Tikrit. By 5:00 p.m., they found out from him exactly where Saddam Hussein was hiding, even that he might be in an underground hole.

And by 6:00, they had troops on the ground. By 8:30, they had him in capture.

And we're also told some luck, if you will, played into this. Just before the strike happened, the electricity went out. And the raid was early enough that the moon hadn't come up, so there were very, very low lighting, which again, played to the strengths of the troops with their nightvision equipment -- Daryn.

KAGAN: And back here in the states, we've been seeing a lot of pictures of Iraqis celebrating. But I would imagine the mood in Tikrit, in this ancestral home of Saddam Hussein, might be very different.

ROBERTSON: The mood here is different. There aren't a lot of people on the streets. There has been reports through the day of some trouble, not clear exactly the nature of that trouble in Tikrit, but certainly, the people that we've talked to since Saddam Hussein has been captured have not been particularly happy about it. They have said that Saddam Hussein was much better than the government that's in place right now, and that's really an indication of the depth of loyalty that some people have for Saddam Hussein. This was his hometown. It benefited under this regime -- better roads, better housing, better schools, better health care for people in this city.

But commanders here believe behind this exterior, quietly, people are actually relieved. They think the majority of people are relieved that Saddam Hussein is now gone -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic Robertson, joining us from Tikrit, thank you very much.

And as you hear Nic mention, things have hardly calmed down inside Iraq. There Insurgents kept up their deadly attacks today, despite the capture of Saddam Hussein. Car bombs exploded in and around Baghdad.

Our Jane Arraf joins us from the Iraqi capital with details on that.

Jane, hello.

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn.

Well, no one expected Saddam's capture to lead to an end to these attacks, and it's proof that indeed they are not.

Two car bombs, as you mentioned, both of them in police stations. One killed at least six police officers. The other one, a suicide bomb, badly wounded several others. And U.S. forces, U.S. military officials are warning that the attacks are not expected to decrease against Iraqi targets.

But they are making some headway in the wake of Saddam's capture in cracking down on people who might be responsible for attacks on U.S. targets.

Now here in Baghdad, the top military officials tell us that overnight they have nabbed several people, including one man who is believed to have been a fairly senior figure in possibly orchestrating attacks in the Baghdad area. Those were people they were led to by documents in Saddam's briefcase, including notes of a meeting of insurgents -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Jane Arraf, in Baghdad, thank you for that.

And now to Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Daryn, thanks.

Now that Saddam Hussein's in American custody, what's ahead for Iraq? Let's talk now with Michael Elliott. He's an editor at large for "Time" magazine, joining us here in our studio.

Nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.

You've written about this. Give me a sense how big a deal this is for the region, because some have said, well, the insurgency is not going stop, Saddam Hussein was not found with communication devices, he was not literally calling the shots from inside the hole. But give me a sense what his capture actually does mean.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, "TIME" MAGAZINE: I think it's huge. Everything that you said and everything that everyone has been careful to say since he's been captured, about having insurgency likely to carry on is absolutely true, there's no question about that. But this is part of the world where symbols really matter. And Saddam Hussein had become a symbol, of defiance of coalition forces, and he's become a symbol, if you like, of American failure. So his capture, I think, sends an incredible message, not just in Iraq, but throughout the whole of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), that in the end, the United States and its allies win, and I just think that that's going reverberate in ways that it's hard to predict now. But I think it's a very big deal.

KAGAN: Other symbols? staying in a rat hole.

ELLIOTT: Staying in a rat hole, looking...

KAGAN: Very different scenario than we saw with his sons. ELLIOTT: Absolutely. This is a guy who's hiding, who looks disoriented, he looks bedraggled, he looks as if he's running from place to place. Very skillfully done propaganda effort by the Department of Defense to show this long video.

KAGAN: At the same time, he had a pistol, you know, didn't shoot it.

ELLIOTT: Soledad, it seems to me that in these sort of circumstances one should never predict the Hollywood ending, which is everyone goes down to flames and you have a shootout at the O.K. Corral, is the likely thing to happen. He had a guy who was -- he's human. He was probably frightened, and bedraggled, disoriented and crawled out. But I think as a propaganda coup, the way the Department of Defense has handled this in the last 24 hours. And if you remember, they had all that trouble with his sons. They were shot. They had to reconstruct the bodies. This has been so much more skillfully done.

KAGAN: In the end, you could not move forward, some have said, in rebuilding Iraq, with Saddam still on the loose, yet there are people who felt he might come back.

ELLIOTT: I think that's absolutely right.

KAGAN: Especially given the history. There was 12 years when the U.S. left and he was in charge.

ELLIOTT: I think that's absolutely right. I think those who are interested in throwing in their lot with the coalition forces worried that maybe the Americans would not stay forever, maybe the Baath Party, maybe even Saddam, would come back in power.

Those who were loyal to the regime, must have had in the back of their mind, the possibility that he would come back, that the Americans hadn't caught him. So it was worth remaining in the resistance. I just think this is an enormously significant moment.

KAGAN: At the same time, we still see attacks, this time against Iraqi police officers.

ELLIOTT: Of course.

KAGAN: Many people have said, how long -- are we protecting in the short term, that attacks by the insurgents will increase? How long before those start to decrease?

ELLIOTT: Well, I always try to have I call Elliott's Iron Law of Insurgency, which is that the Irish Republican Army never had more than about 300 men under arms at any one time, and managed to tie up half the British army for 25 years. So you don't need many men with weapons. And in Iraq, you have a country that is absolutely awash in AK-47s, rocket propelled grenades and angry young men. So, obviously, it's not going to happen soon. But insurgents have to have a political goal that they're working toward. And a symbol of that political goal is to continue success of Saddam Hussein and being able to defy American troops. That's gone.

KAGAN: Only a few seconds left. He's been described as being "a wise ass," I have to say a description I haven't heard before ever on television. Do you think he'll talk eventually?

ELLIOTT: Well, I think all the stories that we've had in the last 24 hours about him being defiant and about making these wisecracking comments are inevitably just the kind of first day stories, because one assumes that there's going to be a lot of interrogation of him.

KAGAN: One would imagine. Michael Elliott is editor of large at "Time" magazine. Nice to have you. Thanks so much for talking with us this morning.

ELLIOTT: Good to be here, Soledad.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com