BBC live : Blair just confirmed capture

n/'t

to get W sobered up and prepped to make his announcement?

people are still pissed at smirk. it's far from over.

I just woke my husband and said the same thing!

Confirnations rapidly coming in from many sources.

And though I don't think that this is going to slow resistance to occupation, it would be good for the troops over there if it did.

Saddam was a scummy dictator, and it is ok by me if he gets what's coming to him. But nothing's changed. He had no WMDS, the reasons for the war were fabricated, we have thousands wounded and billions of dollars looted from the Treasury...

"I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war never mind whether it be plausible or not. The victor shall not be asked later on whether we told the truth or not. In starting and making a war, not the Right is what matters, but Victory .."
--Adolf Hitler

Nothing has changed, except that victory will drown out reason...just as Hitler said.

this is bigger news than Gore does Dean, that's for sure. it a huge feather in Bush's cap. Damn!

Or at the very least (since saying that might get me flamed), it undoubtedly boosted his numbers a bit (before, if he were to say "I won the war in Iraq" it would be spurious at best, now, he can restate it "I met my objectives in Iraq" and it'll be harder to criticize; and yes I'm fully aware that it's not that simple, but look at it from the publics perspective). It'll be all over cable news for weeks, maybe even months.

The only thing which Bush wouldn't want that could come of it is that it might bring into question the inablity to find bin Laden.

I agree....this is four more years of Shrub.

Sadam's death is the end of many things...
The 2004 re-election.
The chances of the Democratic candidates.
If he had been leading fighters, the armed resistance.
The end of the rebels spirit.

Dean in 2008?

And so very true...

.

the smarmy puppet was on the phone and said the US pulled saddam out of a basement in Tikrit with a shovel!

That is the world's fasted dna test. I don't believe the technology is there yet, but it's a nice lie for the masses.

Did U.S. or British troops get him? And WTF is with this DNA test confirm his identity BS?

Sadaam has WAY to many doubles. Some of them look more like him than HIM.

Grok

I'm glad we didn't kill him. Almost makes us look like a decent nation for a second.

am glad Saddam is captured - this will give Baghdad Bush's numbers a boost - but will that last - the capture of Saddam doesn't signal an end to the war on terrorism, nor does it resolve our Iraq occupation

I suspect the capture of Saddam will not reduce the attacks on our forces in Iraq, it may actually increase the attacks with Saddam being herald as a martyr. Is it a mistake to capture Saddam - no, it needed to be done. However, I am now wonder what the plans are to deal with the certain reaction to that capture by terrorists?

Given Baghdad-Bush's record of a lack of planning - I doubt we are ready for the backlash.

also - remember that Poppy Bush's Gulf War victory wasn't enough to renew his stay in the White House -- we still have 11 months before the re-Selection, We are still in Iraq, Bin-Laden is still out there, and the Taliban/Al-Qeada are still causing problems in Afghanistan -- and back in May '03 Baghdad Bush did say that Saddam wasn't relevant

. . or is it just one of Saddam's many doubles ?

. . too many questions

. . not enough answers

and answers from the "coalition" or centcom have long lost a reliable amount of credibility.

Just My Cynical Canuk Opinion

Haven't seen mention of C-SPAN in skimming over these threads. I just woke up, thought I'd check out "Washington Journal" and got the news conference.

Some people really don't understand the importance of dissent in a democracy.

Next caller, a black man, gave 1st caller hell. :yourock:

Next caller, also anti-war.

Next caller: support troops but at the end he said I hope we hear from him (Saddam), unlike Lee Harvey Oswald. (Good point!)

Next, military guy, very excited that this has happened.

Next, woman wondering if Saddam will tell us whether he had WMD (? Huh? He did tell us, but Bush didn't believeit.) Then she attacks Bush.

ACK, Richard Perle calling in! What an oily voice he has. He thinks the Iraqis will try Saddam in Iraq. "If we underestimated anything. . . it was the depth of fear inculcated in the Iraqi people. . ." He thinks there is hope this will affect the violence in Iraq.

Next, a woman is disgusted that Americans think it's OK to grab this person.

:puke:

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Are you ready?!?!

. ?

. . and with billions of dollars worth of underground bunkers,

. . Saddam was in a 6 foot deep "sink-hole" ??

. . right


some info re these tunnels:

A former Iraqi scientist who fled during the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein al-Shahristani, told CBS' "60 Minutes" in February that there were "more than 100 kilometers (over 60 miles) of very complex network, multilayer tunnels."

But he never saw them himself. Few have, said Patrick Garrett, a military analyst at Globalsecurity.org. "There is tons of conjecture on this subject right now," he said, but "there's been no official confirmation or official imagery."

So far, a series of tunnels under Baghdad's international airport have been discovered. On Monday, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi colonel in one tunnel who was calling in artillery fire from his hideout, said Lt. Mark Kitchens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.

"Obviously for the type of regime we're dealing with, the tunnels represent an ideal spot to conceal weapons and serve as a hideout and in some cases an escape route," he said.





Con Coughlin's biography, "Saddam: King of Terror," details a German company's construction of a bunker "about 300 feet beneath the Tigris River" near Saddam's Presidential Palace complex, which has been the target of repeated air attacks in recent days.

The bunker "rested on huge springs, 2 feet in diameter, on a cushion of hard, molded rubber" to absorb the shock of bombardment, Coughlin wrote. He described the structure as a "James Bond-like fantasy hideout" with two entrances guarded by automatically controlled machine-gun nests.





When one of the most secure and luxurious of his palace-and-bunker complexes was completed in 1984, at a cost of $US70 million, Saddam Hussein moved in right away. But even protected by enormous layers of concrete, sand and steel, behind zigzag corridors and blast doors made to withstand a Hiroshima-size explosion,\

/snip/

Today the bunker beneath the "305 Guest House" in Baghdad's main palace compound is part of an underground world of tunnels, shelters and storage depots where Saddam may be hiding his most fearsome weapons, as well as himself. Iraqi scientist Hussein Shahristani and other exiles even talk of a phantom subway that was built but never opened in the 1980s. ("I'm still waiting to take a ride in it," says a skeptical former U.N. inspector.) What is certain is that many underground bunkers and tunnels do exist, and they could be a subterranean nightmare for American and British forces. Day and night some of the most powerful "bunker-busting" bombs in the U.S. arsenal are being brought to bear on the massively fortified infrastructure. Some of the bunkers are buried so far beneath the city that when British Member of Parliament George Galloway met with Saddam in one of them last August, he wrote about taking a high-speed elevator "so deeply under ground my ears were popping."

"We should assume that Saddam has created an underground network where he could potentially survive for months on end," says a former U.S. official who worked on the issue. "Let's hope that we don't find ourselves in a situation like we were when we chased the Viet Cong 30 years ago." But the fearsome tunnels of Vietnam were tiny and primitive compared with these. And the Iraqi capital is not the only city in the country built above a warren of catacombs and secret passages some of them centuries old as well as other high-tech hiding places for troops, supplies and senior officials. Najaf and Karbala, currently on the front lines, and Samarra, near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, are cities famous for homes with multilevel basements linked by deep corridors that crisscross beneath the streets.





The first of these underground cities was reached when the US forces took over Baghdad International Airport Thursday, April 3, and plunged into a vast underground labyrinth accessed at the tip of the outer runway. Another such facility is located to the north, known as the “Northern Palace.

More like self-contained underground cities, these compounds take up areas of between 7 and 10 sq.km, with their own internal systems of up to 7 km of road. The two airport palaces are linked by an underground expressway.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=458


YET

Sadddam was found in a wee dugout hole

right !!

except in the minds of those swayed by US propaganda. It is about land, resources, power, and profits.

The score in the bottom of the first is still: Before their war was won = 138. After their mission accomplished = 317 more, Total young land of the free and home of the brave heroes just following orders = 455 not counting dying among 2,577 wounded.). Iraqi men, women, and children evil doers massacred = 9,766. Those seeking vengeance for sake of family and invaded homeland honor = most. Years for Viet Cong to come together = several. Time for Iraqi resistance to build = damned near immediate. Have a nice day.:)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A95BE375-F766-4267-812A-556C573EEAA7.htm

<snip>
Here are the views of leading analysists and political commentators on the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Mustafa Alani, Analyst at Royal United Services Institute in London:

"There will be a reduction in operations sponsored by former regime loyalists, but this is not the full story because they are not the only group involved. It won't affect those by Iraqi or Arab mujahideen and might increase them because those who did not want to be branded as supporters of Saddam might now join a resistance with a more nationalist dimension.

For the Americans after the failure to capture Osama bin Laden after so many years, it is a propaganda coup, especially if he was captured alive. It's an intelligence prize because they can get information from him about cells working now. And it's a huge victory because he was the head of the regime and not like anyone else on the list of 55 most wanted."

<snip> Toby Dodge, Analyst at Warwick University and International Institute for Strategic Studies, UK:

"It's a huge coup and most Iraqis will be celebrating the capture of this tyrant. But it's not as clear-cut as that. The insurgency has grown well beyond Saddam's control or even influence. There are 15 to 30 groups that have no direct contact, financially or strategically, with Saddam Hussein.
His capture gives the United States a window of opportunity.

If they redouble their efforts and increase their troop commitment, they could contain or even roll back the
insurgency. But the temptation of Bush, facing a re-election campaign, will be to call this victory and cut and run. That would be a disaster for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the strategic interests of the United States in the region and beyond."

the war on terror, instead of the Saddam red herring.

not everyone buys this story without a thot.

Give it a week or so.

Plastic turkeys are everywhere these days.