‘Where is Saddam Hussein?’ was the question on everyone’s lips during the weeks that followed the fall of Baghdad. Finally, the hunt that began with a hellfire of bombs eight months before, ended without a single shot being fired. Operation Red Dawn was executed by 600 soldiers including cavalry, engineers, artillery, air support, and special forces from the Raider Brigade of the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division.
On an intelligence tip-off, soldiers entered two sites codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2, outside the village of Adwar. But Saddam was nowhere to be found. The situation turned into an increasingly desperate cordon and search operation. The soldiers finally found the fugitive dictator hiding in an 8 foot deep ‘spider hole’ at a small 2-roomed mud shack in a sheep farm just across the Tigris River from his opulent palaces. The hole was six to eight feet deep, with enough space to lie down, camouflaged with bricks and dirt and allowed the dictator to breathe through an air vent.
Caught like ‘a rat in a hole’, Saddam gave up without a fight -despite being armed with a pistol. The 66-year-old former dictator had a long black-and-gray beard and unkempt black hair. Two AK-47 rifles and US$750,000 in $100 bills were also found.
*Images from Zero Hour program.
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