Now that the American forces have at last succeeded in capturing Saddam Hussein, everyone is attacking the deposed Iraqi leader. Journalists and writers keep coming up with sensational theories of how the Americans finally managed to reach Saddam and eventually arrest him.
Some tell of how a telephone call through Thuraya satellite telecommunication network led the Americans to where Saddam was hiding. The promoters of this theory claim that the Americans monitored conversations between Saddam and his wives and relatives, particularly calls to his second wife, Samira Al-Shahbandar. There are those who attribute his arrest to the help offered by Samira, who they say provided the Americans with valuable information leading to him. Still others have a James Bond theory claiming some of Saddam’s aides and confidants kidnapped their former leader in hopes of the $30 million reward offered by the Americans for anyone helping them to find Saddam. The story goes that the aides kept Saddam at the farmhouse with the spider hole and then led the Americans to him.
Saddam loyalists still fascinated by his “extraordinary courage and bravery” offer a different explanation, claiming that after locating the place where the former leader was hiding, the Americans gassed the entire area and stunned everyone in the vicinity. Nerve gas was widely used, which led to the entire population of one village being temporarily paralyzed. The village is in the area near the farm where Saddam was hiding. The loyalists say that the American troops who conducted the search and arrest operation were wearing gas masks to protect themselves. Saddam and the two men with him were captured without a single shot being fired simply because they were all drugged and immobile because of nerve gas.
The loyalists claim that hundreds of gas bombs were used in the operation They ridicule the American claim that the operation did not cost them a single bullet, saying the cost of the nerve gas used in the operation was worth millions of bullets and that millions of dollars were paid to the informers who provided the Americans with information leading to the arrest.
We will no doubt continue to hear every conceivable theory about Saddam’s capture. Probably very few are correct and even fewer will be substantiated. The facts may become clear in a few months or years, as usually happens in such cases. The truth no one can deny is that Saddam’s capture is a major event, the ramifications of which will not be confined to Iraq but will spill over into the region, the United States and the entire world.
