Gannett News Service December 15, 2003
Saddam's arrest cause for joy and continued caution
WASHINGTON - For Baghdad residents and Iraqi expatriates, the image of a haggard, defeated Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody has for the moment transposed the long shadows of Iraq's occupation and the violent resistance it provoked.
"There is your weapon of mass destruction!" Baghdad native Hyder Haddad said after watching television news from his home in Dearborn, Mich. "Look! It's the face of the devil."
The Iraqi dictator who ruled with an iron fist for a quarter of a century offered no resistance when U.S. forces found him Saturday in a hole in the ground on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit. His face was drawn. His hair and beard were overgrown and knotted.
Haddad, a translator who returned from Baghdad three days ago, was staggered by the good news. He said Saddam's capture will go a long way toward quelling the insurgence that has targeted coalition forces, relief agencies, the United Nations and expatriates like him who returned to Iraq to aid in its reconstruction.
"Yesterday I did not have a lot of hope for Iraq," Haddad said. "There was too much danger, and still there is. But now the symbol of hate is gone. The evil leader is gone. Everything that has happened in Iraq up until now - the good, the bad, the ugly - is all worth it for this moment."
Others sounded a more cautious note.
In a brief televised address yesterday, President Bush declared an end to "a dark and painful era" for Iraqis but also warned against false hope.
"The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq. We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East," he said. "Such men are a direct threat to the American people, and they will be defeated."
For Dr. Nabil Al-Azzawi, an Iraqi surgeon and former chief of Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad, the merriment fanned by Baghdad television was tempered by daily realities.
"There will not be a dramatic change immediately, but it will quiet the conditions," Al-Azzawi said of Saddam's capture. "Hopefully someday soon the coalition forces will be able to focus less on security and more on the rebuilding."
Jubilant Iraqis fired guns into the air in the streets of Baghdad yesterday.
In this country, the terror alert level remained at yellow, or elevated, yesterday but Saddam's capture is not expected to end terrorism or attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
"The people who have been doing these attacks have been doing them because they think it's the right thing to do," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a security policy center in Alexandria, Va. "I wouldn't necessarily assume that getting the old man is going to necessarily shut it down."
There is some concern that Saddam's capture by itself will lead to retaliation by guerrillas in Iraq or by terrorists around the world. Saturday's arrest may, however, persuade skeptical Iraqis to cooperate more with coalition forces, Pike said.
© Copyright 2003, Gannett Company, Inc.
