12/14/2003

President Bush addressed the nation on December 14, 2003. ” ‘I have a message for the Iraqi people… You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again. All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side.’ He added, ‘In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful […]

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12/14/2003

President George W. Bush announcing the capture of Saddam Hussein: “Good afternoon. Yesterday, December the 13th, at around 8:30 p.m. Baghdad time, United States military forces captured Saddam Hussein alive. He was found near a farmhouse outside the city of Tikrit, in a swift raid conducted without casualties. And now the former dictator of Iraq will […]

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12/13/2003

On December 13, 2003, “Saddam Hussein was found by a team of U.S. Special Forces hiding in a hole six feet underground nine miles from his hometown of Tikrit. …The president [Bush] gave a short televised speech. ‘This afternoon, I have a message for the Iraqi people,’ he said. ‘This event brings further assurance that […]

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12/13/2003

According to articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post, both dated on January 14, 2004: “Saddam…consistently refused operational cooperation with Osama before he fell and went into hiding in April [2003]. In written instructions seized when he was at last captured in December [13] 2003–and deemed authentic by the CIA–Saddam warned his […]

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12/13/2003

“On December 13, 2003, in a moment of misplaced bravado, [Coalition Provisional Authority leader] Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III famously crowed at a press conference, ‘We got him!’ Saddam Hussein was finally captured in an intensive hunt by U.S. Special Forces that began with the invasion nine months earlier. He had been literally holed up […]

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12/13/2003

In Iraq, “Saddam Hussein had been captured on 13 December, 2003 by elements of the USA’s 4th Infantry Division, while hiding in a six-foot-deep hole in a farm in the village of Daur, close to his hometown of al-‘Auja. The hole was covered by a trap door. His disheveled, heavily bearded, and haggard face was […]

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12/13/2003

On the evening of December 13, 2003, American forces searching for Saddam Hussein were at a farmhouse outside of Tikrit. After identifying a rug over a trapdoor, “The soldiers drew their weapons and beamed bright lights down a thirty-inch-square shaft. At the bottom, in a hole barely bigger than a coffin, was a haggard sixty-six-year-old […]

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12/13/2003

Saddam was interrogated by U.S. intelligence shortly after his capture on December 13, 2003. When he was asked “why he would not let [weapons] inspectors into his facilities if he had no weapons, he was reported to have said, ‘We didn’t want them to go into the presidential areas and intrude on our privacy.’ “ […]

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12/13/2003

As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary:” “Capture of Saddam Hussein by US Forces.”  – Commissioned by the Prime Minister The Right Honourable Gordon Brown MP, “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary,” IraqInquiry.org.uk, Dec. 13, 2003 […]

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12/13/2003

“On December 13, 2003, the biggest prize of all came when Saddam himself was found alive at the bottom of a hole near Tikrit, in the Sunni Triangle.”  – Andrew Langley, Bush, Blair, and Iraq: Days of Decision, Page 38 […]

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