I suspect he was directing it in a general sense. I doubt he was directing specific attacks. Saying 'go sabotage electricity' rather than 'tonight you will attack at point x'.

There's also a interesting story in the Sidney Morning Herald about how the Kurds captured Saddam and drugged him and stashed him in the spider hole for the Americans to retrieve.

Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.

I'm not seeing this story in the American media anywhere so far, except for a link to the SMH story on Drudge's site.

Ara,

Sounds Bizarro-World to me.

Yours,
Wince

I didn't make it up! Honest!

Good point. He must have been doing soemthing. "Heh.Indeed." :)

Ara, they also set up him with the $750,000, if that story is true.

Commissar:

It's a bizarre story, for sure. Have you seen it anywhere in the American media?

I don't think the military suggested Saddam was living in that hole. He was living in that shack (and perhaps others while moving around) and simply used the hole as a hiding place when necessary (as when the military showed up).

Some have taken the fact that he was in the hole when found as proof that he had no contact with anyone in the resistance. That's just not the case.

Obviously, that $750,000 was there for a reason. He also had information that led to the arrest of resistance members and the arrest of people who had infiltrated the coalition. How would he have this info if he weren't in a coordinating position? I also wonder how much money was in that chest before he started paying people to attack.

And Ara... come on now. Do you honestly believe that story? Do you truly believe that Kurds captured and drugged him and left him in a hole for us to find? Do you really?

I blogged on a WaPo story on this yesterday morning. It sounds like he was directing part of the insurgency in a very broad sense.

Ara,

I doubt the story only because if the Kurds caught him, there probably would have been some difficulty retreiving enough DNA to prove it was him....

With 750k in cash on him, if he wasn't leading a terrorist campaign, then he'd have been on a beach somewhere...Cuba springs to mind; but he was caught in a hole in the ground with armed guards around him and plenty of cash...he was involved in the attacks, sure as anything.

The Kurd story is being reported on an Iraqi blog as having been fabricated by a former reporter for Al-Jazeera, and it orginally appeared in a Sunday morning tabloid in London.

1. If the Kurds had Saddam, they might, conceivably, turn him over to the US, but they sure wouldn't let the US have the credit for it.

2. They would have turned over a severely mutilated corpse.

3. They would have kept the money.

Another point, I have seen a couple of times and I am trying to confirm (which is to say, at this point, it is rumour) is that the hole he was hiding in was actually a septic tank. Apparently the design details (except for the fan) match the more or less standard design of a septic tank in that part of the world.

Well, anybody knows you don't put a fan in a septic tank that you're going to use as a septic tank, because, when the you-know-what hits the...

<ahem>

Gary, if that's true, I can't think of anything more appropriate. Brings a smile to my face.

And on the news they're talking about how they're closing in on Saddam's #2 guy...

<ahem>

Am I the only person who has read about "Saddam's suitcase?"

It took me a minute to find another article. Alas, I forgot to bookmark the first one.

Here's one:
"[Saddam]Documents Show Saddam's Ties to Resistance
Fox News Cable/Reuters ^ | Tuesday, December 16, 2003 | Bret Baier, reporting

Posted on 12/16/2003 8:11:47 AM PST by TomGuy

The U.S. military found a treasure trove of documents on Saddam Hussein when he was captured -- some of which could prove that he had been commanding and financing guerrilla attacks against the coalition, Fox News has learned.

Earlier Tuesday, there were unconfirmed reports that Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (search), No. 6 on the U.S. military's 55 Most Wanted (search) list, had turned himself in. But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a morning news program that the report was unfounded.

The documents found with Saddam are described as minutes of meetings with Iraqi government officials who are believed to be financing cells of enemy fighters.

U.S. commanders say it's clear Saddam had communication with Iraqi officers who were financing attacks and that communication occurred via courier. He didn't have command and control but he was kept aware, they said. " (emphasis added)

The key here is not really whether Hussein directed anything, but the fact that the man had a ton of papers relating to the turncoats in the government. Nail them, and you've put a big hurt on the Sunni/foreign resistance.

I can see why we aren't seeing much about this right now: make the targets feel safe, right until we pick 'em off...

Well Gary, if the rumors are true about the original purpose of the hold Saddam was found hiding in, then I now know what we should call the 4th infantry guys detailed to flush out the rest of the saddamites:

The Antiseptic Squad.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Casey, I noted the briefcase report as well and later read that 78 Baathist Saddamites had been rounded up as a result. I also read this week that the new Iraqi army had thousands of new recruits from the Sunni triangle since SH had been captured. Another interesting report tells us that 4200 new IP have been recently trained and are now on duty in Mosul. I'm encouraged tremendously by these new developments.