Iraq II: Excerpt du Jour on the War

The 11th of 20 excerpts from "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas Ricks:

"We got him!" [Paul] Bremer exclaimed to reporters on December 14 [2003]. After thirty-eight weeks of searching, Operation Red Dawn, involving six hundred conventional and Special Operations troops, had caught Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole on a farmstead near the village of Dawr, 10 miles south of Tikrit and not far from his birthplace of Auja. An informant had said that an important person was there, amid the palm groves and orange orchards. One soldier noticed a prayer rug over a dirt spot that looked swept recently. The rug was removed, and a Styrofoam lid was found underneath it. After it was lifted -- carefully, in case it was booby trapped -- it revealed a square-cut hole resembling a mineshaft.

Under standard procedures . . . soldiers would have dropped a grenade or fired into the "spider hole." But before they could, two hands appeared in surrender. Saddam Hussein was taken into custody. . . .

At last, some commanders thought, the corner had been turned. Not only had Saddam been caught, he hadn't even put up a fight -- a circumstance that appeared to undercut the heroic image he had tried to construct. . . .

In the next few weeks the U.S. military obtained the best information it had seen in months. . . . This might have been the moment for a political opening to the Sunnis, capitalizing on the stunning capture by reaching out to wavering enemies, said an Army intelligence officer who was based in Anbar at the time. "I think we missed an incredible opportunity to bring the Sunnis into the fold during that December-January time frame," he said. "A lot of infrastructure spending and a push to reach out to religious and tribal leaders could potentially have changed the course of the war."

But neither the CPA nor the Bush administration was inclined to offer repreives, recalled the officer. "That was a great missed opportunity," he said with palpable regret.

© 2006, Thomas E. Ricks. All rights reserved.