More reporting suggesting the capture of Saddam Hussein wasn’t what it was made out to be:
Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British tabloid newspaper has reported.
Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam’s son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.
The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president’s capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, “exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete”.
A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until he negotiated a deal.
The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.
An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: “Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time.”
You’d think the Jessica Lynch saga, among others, would teach the media to be a little more critical in its reporting and not simply run with the U.S. military version of events. But I suppose that’s the easiest thing to do. And it makes for the best flag-waving coverage.
UPDATE: Scotland’s Sunday Herald has a much more detailed account.
At this point, I’m not sure what happened. But I have plenty of reasons to be skeptical of accepting the government account at face value.