After 8-month search, Army's 4th Infantry Division gets its man

The troops are being cautious; they fear the capture will unleash new attacks.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
They've endured roadside ambushes, grenade attacks and a steady stream of casualties. Now, the Army's 4th Infantry Division has captured the biggest prize of the war in Iraq: ousted President Saddam Hussein.
The soldiers who rousted the disheveled "ace of spades" from his underground hiding place outside Tikrit on Saturday had spent more than eight months on the hunt, slogging through a region north of Baghdad considered the most loyal to Saddam and most dangerous for occupying U.S. troops.
The division commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, told reporters at a televised press conference from Tikrit how Saddam was cornered, a pistol at his side, in the bottom of a hole on a farm near the Tigris River.
"There was no way he could fight back, so he was just caught like a rat," Odierno said.
The announcement thrust the New Jersey native and his troops from Fort Hood, Texas, into a worldwide spotlight. Some say they were not surprised that these soldiers were the ones who made the capture.
Had little doubt
In fact, the 1st Brigade commander who helped lead the raid predicted the capture several months ago, after Saddam's two sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed by U.S. forces and buried near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
"We're acting on the assumption he could very well be here," Col. James Hickey told a Reuters reporter during a night patrol around Tikrit in August. "If he is here, we will get him."
In the end, they did, but not before the division suffered dozens of casualties, including the deaths of soldiers from Fort Hood, Fort Carson, Colo., and other attached units.
The 4th Infantry Division was one of the last major combat units to arrive in the Iraqi theater, after 11th hour diplomatic haggling forced units bound for Turkey to reroute to Kuwait. By April, after the fall of Baghdad, they streamed into the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north of the Iraqi capital, with the daunting task of securing the areas where opposition from Baathist remnants has been most persistent.
Undeterred
Division soldiers were injured or killed in mortar and grenade attacks, by land mines and roadside bombs, in checkpoint attacks and convoy ambushes. They weren't deterred, according to Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Colorado congressman who visited Odierno and the 4th Infantry Division during a recent tour of Iraq.
Beauprez remembers meeting with two 4th Infantry soldiers who had survived a roadside explosion just 48 hours earlier.
"They were pretty cavalier about it, even laughing about it," Beauprez said. "They said, had it not been for their Bradley [armored fighting vehicle], they might have missed our lunch."
Beauprez returned from the trip singing the praises of Odierno, a straight-talking commander who seemed straight out of Hollywood's central casting.
"Odierno just struck me as a soldier's soldier. He looks the part, he sounds the part," Beauprez said. "If you're making a movie, you could not find anyone better to put in that role."
Odierno, who has a master's degree in nuclear effects engineering, often insisted that he had plenty of troops to complete his mission in the Sunni areas. What he needed were more Iraqi translators to help bring in better intelligence information, Beauprez said.
Days leading to capture
In his press conference Sunday, Odierno described how the intelligence data improved day by day, especially over the past 10 days when coalition officials brought in a cadre of one-time Saddam loyalists for interviews.
Odierno believed that Saddam was constantly moving, perhaps every three to four hours, to a series of hundreds of hiding places scattered around the region. U.S. troops occasionally heard reports that so-called "high value targets," or HVT's, were in particular areas.
"Colonel Hickey, he came and laid it out for me yesterday afternoon and gave me a quick brief of what he thought was going to happen, that [the target was] an HVT, potentially, HVT number one," Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. "We thought it was Saddam."
More than 600 4th Infantry soldiers went on the "cordon and search" mission, sealing off a 4-square kilometer area down a road that patrol units had literally driven down in the past. They sealed the area and moved in, finding a series of small farm buildings. There was a small kitchen with running water, and a bedroom strewn with laundry, Odierno said.
Outside, they found a narrow hole concealed by a camouflaged, plastic-foam lid, lightweight enough that it could be moved easily.
Saddam was at the bottom of the hole, "a bit disoriented ... very much bewildered," Odierno told reporters. He put up no resistance. Two bodyguards were later captured in the surrounding area, and troops recovered $750,000 in $100 bills.
Restrained
Soldiers in Iraq were restraining their celebrations, some telling reporters they were not sure if the capture might unleash a new series of attacks. At the troops' home base in Fort Hood, the news interrupted a series of war games meant to simulate situations replacement troops could soon face in Iraq.
"We certainly stepped out of our role-playing in this training and got to enjoy that announcement," Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, 3rd Corps Commander, said.
But there was no restraining the joy in some circles.
Beauprez, whose son awakened him before 5 a.m. to hear the news, spent part of Sunday meeting in Denver with a group of Baghdad city council members in town to learn about local government.
"I don't know when I last saw happier people," Beauprez said. "These gentlemen were almost uncontrollably euphoric. I said, 'Do you ever stop smiling?' He said, 'Not today.'"