Lew, I was in Saudi Arabia when Saddam was captured, and remember watching the event on CNN in the Saudi Gazette newsroom. When the spokesman described the capture, emphasizing that Saddam “offered no resistance,” my boss — a Palestinian — snorted “the bastard didn’t even fight back.” Not fighting back was worse than getting caught.
If the Marine’s account is true, then Saddam did fight back. Cannot possibly have that. The whole goal of the spider hole story was the same as all of the photos that “leaked” out of Abu Ghuraib — to humiliate and emasculate Arabs and make them accept their conquest and occupation by the United States.
I was working for the Saudi Press Agency at the embassy here in Washington when the invasion started. Not many Saudis I knew there were pro-Saddam, and did not want Iraq to win the war. But they did want Iraqis to fight well and give a good account of themselves. And some were terribly depressed during the first week of the invasion, when it appeared the Iraqi army was simply collapsing without offering much resistance.
3:32 pm on March 9, 2005
