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| Rummy on Saddam--60 Minutes interview |
| 2003-12-15 |
| Edited for brevit. Saddam Hussein has been compliant since he was captured Dec. 13, but so far is not cooperating, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Lesley Stahl on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" Dec. 14. "He has not been cooperative in terms of talking, or anything like that," Rumsfeld said. "He clearly was compliant or resigned, in effect, as he was being examined and as he was being transferred from the hole to the transport that took him away, but I think 
it’s a bit early to try and characterize his demeanor beyond that." The secretary said that to his knowledge, reports that Iran was involved in Saddam’s capture are untrue. "The reason he was finally captured was because some wonderful young men and women in uniform have been over there for seven or eight months, and they have been doing a wonderful job for our country and for the Iraqi people in helping to set that country on a path," he said. "And they have developed an ability to deal with a high-value target like Saddam Hussein (and) to do it in a time-sensitive way," he continued. "And when the intelligence was gathered and analyzed (and) brought together over a period of some hours and days, they were able to then move very rapidly and very skillfully and very professionally and capture that individual." Saddam had "very inflated views of himself and his role in the world" when he was in power, the secretary said. "And to have him go out the way he is going out – with a whimper – it seems to me deflates those that would have wanted to support that approach to the world." The secretary said that although the man soldiers found hiding in the hole near Tikrit looked like Saddam Hussein and had a bullet hole in his leg and tattoos that Saddam was known to have, firm conclusions weren’t made at first, and he warned President Bush when informing him of the capture that early reports often are incorrect. "I was more interested in the fact that we found a sizeable amount of money," Rumsfeld said, "because we know that Saddam Hussein had doubles, and we know that they used plastic surgery, so they could very easily have put the tattoos and the bullet hole when they were doing the facial surgery." He said the large amount of money found at the scene — some $750,000 in U.S. $100 bills — and positive identification by some of Saddam’s former cabinet members in custody made it clear the captured man was, indeed, the former Iraqi dictator. |
| Posted by:Dar |