Saddam Captured...and, incredibly, looks headed to stand trial on war crimes charges. Currently he is being held by US forces at an undisclosed location. The Washington Post's Dana Priest and NBC's Andrea Mitchell on NBC this morning saying we can expect some sort of war crimes trial. Meanwhile, Mitchell says, David Kay, who is back in Washington to meet with CIA Director George Tenet, was expected to ask to be replaced as head of the weapons hunt team. Now with Saddam in custody, hopes are raised that he will provide information about what did happen with the weapons of mass destruction.

Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of 4th Infantry Division, speaking to journalists in Baghdad Sunday, said he expects the insurgency will continue, that it does not seem to have been coordinated by Saddam, but rather is being conducted by cells operating more at the regional and local level. Juan Cole agrees, writing "the Sunni Arab resisters to US occupation in the country's heartland had long since jettisoned Saddam and the Baath as symbols...They are fighting for local reasons. Some are Sunni fundamentalists, who despised the Baath. Others are Arab nationalists who weep at the idea of their country being occupied. Some had relatives killed or humiliated by US troops and are pursuing a clan vendetta. Some fear a Shiite and Kurdish-dominated Iraq will reduce them to second class citizens. They will fight on, as Mr. Bush admitted today."

The Los Angeles Times' John Daniszewski disagrees, writing "the tables-turned scene of today — with Hussein himself reduced to a disheveled, compliant prisoner, bending his head obediently as an American doctor searches his wild, shaggy hair for lice — will resonate among his followers. Rather than fighting on to avenge him, they more likely feel contempt for him and despair for their cause. The gasps that arose when Iraqis first saw his TV image could well be the sound of the air leaving the insurgent movement."

"Captured not killed" is what Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden describes as one of the really positive aspects of the arrest. The BBC's Guto Harri in London remarked on this too: "Tony Blair is pleased not just with what's happened -- Saddam's capture -- but also how. We all imagined that if the Americans got a tip off they would just bomb somewhere off the face of the earth. But he was captured without a shot being fired. He's looking healthy, he's not been tortured, he's being handed over to Iraqi justice."

Separate from the capture of Saddam, presumably, Reuel Marc Gerecht argues in the Weekly Standard that Bush and Bremer should call for direct elections in Iraq sooner than later, to assuage Iraq's majority Shiites and prevent them from creating their own bands of guerrilla forces against the occupation.

Posted by Laura at December 14, 2003 12:01 PM