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Ahmed Amr
George Bush doesn?t have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more. But the resistance lingers on. Worst still, Saddam is still alive and will be accorded some kind of public trial. He might even have time to write his memoirs while preparing for his defence. That is no comfort to the many willing Iraqi, American, Arab and European collaborators who played along with Saddam during various stages of his reign of terror.
Scott Burchill
It is hard to believe that either Washington or London would relish the prospect of an open trial of Saddam Hussein. They would not want him to adumbrate their support for him - credit-by-credit, pathogen-by-pathogen, weapon-by-weapon - during the 12 years before he became an official enemy by invading Kuwait in August 1990.
George Monbiot
Tomorrow at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, George Bush will deliver a eulogy to aviation, while a number of men with more money than sense will seek to recreate the Wrights’ first flight. Well, they can keep their anniversary. Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. Dec 17th 2003 is the centenary of the world’s most effective killing machine.
Anne Gwynne
Whenever I light a cigarette I think of B. I last saw him in the beautiful, moonlit city of Nablus. To meet was a huge risk for him but he wanted to say “until we meet again”. I hadn?t made it to an earlier rendezvous, and was sad that I had missed him ? he knew, so he came back at a very dangerous time when the soldiers were in the city! To my profound sorrow, some four months later he has finally been trapped and captured in Raffidiya during an Israeli occupation army undercover operation in which his brother was also dragged in shackles from his bed.
Manuel Valenzuela
Deep in the halls of Washington a putrid wind of sweeping ideology festers, swirling like a hurricane from the Atlantic seaboard, becoming a tornado in the frozen tundras of the Midwest, an impenetrable and monstrous fire wall consuming vast tracts of open expanse in the West and a sweltering drought drying up the nation?s future. Like a virus that was given new life, the once dormant group, for years denied the claws of power, suddenly awoke and spread through all levels of the US government with the appointment of George W. Bush in 2000. This cabal of Machiavelli and autocratic-style believers of power is now deeply entrenched in the highest positions of our government, determining policy and the direction our government and by consequence our nation is headed in.
Leila Montour
The name I?ve heard in nearly every conversation for the last eight years. All, and I mean ALL, of the Iraqi ex-pats and refugees in my community have peppered their conversations with this name over and over again. Not just the name representing the man, but the name as symbol of everything back home: every arrest, beating, torture, lost limb and life, humiliation, secretive whispering, paranoid thought, forced military service, tapped phone call, and missing family and friends. The stuff of division since the war began, the desire to be rid of him sometimes overcame the desire to stop the inevitable further rape and pillage of Iraq.
Bruce Kennedy
For months, reports from Baghdad have rumoured secret negotiations between Saddam and the USA. In September, several reports surfaced that were then quelled by the Washington tout rags, including CNN and Fox News. At a time when George Bush is being accused of everything from war crimes against Iraqis, to exercising a reckless disregard for the lives of America soldiers, and who is currently seen as virtually incapable of winning re-election for his gang of thugs, could it be that Bush has negotiated with his so-called No. 2 enemy?
Robert Fisk
"Peace” and “reconciliation” were the patois of Downing Street and the White House yesterday. But all those hopes of a collapse of resistance are doomed. Saddam was neither the spiritual nor the political guide to the insurgency that is now claiming so many lives in Iraq - far more Iraqi than Western lives, one might add - and, however happy Messrs Bush and Blair may be at the capture of Saddam, the war goes on.
Sami Ramadani
As a long-time refugee from Saddam Hussein’s regime, the joy for me was deep, but the pain, too, was overwhelming as I remembered relatives and friends who lost their lives opposing Saddam’s tyranny or in his wars. This delightful moment - enjoyed by all the Iraqis I spoke to as the news of his capture was breaking - was soured by the fact that it was Iraq’s newly appointed tyrant, Paul Bremer, doing the boasting: “Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!”
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