A special operations veteran shared recent details about his elite team’s capture of Saddam Hussein in an interview nearly 20 years after the key mission.
Retired Army Master General Sergeant Kevin Holland said his Delta Force team told the previous Iraqi president and dictator that “President Bush sends his regards” once they pulled him out of a hole where he’d been hiding underground in 2003.
Holland described the mission on a Dec. 7 episode of a podcast hosted by a Navy seal veteran called “Danger Close.”
He said his elite team received “human intel” that led them to a hole in the bottom in a small agricultural town in Iraq.
The opening was covered with a layer of leaves and sand, and plugged with styrofoam to obscure its location. It had a small pipe sticking up to permit oxygen to flow, Holland said.
He and his squadron uncovered and unplugged the opening and saw it was lined with bricks like someone was hiding in it. They threw a grenade into it after which heard a voice speaking Arabic that progressively grew louder.
“Then hands come out of the opening and a giant bushy head of hair after which we grab him and jerk him out — and it [was] like ‘well, that’s him,’” Holland said.
He said the moment was surreal added despite having gotten a tip that Hussein was taking cover in the opening.
Holland recalled one in all his fellow squad members who helped pull out the deposed Iraqi president saying “Holy cow, it’s him” in shock.
Hussein was armed with a Glock 18 so one other Delta Force member — who Holland described only as “a giant Texan” — “nails him within the mouth” to get the gun away, he said. He added that President Bush now has that gun.
The dictator then tried to plead with the American team.
“He just said he was the president of Iraq and he’s able to negotiate,” Holland said. “He said that in English.”
“We’re like ‘that point’s passed, brother.”
The highly-honored veteran said he could sense Hussein was evil from just his presence.
“You possibly can feel he was just an evil guy. He had this presence about him that was very unnerving,” Holland said.
Hussein’s presidency was marred by quite a few human rights abuse accusations, including an estimated 250,000 murders.
After his capture, he was transferred to the custody of the Iraqi interim government. He was tried and convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity for his involvement in a 1982 mass killing of Shia rebels.
He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on Dec. 30, 2006.