Not that I feel sorry for Saddam by any means......

[Wetzelbill]

but could you imagine having to live like that for 8 months? Moving from crappy spiderhole to crappy spiderhole. Barely eating. Barely sleeping, and when you do it's restless and with one eye open. Hearing bombs flying overhead. Any sound or footstep could be a group of soldiers prepared to bring hell's fury down on you. Maybe U.S. soldiers would get you. Maybe you might fall into the hands of one of your enemies that you made over the decades. Tortured. Maimed.

No showers. Nothing.

Damn, that would be awful.

Just the anticipation alone would be nerve-wracking enough to make me lose my will.

No wonder he never fought back.

I think he'll welcome the idea of a trial. If he gets a chance -which he won't- he'll grandstand as bad as Milosevic has been doing.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. Surprised...

I'm surprised he didn't kill himself first. I'm waiting for the ulterior motive (if, indeed, it's not simply to put himself on trial, and in the process, putting the US on trial for giving him weapons of mass destruction.)

[Loonman]

2. It makes Dubya look all the more petty

For pulling a sad, pathetic, old man from a hole.

[Pillowbiter]

3. I don't feel guilty about how Saddam would be treated by his own people

as they should be the only ones to determine Saddam's fate. I do feel sorry for the way America has betrayed Saddam and his people, time and time again.

Yes Saddam is a dictator who has done bad things to retain power. He is not guilty of genocide, or over half of the things the US propagana machine has been accusing him of for the past 10 years.

PB

[spindoctor]

4. In Manhattan they would kill for an apartment like that

Depending on location, of course.

[cirej2000]

5. Yes, he's just an old man with a beard...

sad that he had to live like that...even though he was not a nice guy.

but he is a human being he looks just like any old homeless guy in the streets of LA.

not a single luxury...like Robinson Carusoe, it was primitive as can be!

[stevedeshazer]

6. At the risk of being labeled

a "conspiracy theorist", I'm not at all certain that Saddam was on the run all that time. It's entirely possible that he was in the tender loving care of the CIA a good deal of that time.

Or else Bush is just the luckiest bastard on the planet that Saddam was found just in time for a pre-holiday Sunday TV special starring the Ace of Spades just as every dittohead in the nation was gearing up to watch the NFL.

[Isome]

7. I feel sorry for him.

You see, I haven't traded in my humanity for nationalism or society's stamp of approval. I still possess my own humanity, so it's not hard for me to see the humanity in others, even if the society in which I live has decided that expressions of compassion for certain individuals or peoples, if not verbotten, must first be qualified with utterances of disgust.