Eight months after the fall of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein is still at large. But acting on new information, US Special Forces prepare to launch Operation Red Dawn. Zero hour approaches as US soldiers converge on a sheep farm just nine miles from Saddam’s home town of Tikrit. This is the tense countdown to the capture of Iraq’s fugitive dictator. Where is Saddam Hussein? was the question on everyones lips during the weeks that followed the fall of Baghdad. Finally, the hunt that began with a hellfire of bombs eight months before, ended without a single shot being fired. Operation Red Dawn was executed by 600 soldiers including cavalry, engineers, artillery, air support, and special forces from the Raider Brigade of the U.S. Armys 4th Infantry Division. On an intelligence tip-off, soldiers entered two sites codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2, outside the village of Adwar. But Saddam was nowhere to be found. The situation turned into an increasingly desperate cordon and search operation. The soldiers finally found the fugitive dictator hiding in an 8 foot deep spider hole at a small 2-roomed mud shack in a sheep farm just across the Tigris River from his opulent palaces. The hole was six to eight feet deep, with enough space to lie down, camouflaged with bricks and dirt and allowed the dictator to breathe through an air vent.
