Operation Red Dawn

The Operation Red Dawn (Operation Red Dawn in English), carried out by US Army troops on December 13, 2003, in ad-Dawr, a small town in Iraq near Tikrit, led to the capture of the former president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The operation is named after the 1984 film Red Dawn. The mission was assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division, commanded by General de Raymond Odierno division and led by Col. James Hickey of the 4th Infantry Division, in joint operations with Task Force 121, an elite and covert joint special operations team.

They searched for two sites with the codename of "Wolverine 1" and 'Wolverine 2', outside the city of ad-Dawr, but did not initially find Saddam. An exhaustive search between the two noted sites finally turned up Saddam hiding in a "spider hole" at 20:30 local Iraq time. The former Iraqi president did not resist his capture. The images of a careless Saddam, with a long beard and hair, and totally dazed, went around the world in the following days.

Background

Saddam Hussein disappeared from public view shortly after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The US military labeled him a "High Value Target Number One" (HVT1) and began one of the largest manhunts in history.

Between July and December 2003, JSOC Task Forces 121 carried out twelve unsuccessful raids to find Saddam Hussein, along with 600 other operations against targets, including 300 interrogations. On December 1, 2003, a former driver divulged the name of Muhammed Ibrahim Omar al-Musslit, Saddam's right-hand man, known to TF 121 as "the source" or "the fat one". Over the next two weeks, nearly 40 members of his family were questioned to determine his location. On December 12, 2003, a raid on a Baghdad house being used as an insurgent headquarters captured Omar. Early the next morning he revealed where Saddam could be found. This intelligence, and other intelligence from detained former Baath Party members supported by ISA signals intelligence, eventually identified Hussein at a remote agricultural complex south of Tikrit.

A Soldier lifts a polystyrene foam lid that covers the hole where Saddam Hussein was discovered

Operation

Operation Red Dawn was launched after obtaining actionable intelligence that identified two likely locations of Saddam Hussein's whereabouts codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2, near the city of ad-Dawr. Delta Force C Squadron, ISA operators under Task Force 121 and the 4th ID 1st Brigade Combat Team carried out the operation. The operation is named after the 1984 film of the same name starring Patrick Swayze. Site names from "Wolverine 1" and "Wolverine 2" they are also a reference to the American insurgent group in the film, The Wolverines. The forces involved in the operation consisted of approximately 600 soldiers, including cavalry, artillery, aviation, engineers, and special operations forces.

Forces cleared both targets, but did not initially find the target. Then, as the operators were finishing and helicopters called in to extract them, a soldier kicked a piece of flooring aside, exposing a spider hole; he prepared to throw a fragmentation grenade at it, in case it led to an insurgent tunnel system, when Hussein suddenly appeared. The Delta operator struck him with the butt of his M4 carbine and disarmed him from a Glock 18C.

Hussein surrendered and offered no resistance; he was taken by an MH-6 Little Bird from the 160th SOAR to the Tikrit Mission Support Site, where he was properly identified. He was then taken in an MH-60K Blackhawk helicopter by the 160th SOAR from Tikrit to Baghdad and taken into custody at Baghdad International Airport. Along with the Glock, an AK-47 and $750,000 that were recovered from the spider hole.

Saddam Hussein after his capture

Capture and Prisoner of War Status

A Pentagon spokesman said he was given the status because he was the leader of the "old regime military forces."

There was also controversy over television footage showing a scruffy-looking Saddam Hussein with a long black and gray beard in custody and undergoing a post-capture medical examination to confirm his identity, footage considered by some to be a failure to shield it from public curiosity,A US military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, said the operation, involving several combined US units, was launched within 24 hours of receiving a tip from a member Saddam Hussein's clan.

His custody and that of 11 of his collaborators were transferred to the Iraqi interim government months later, on June 30, 2004.