Wars can become intriguing political games, but often for different reasons.

At the press conference in Baghdad Paul Bremer, the White House-appointed administrator of Iraq, did well to control his effusiveness when he announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'im." Some pictures never lie. The ones of a haggard, bearded, resigned Saddam Hussein did not. But now more lies and deception by the United States are seeping forth: For one, just who got Saddam Hussein?

The world was told, live by satellite television, on Sunday, Dec 14 at 3pm Baghdad time, that Saddam had been caught. And we were told it was US special operations forces that had captured the Baghdad butcher hiding in a hole like a rat on a farm in al-Dwar just outside Tikrit, his tribal homeland. We were led to believe that the rat had just been caught, give or take a few hours. Fact is, Saddam was captured the previous day, Dec 13, at 8:30pm Baghdad time. So why did the US sit on the news for 18 and a half hours?

George W Bush, the White House and Pentagon had yet something else to hide, another lie to manufacture. No, not about whether Saddam had been captured, but who in fact had actually "got 'im". Now as more news trickles out, piecing together the puzzle raises more question of whether the United States the world's most powerful nation run by a semi-literate president and his coterie of war mongers and liars, joined prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia can be trusted at all. Or if indeed, as critics have been saying, Bush is the most dangerous of US presidents with whom the world has to live today, including Americans?

Counter-claims

There is now a catalogue of counter-claims against White House-driven spin that US forces, led by Colonel James Hickey of the Armoured Calvary, had found and captured Saddam based on at least 15 hours of grueling intelligence piecework. Unless the White House and Bush come clean, we may soon learn that Saddam's capture was imminent and had been known at least 72 hours earlier among Iraq's Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan hierarchy.

Early on Dec 14 a Tehran-based Kurdish news agency had wired a report that Saddam had been found and captured by PUK forces. Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking PUK member, had led a special intelligence unit that found Saddam near the former dictator's birthplace. The wire report in part read: "Qusrat's team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!"

That line was attributed to the head of the PUK, Jalal Talabani, who at the time was in the Iranian capital en route to Europe. The Western media had heard about the report but unable to verify its claims, relied mostly on the US military command and US intelligence sources in Baghdad, who told them the same story that General Ricardo Sanchez, head of US forces in Iraq, had offered at the press conference, with nodding approval from Bremer and senior officials of the Iraqi National Congress.

For a whole week the media ran with the US' version: that US intelligence had extracted from "a source" from his inner circle, apparently quickly assembled a 600-strong raiding team by 5:30pm Saturday and had "got 'im" by 8:30pm. But at the Pentagon press briefing afterwards, nobody had picked up the slightest clue jammed into a passage that had alluded to the "joint operation" in which the Kurdish militia had participated.

Nor was the press listening when Ahmed Chalabi, the US-installed convicted fraudster and head of the Iraqi National Congress when he said, fleetingly, that Qusrat and his PUK forces had provided vital information leading to Saddam's capture.

But that's not the same as saying Qusrat and his Kurdish militia team had worked the intelligence and led the way to finding and capturing Saddam. That's not the same as saying Qusrat and the PUK militia had led Colonel Hickey and his 600 men to where Saddam had dug himself into a hole. So who's telling the truth?

The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, on Dec 17 quoted an interview carried on PUK's al-Hurriyah radio station in which Adil Murad, a member of the PUK's political bureau, said that the day before Saddam's capture he was tipped off by a PUK general, Thamir al-Sultan, that Saddam would be arrested in the next 72 hours.

On Dec 21, the British Sunday Express attributed to a Middle East-based Western intelligence source as saying: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

Long silence

So far neither the White House nor Pentagon has responded to these claims. The latest silence is similar to the long silence between capturing Saddam on Dec 13 at 8:30pm and announcing it the next day at 3pm Baghdad time. Is Washington trying to buy out PUK's claims for Saddam's arrest? If so, why?

Paul McGeough, Baghdad correspondent for the Fairfax press in Australia, asked why if true that US forces had captured Saddam PUK militia were allowed involvement in Operation Red Dawn. McGeough says US intelligence were desperate for success in Iraq in a war that has gone horribly wrong, and a war that's still seen as illegal by international law "unless the Kurds had something vital to contribute to the operation so far south of their usual area of activity."

Moreover, McGeough says: "A report from the PUK's northern stronghold, Suliymaniah, early last week claimed a vital intelligence breakthrough after a telephone conversation between Qusrat and Saddam's second wife, Samirah."

There are other pressing reasons. The peace dividend in Iraq is looking like a dog's breakfast, with no end in sight of guerilla attacks on US and allied forces. Even the United Nations and non-governmental organisations will continue to be targeted. There was the idea that Saddam was behind the attacks, so the White House put enormous pressure on US intelligence in the Middle East to nab a Baathist Party kingpin. Quickly, dead or alive. Something had to happen, and soon. But with the killings continuing unabated, US intelligence is again being discredit in the same way as it has been for not stopping the 9-11 attacks when it had all the information of an imminent assault.

Besides, Bush's image was in tatters. In May he proclaimed "mission accomplished" while on board USS Abraham Lincoln, just off the coast of San Diego. Despite earlier denials, the White House had supplied the huge banner fastened on the ship behind Bush at the podium. And all the while, after his Hollywood-like entrance onto the aircraft carrier, Bush gave the impression that the US had won the war in Iraq. But with US soldiers still being killed, and he heads into an election year in 2004, Bush's re-election is anything but assured.

The capture of Saddam, and attributing it to US military forces and intelligence, is just the tonic Bush is looking for. The other: a strongly recovering US economy. But that could sour easily either for reasons of ongoing uncertainties in Iraq over war, the carnage produced by the still unilateralist US foreign policy, White House crony-racked economic reconstruction, vengeful sectarian killings, the derailed Middle East peace roadmap, or the unsustainable pace of US economic recovery. Or a lethal combination of all these Molotov cocktails.

Sources: Fairfax (Australia), Agence France Presse, Reuters, and Associated Press.

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia-Pacific region.