Saddam dominates world's media

Saddam Hussein's capture has dominated front pages of newspapers around the world today.

“We got him! US exults,” read the Bangkok Post’s banner headline today. “Saddam Captured,” declared Singapore’s Straits Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Headlines and pictures of a dejected Saddam Hussein – both bearded and beardless, staring vacantly – were splashed across front pages defining the biggest story to emerge from Iraq since the US invaded in March.

People around the world were amazed to see stunning television pictures of the bedraggled, bearded Saddam in US custody and an exultant US administrator Paul Bremer proclaiming: “We got him.”

The defining television images were repeated over and over as details of the dramatic capture gradually unfolded on Sunday.

“Those pictures. To use Saddam Hussein’s phraseology – the mother of all mug shots,” said Chris Wallace of the US television channel Fox News. “You have to wonder in some sense if he wasn’t relieved to have been caught.”

Television stations across Asia cut their regular late night programmes on Sunday to offer running reports of the capture.

Initial excitement about the capture was evident in the breathless television coverage, but newspapers were more reflective.

“His capture will be a turning point in international efforts to reconstruct and bring order to Iraq,” said an editorial in South Korea’s Joong Ang Ilbo.

The daily urged Seoul to speed up its plan to send up to 3,000 troops to Iraq.

New Zealand’s biggest-circulation daily, the New Zealand Herald, published a special late five-page edition.

“No shots, no resistance, Saddam caught ’like a rat in a hole,”’ it headlined its front page story.

Alongside was a photo of the former dictator having a swab taken from his mouth.

Malaysia’s The Star tabloid, the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, devoted six of seven world news pages to the story, beginning with a banner headline on page one: “Saddam nabbed.”

But Hong Kong’s newspapers warned that Saddam’s capture did not mean the end of US troubles in Iraq.

“Just because Iraqis hate Saddam doesn’t mean they like America,” wrote the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily.

In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, some newspapers remained unsupportive of the US effort in Iraq and were sceptical that it was the real Saddam who had been captured.

With many American newspapers missing the news before going to bed, some printed special editions.

The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tennessee, planned an afternoon edition. The Great Falls (Montana) Tribune printed a six-page extra.

Some Arab TV stations did not carry Bremer’s announcement.

But the major ones, such as Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya in Dubai, showed both Bremer and scenes of Iraqis celebrating in Baghdad.

Germany’s public ZDF television interrupted its winter sports coverage to carry a live broadcast of Bremer’s press conference.

After their regular evening news programme, they broadcast a 20-minute special looking at Saddam’s history and the events that led up to his capture.