Iraq, through the eyes of a veteran NBC reporter

updated 12:07 p.m. ET May 30, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Since 2003, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has provided viewers with the unvarnished, if sometimes unpalatable, truth about the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Here is an excerpt of his book, “War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq.”

1

“Conceal thy travels, thy tenets, and thy treasures.” — Arab proverb

Ad-Dur, Iraq

December 15, 2003

No one was to come in or out.

Dozens of American soldiers formed a defensive circle around the palm grove, silently keeping watch. Gunners in the turrets of Humvees parked next to the troops turned hand cranks at their waists to pan .50 caliber machine guns left and right, training the long gun barrels on the dense trees around the edges of the grove.

“Got to keep your eyes moving.

“Got to look out for snipers.

“Got to protect the circle.

“Nothing can go wrong today,

“Not in front of all these reporters.”

It was a big day, and we all knew it. I was at the center of this defensive ring of American muscle and machines along with about a dozen other journalists. We probably looked ridiculous to the troops. They had their uniforms: khaki combat boots, M4 rifles, Kevlar helmets, and Wiley X ballistic sunglasses. We had our uniforms: brightly colored flak jackets (mine was sky blue), cameras, tripods, notebooks, khakis, and quick-dry synthetic shirts. The army had choppered us into this clearing on two Black Hawks to see what didn’t look like much from the outside: a tiny cinder block farmhouse with a garden filled with sunflowers, oranges, and pomegranate trees. The fruit looked almost ripe on the cool bright December morning. But no one would be picking it. Not from this house. Not anymore.

“We have a cordon around the area, but it is still dangerous. Don’t wander off,” an army officer warned. My canvas hiking boots stuck in the soft black soil as I walked to the farmhouse and through its thatch gate.

But what I saw inside didn’t make any sense to me. Military officials said Saddam Hussein was captured hiding in a hole. I didn’t see any hole, but only a typical one-room Iraqi farmhouse with a cement patio in front where laundry and basterma (Arab pastrami) were drying on a line. One of the biggest manhunts in history had led the U.S. military here: Saddam’s safe house where he slept and apparently cooked for himself. It seemed that he lived badly as a fugitive. My mother would have called the place, like my room growing up, “a pigsty.” There were broken eggs on the floor, a dirty frying pan atop a gas burner, and a half-eaten Mars bar and an open bottle of moisturizer on a wooden stand next to a single, unmade twin bed. I imagined the dictator, who had lived in palaces with hundreds of servants, suddenly forced to fend for himself like a freshman in college who, no longer having his mother to pick up after him, eats junk food and doesn’t clean up. It must have been a tough adjustment for Saddam. One of his private chefs told me the Iraqi leader was a finicky eater, often struggling with his weight; he always made himself a bit thinner in his statues. He liked vegetables and mutton stews, and would fine the chef if he used too much oil. Saddam would tip him if meals were particularly tasty and light. He liked things just so. One of Saddam’s palace maids — like many, a Christian woman (Saddam thought Iraqi Christians to be especially honest and clean) — told me Saddam was also so fastidious about hygiene that she was required to take off her shoes and walk barefoot across a mat soaked in disinfectant before entering his bedroom. Saddam couldn’t have liked living in this farmhouse, just three miles from his dusty home village, al-Ouja, which he hated for its poverty. The poor street thug who intimidated and killed his rivals until he became “al-Rais,” Arabic for both head and president, had come full circle.

“But where’s the hole?” I asked the officer. “Didn’t you find Saddam in a hole?”

He led me back outside to the cement patio with the laundry line.

“At first we didn’t see it either. A soldier was standing right here and didn’t notice the hole until he kicked aside this mat,” the officer said, pulling back a plastic tarp on the ground. Underneath was a Styrofoam cork in the cement about the size of a big fishing tackle box.

“When the soldier removed this Styrofoam cover,” he said, “Saddam was inside. Saddam put his hands up and said, ‘I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, and I am ready to negotiate.’ “

Saddam apparently lived in the farmhouse most of the time, and took refuge in the hole only when danger was close. Saddam also had a pistol, but didn’t use it, and traveled in a beat-up white and orange taxi discovered nearby.

The soldiers were relaxed and joking with journalists. It was a “good news” day and this was the military’s chance to play show-and-tell.

“And what did the soldiers say to Saddam?” one of us asked.

“President Bush sends his regards,” an officer said.

We all laughed.

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