When US forces pulled Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground behind a two-room shepherd's hut, they were within sight of the former Iraqi president's lavish palaces in his home town of Tikrit.
"It is rather ironic that he was in a hole in the ground across the river from these great palaces he built, where he robbed all the money from the Iraqi people," said Maj Gen Ray Odierno who commands the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Saddam, on the run since US-led forces toppled his government in April, was carrying a pistol but put up no defence as he was pulled out of the small dark pit which was covered with a piece of styrofoam and a rug behind the two-room farm building.
"He was just very much bewildered and he was taken away," Major Odierno told a news conference.
The army cordoned off an area of two-by-two kilometres near Ad-Dawr, some 15 km down the Tigris river from Tikrit after receiving intelligence from a mid-level Iraqi source, he added.
"Over the last 10 days or so we have brought in about five to 10 members of these families who then were able to give us more information and finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals," he said.
"He could have been hiding in a hundred different places, a thousand different places like this all around Iraq and it just takes finding the right person who will give you a good idea where he might be."
The officers in charge of the operation knew they were on the trail of a big fish, but were not entirely sure they would find Saddam. "We were going after an HVT (high-value target), possibly HVT number one. We thought it was Saddam." The soldiers who pulled back the cover to find the cowering ex-president may not have known that, Major Odierno said.
"What we normally tell them is we are going after an HVT. So the soldiers knew there was somebody in there we were actually going after who was targeted, but my guess is they probably did not know who it was until we were finished."
The 4th Infantry Division has taken up residence in the sprawling riverside complex of palaces Saddam built in Tikrit to act as a base while hunting down senior members of the former Baathist government.
Major Odierno said he was not surprised to find Saddam so close to the palace, but said he was probably constantly on the move around the region north of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle.
He showed reporters a military-style metal canteen containing $750,000 in cash which was found in the hut. Nearby, troops found boats which could have been used to transport supplies or visitors, he added.
"We have been to this area before. We have been down this road before. That doesn't mean he has been there the whole time.
"My guess would be he has probably 20 to 30 of these all around the country," Major Odierno said.
Troops arrested two other people who tried to flee the building, which consisted of a kitchen and a bedroom, strewn with new clothes -- evidence which, Odierno said, suggested Saddam may have arrived at the hut just hours before the military raid.
No cell phones or other communications equipment were found at the hut, suggesting Saddam was not coordinating insurgency against the occupying forces, Major Odierno said.
"I think he was more there for moral support and I don't think he was coordinating the entire effort." - Reuters