WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 The U.S. military\u2019s global reach was on display in 2003, when American forces captured ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after a nine-month pursuit following the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.<\/p>\n
Retired Col. Michael Keller, who served 29 years in the military and deployed overseas seven times to Iraq, said he was \u201cboots on the ground for the liberation of the Iraqi people\u201d during the U.S.-led coalition\u2019s effort to topple Hussein\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n
Operation Iraqi Freedom launched in March 2003. Keller said the unit he belonged to supported the Marines, specifically the I Marine Expeditionary Force. As U.S. forces moved into Iraq, Baghdad fell quickly, but Hussein escaped and went into hiding.<\/p>\n
Keller said he was assigned to a team sent to Tikrit, Hussein\u2019s hometown, and lived near the special operations forces involved in the mission that ultimately led to Hussein\u2019s capture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe coincidentally lived right next door to the house on the compound that the special operations team lived in,\u201d Keller said. \u201cSo whenever there was a mission going on, we kind of had an idea when they spun up the helicopters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keller said he learned about Hussein\u2019s capture not through official military channels, but from local workers at the dining facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd oddly, I learned of his capture not through military channels, but through the locals who worked in the dining facility,\u201d Keller said. \u201cThey spread the rumors throughout the camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hussein was found hiding in a \u201cspider hole\u201d on a rural farm south of Tikrit, where Keller was stationed. Keller described the concealment used to hide the underground space.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hole itself was covered or concealed with a big block of styrofoam and some palm branches and things like that,\u201d Keller said. \u201cAnd so that\u2019s where the operators found and extracted Saddam from that hole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the operation and the broader mission, Keller said the U.S. military\u2019s success comes from its standards and the people who serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe set the standard for professionalism and for operational integrity and capability,\u201d Keller said. \u201cSomething that soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and now guardsmen, work on a regular basis. And my hat\u2019s off to all of them, to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 The U.S. military\u2019s global reach was on display in 2003, when American forces captured ousted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[94,11602,11605,8902,493,11604,11603,858],"class_list":["post-23938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iraq","tag-michael-keller","tag-military-professionalism","tag-operation-iraqi-freedom","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-special-operations","tag-tikrit","tag-u-s-military"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116246123807559585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}