AD-DAWR, Iraq (Reuters) - "I'm Saddam Hussein," the man with the scruffy beard said in English when U.S. troops found him in a dirt hole. "I'm the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate."

"President Bush sends his regards," they replied.

U.S. officers who captured the 66-year-old former dictator in the hole next to a hut in Iraq Saturday could not believe how easy it was when after eight months of hunting they took Saddam without either side firing a shot.

Maj. Brian Reed, operations officer for the first brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division, recounted the story for reporters Monday at the site where Saddam was found.

The hole contained nothing but an electric strip light and a ventilation fan. The roof was supported by rough wooden beams.

"What we found surprised us," said Col. James Hickey, the commanding officer of the brigade involved in capturing Saddam. "We didn't think it would be so simple."

The former president, who once could take his pick from an array of lavish palaces across Iraq, was pulled from a specially dug hole in the ground just big enough for a man of his average build to crouch in.

The army was led to Saddam's hideaway -- near a shepherd's hut in an orange grove on the banks of the Tigris River -- by information from a wealthy man from nearby Tikrit arrested in a raid Saturday.

Hickey declined to identify the source, saying only that he was from an important family in the town and that he had "a large waist line."

Although from Saddam's home town, the man was not from Saddam's tribe, Hickey added.

It was at least the 10th time U.S. troops in Tikrit had headed out on a mission hoping to capture the man they refer to variously as BL1 (black list one) or HVT1 (high-value target one), Hickey said.    Continued ...

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