By Mariam Fam and Aleksandar Vasovic
The Associated Press

ADWAR, Iraq - When darkness fell, the Americans moved into position, 600 of them, from infantrymen to elite special forces. Their target: two houses in this rural village of orange, lemon and palm groves. Someone big was inside, they were told.

But when they struck, they found nothing.

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Then they spotted two men running away from a small walled compound in the trees. Inside, in front of a mud-brick hut, the troops pulled back a carpet on the ground, cleared away the dirt and revealed a Styrofoam panel. Underneath, a hole led to a tiny chamber, just big enough for a single person to squeeze into.

At first they didn't recognize the man hiding inside, with his ratty hair, wild beard and a pistol cradled in his lap. But when they asked who he was, the bewildered-looking man gave a shocking answer.

He said he was Saddam Hussein.

"He was just caught like a rat," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of 4th Infantry Division, which conducted the raid that caught him. "When you're in the bottom of a hole, you can't fight back."

The farm is near the town of Adwar, nestled among palm trees along the Tigris River just a few miles from Saddam's birthplace of Uja. One of the many palaces built by the dictator is just across the Tigris, and Saddam used to come here to swim. Adwar is the hometown of one of his most trusted aides, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri.

Over the past few weeks, as U.S. intelligence agencies began to focus in on Saddam's extended family, prisoners and intelligence tips led to increasingly precise information, said a U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Gradually, CIA and military analysts narrowed their list of potential sites where Saddam could be hiding. U.S. forces questioned "five to 10 members" of a branch of the extended family, said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

Commanders knew their target - "We thought it was Saddam," Odierno said - but the soldiers didn't.

"We were told that we would be looking for some really big fish - nothing more," said one soldier who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Sanchez called Saddam's hiding place a "spider-hole."

"The spider-hole is about 6 to 8 feet deep and allows enough space for a person to lie down inside of it," Sanchez said. He showed video images of an air duct and a ventilation fan.

Soldiers searched the hut, made up of two rooms - a bedroom and a kitchen. The soldier described it as "just two rooms and a sink, there was one bed and one chair and some clothes and that's about it." Soldiers seized two rifles, a pistol, a taxi and $750,000 in U.S. currency in a suitcase.

"We didn't stay there long. It smelled really bad," the soldier said. "It looked more like a garage than a proper house."