Capture cheer fades into Iraqi ire at US

The morning after Iraq's US governor revealed the ousted strongman was a disheveled prisoner, Iraqis flooded the streets to snatch up newspapers emblazoned with photos of the man who ruled them by fear, now humbled and captive.

Many were ecstatic to see Saddam captured and hoped he would answer for his deeds but said they would not rush to thank America -- in their eyes the source of their problems since a US-led coalition toppled Saddam in April.

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"I hope that we get the chance to try him our way, to let everyone who suffered make him taste what he had made us taste," said Ali Hussein, 29, a stationery shop owner who said he was still dizzy with joy.

"But whether he's in a hole or in jail, it does nothing for me today, it won't feed me or protect me or send my children to school," he said.

Even as news of Saddam's capture sank in, car bombs ripped through two police stations in the capital, the latest in a series of attacks US forces blame on loyalists of Saddam and on foreign "terrorists" infiltrating Iraq.

President Bush warned that catching Saddam would not end attacks by people who do not "accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East," implying a pledge of a better life many Iraqis said Bush was failing to keep.

"It's great that he's caught, but it wasn't him who screwed up the petrol and the electricity and everything else so badly, so now a canister of gas that was 250 dinars costs 4,000, if you can get one," said Ghazi, a 52-year-old dentist, from his car as he queued with hundreds of other drivers waiting for petrol.

"This is an oil country and it should be rich. It should not be Afghanistan."

Other drivers echoed the complaints of chronic fuel shortages in a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves, as well as of their treatment at the hands of troops who have killed civilians while hunting suspected Saddam partisans or pursuing criminals with Iraqi police.