What’s with this story? First the claim that Saddam’s second (of four) wives was somehow responsible for Saddam’s capture, then the claim that she had plans to flee to France and then Moscow. It’s a strange bit of reporting, and I’m just not sure what to make of it. Here are some interesting bits, though:

In a tapped phone call last Thursday [Samira Shahbander] arranged to meet the former dictator that weekend after demanding cash.
But the meeting was cancelled at the last minute – perhaps because Saddam was beginning to feel the heat that US forces were closing in. Late last Friday, US soldiers captured an Iraqi fugitive they had been hunting since July – who is believed to have given them the former dictator’s exact location – a farm at Ad Dawr, about 15km from Tikrit, his ancestral home and where he was caught late Saturday.
She told friends she was going first to France and then to Moscow – that Saddam had been secretly promised by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to give her sanctuary.