REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * Sean Penn is back in Iraq, and writing articles. Really. * Rantburg has a mirrored copy of a photo of Saddam Hussein just moments after his capture at the hands of US forces. * US soldiers have captured 13 in a raid on Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. * Soldiers from the US 4th ID have killed 2 Baathists attempting to flee southeast of Khalis. * British and Danish forces have captured a senior Baath figure near Basra. * Task Force "All American" has located a major arms cache. * The US has captured several suspected al-Qaeda near Mosul. * Several relatives of Baathist leader Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri have been captured in Samarra. * Khamis Sirhan al-Mohammed, #54 in the Deck of Cards, has been captured by the 82nd Airborne Division near Ar-Ramadi. Here's The full CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * al-Bawaba is reporting that Saddam Hussein's former secretary Abed Hamoud al-Tikriti has died while in US custody. * A mortar attack on Logistical Base Seitz west of Baghdad has injured 35 US troops. * 2 French civilians have been killed by gunmen in Fallujah. * 5 people have been killed in a Shi'ite mosque bombing in the Iraqi city of Baquba. * Attacks on US forces in Iraq are down 22% since the capture of Saddam, and I would say that one of the possible explanations as to why is that the remaining Baathists are too busy fighting amongst themselves right now. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * Saddam Hussein has been declared a prisoner of war by the Pentagon. Newsday takes a look at what this means under the Geneva Convention. * It seems that Saddam Hussein's old statues are being put to a new use - honoring US soldiers who have fallen during the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom. * The US is planning to release 500 Iraqis as part of a carrot-and-stick amnesty drive. * High-ranking Baathists in Tallafar have renounced their party affiliation according to CENTCOM. * Fallujah, once a hotbed of anti-Americanism, seems to be becoming less hospitable to the Iraqi insurgency. This sentiment doesn't appear to be shared by Saddam's old thugs, however. * The Seattle Times has a nice round-up of other good stories from Iraq that are very much worth checking out. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * Turkey is warning against a break-up of Iraq. Orrin Judd says they may have reason to be concerned. * Syria plans to return $200,000,000 to Iraq according to a Turkish newspaper interview with Bashar al-Assad. * The Union of Arab Lawyers is planning for the defense of Saddam Hussein with legal experts from Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon traveling to Cairo to form a defense committee. * The US is using Turkish bases to rotate troops in and out of Iraq. * General Meyers is praising Mongolian troops for their efforts on behalf of coalition forces in Iraq. * The US has rebuffed a plan by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to hold early elections. * David Kaspar notes that the German media is starting to pay attention to the progress being made in the reconstruction of Iraq. WMD HUNT * The testing performed on the mortar shells recovered by Danish troops in Iraq appears to be inconclusive, with Danish tests showing positive and US tests turning up negative. Further testing is going to be conducted. * The US appears to be investigating every lead as to whether or not WMDs were shipped out of Iraq prior to the war, despite Rice's recent statements that the US has neither credible nor firm evidence that they went to Syria as some have suggested.