Several jokes circulated by the same method, reputedly quoting Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, Iraq's notorious information minister, as denying the capture, saying the man nabbed was actually a Taliban leader.
Elsewhere, though, many Arabs said that at a minimum, they would have preferred that Iraqis, not American soldiers, had captured Saddam.
"It is a shameful day in the history of the Arab nation when a prominent Arab president is caught by foreign occupiers and not the Iraqi people," said Abu Khaled, a Damascus taxi driver who gave only his nickname.
"In the absence of Saddam, the Americans will have no excuses; they will not be able to explain away the resistance as something related to him," said Abdel Bari Taha, a Yemeni political analyst.
"The Americans will come to realize that resistance is coming from the Iraqi people, not his followers or the Baath Party," he said.
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