In the dead of night, a coalition of American forces, accompanied by Kurdish fighters, stormed a small farmhouse on the outskirts of Ad-Dawr, a rural town near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. After a brief firefight, the former Iraqi president was dragged out of a cramped hole in the ground, where he had been hiding for nine months. The "Ace of Spades" had finally been caught, marking a symbolic end to the Ba'athist regime and a major milestone in the Iraq War.