Saddam Hussein

President Bush said Wednesday that there was no proof tying Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, amid mounting criticism that senior administration officials have helped lead Americans to believe that Iraq was behind the plot. Bush's statement was the latest in a flurry of remarks this week by top administration officials after Vice President Dick Cheney resurrected a number of contentious allegations about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

The army of grievers climbed to the hilltop at dawn, waiting for the 365 flag-draped coffins to arrive. Some sat weeping in the stony dirt amid row after row of empty graves; others lined the streets for blocks. They clutched framed pictures of husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters -- all victims of Saddam Hussein's 1988 genocidal campaign against the Kurds. When the coffins came, carried up the hill on the backs of soldiers, the lamentation could wait no longer.

At the spot where U.S. forces helped Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, protesters Friday tore down an effigy of President Bush and set it afire during a demonstration over plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011. People began arriving at central Baghdad's Firdos Square just after sunrise, some having walked for hours across the capital. Most came from Sadr City, the stronghold of the Shiite Muslim cleric who called for the gathering, Muqtada Sadr.

It is a wide world, I know, and there are surely people in it more receptive than myself to the idea of a four-hour miniseries about Saddam Hussein. That seems a long time to spend with the man. (John Adams got eight-plus hours earlier this year, but he was a Great American and lived to be 90.) And there is Steven Soderbergh's upcoming 257-minute Che Guevara biopic, but that has Benicio Del Toro in it, at least, and a big-screen budget.

Hundreds of supporters of Saddam Hussein broke curfew Sunday to pay respects at the tomb of the toppled Iraqi president, who was buried before daybreak in the small northern town where he was born. At the funeral in Al Auja and across the Arab world, Hussein's fellow Sunni Muslims expressed outrage at his chaotic final moments, revealed in grainy footage circulated widely on the Internet and on television showing his execution at dawn Saturday in Baghdad.

A military nurse who cared for Saddam Hussein in jail said the deposed dictator saved bread crusts to feed to birds and seldom complained to his captors. Master Sgt. Robert Ellis cared for Hussein from January 2004 until August 2005 at Camp Cropper near Baghdad. Ellis, 56, an operating room nurse in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, said he was ordered to do whatever was needed to keep Hussein alive.

Saddam Hussein carried to the grave many of the most closely guarded secrets of the labyrinthine nation he ruled for 24 years. Even many Iraqis who are not mourning the execution Saturday of the fallen dictator are wistful about losing the opportunity to learn more about the crimes of his regime. Investigators are still scouring the globe for billions of dollars Hussein transferred to foreign accounts before his fall in 2003.

Protests over Saddam Hussein's execution continued Tuesday inside and outside Iraq as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered an Interior Ministry committee to identify who taunted the ousted dictator and released footage of his hanging. Officials said the panel probably would question everyone present at Saturday's hanging. The Iraqi government did not say what, if any, punishment would result.

Two of Saddam Hussein's former aides will probably be hanged this week, Iraq's Shiite-led government said Wednesday, even as it arrested three men in an effort to contain the uproar over the filming of Hussein's execution. There were conflicting reports on the planned executions of Awad Hamed Bandar and Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, just as there had been before Hussein was hanged Saturday. Iraqi officials said the hangings were imminent, but noted that the execution time would not be publicized.