A Black Feather, A poison pen... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish So, the one bit of good news from all of this is that they caught Saddam. Some people would quibble over whether or not it's a good thing that he was taken alive. The more reasoned, rational half of me says "Yes" because this way we can conceivably get some answers out of the motherfucker, and i'd be willing to bet a week's worth of lunch money that he'll re-affirm the antipathy and lack of a connection between himself, his regime and the whole Osama/al Qaeda/Sept.11 question. If anything, the discovery of any presence of al Qaeda in Iraq could and should more likely be attributed to the downfall of Saddam, as he was highly intolerant of religious fanatics, even ones he could have used as "useful idiots." The right-wing belief in this country is to lump all of those people in the Middle East who aren't our friends into the category of simply being Islamic radicals, conveniently forgetting that one of the reasons why the Reagan administration got so cozy with Saddam was that he was very hard on those types, evinced by his gassing of the Kurds (which was also, admittedly an ethnic thing, akin to - but more upfront than - the British gift of smallpox blankets to the Indians in the French/Indian War), his supression of the Shi'ite population and his war with Iran. On the other hand, it would not have pained me to have heard that instead of capturing him that they had recovered his remains or had killed him in the process of trying to arrest him. People like that ignorant bitch Coulter or a few other wingnuts, like to paint a picture that anyone who opposed the war in Iraq was somehow pro-Saddam. It's a cheap tactic and a shitty card to play. Anyone with any sense, excluding Coulter and her ilk, recognize that while Saddam was, indeed, an evil tyrant who warranted removal from office, humiliation, public trial and maybe even a really slow gruesome, and potentially public execution, the fact of the matter remains that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are still out there biding their time, waiting to strike at us again while our administration is still too busy having an orgasm over what is really only our second major success in Iraq since this began. the news of a large explosion in the last hour or so in Baghdad should also stand as a bit of proof that if the wingers and the neocon fantasists think that Iraqi resistance to the Allied occupation is just going to collapse like a house of cards, they are every bit as stupid and mistaken as their least generous critics would suggest, although as of five minutes ago, the spin coming from Iraq is that the explosion was the result of a stray bullet from a street celebration striking a fuel tank...umm...oooookaaay Even if more terrorist attacks happen, even if the economy is still in the toilet, how much do you wanna bet that come election time next November, they are going to try to play the capture of Saddam as some sort of trump. 11:09 a.m. - 2003-12-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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