SADDAM DAMMIT

After two days of All-Saddam All-The-Time, I have only three observations:

1) In all of the TV footage of Iraqi citizens celebrating the capture, I saw no women. Not a one.

2)This is the worst news I've heard since the economy was picking up a little. Oh it's good news for the Iraqi people who have feared his return; and it's good news in general for the world, to diminish such a cruel man.

But just as there never was the slightest doubt that the mighty US military would quickly vanquish the Iraqi government and army (and so what?), we knew Saddam would eventually be captured.

I hoped it would either be bungled or happen after the election. Hey, it's situational ethics. But paranoia is just having all the facts. Is it possible the capture--and the forthcoming trial--were planned, timed and staged to help win the election? There's no doubt that the evils of Saddam will be exposed in the trial, that it and the horrors that he inflicted on Iraqis will be frontpage news all over the world. This can and will be used to support and justify Bush's actions.

The rightwing's money and propaganda machines, well-honed after twenty five years of dedicated thinktank activity and laserbeam focus, have already made Bush more formidable an opponent in 2004 than many of us have been willing to admit. Even with the perfect Democratic candidate, even with all Bush's obvious vulnerabilities, even with all of the lies and calumnies of this administration regarding this war and just about everything else, even with tens of millions disgusted with this presidency, even with the blatant attacks on the Bill of Rights and civil liberties in general, even with insane deficits that further the neocon goal of bankrupting the government so it can't afford social programs, even with the dismantling of enviromental protection and medical security, even with the fact that we are far less safe than we were before the empire-building wag-the-dog neocon dream of invading Iraq came true --oh, we could type for another hour--even with all this, it will be a tough battle.

But planned, or lucky break for Bush, the capture happens now, and so far it's not bungled. (I have hope.) There's no denying the boost this gives Bush in the campaign. It's the buzz.

The trial may also further expose the long dark history of complicity with and support of this regime by America--but not Bush's America, and his machine will make good use of that; and Bush has already prepped the way for this by acknowledging past American support of undemocratic (what an understatement) regimes in a recent speech.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have not found the magic bullet in their campaigns, and their sniping at each other is not useful. With this news, are they going to need some divine intervention to beat the Axis of Evil?

It's worrisome, but it just means we have to redouble our efforts, be yet even smarter, and speak out even louder about all the egregious actions of the Bush usurpers. There is simply no other choice.

3) So we shaved the guy. We showed him being inspected for lice, throat examined, etc, but still there were doubts this was Hussein-baby. How come we didn't see him being shaved? And how come that's all the video we saw, anyway? That's the most newsworthy and interesting?