Flutterby™! : Saddam Hussein captured. 2003-12-14 22:52:35.227032+00

Saddam Hussein captured.

2003-12-14 22:52:35.227032+00 by Dan Lyke 7 comments

In the jubilation over the capture of Saddam Hussein, let us not forget that Osama bin Laden is still at large.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-14 23:35:20.112702+00 by: Diane Reese

That was my first comment to my thrilled elderly father, and to my sons: I'll be much happier when bin Laden is located.

Not to mention that today's capture is likely to give Shrub a bounce in the polls, unfortunately....

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-15 16:56:29.084312+00 by: Shawn

I made similar comments, along with the prediction that this isn't going to change anything all that much. We'll still be over there for a long time and fanatics will continue to take pot shots at us.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-15 23:45:11.473816+00 by: Larry Burton

Still, this capture should be regarded as good news. Just because all the bad boys haven't been captured that isn't reason not to be happy when one of them is captured.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-16 01:57:28.137407+00 by: Dan Lyke

Yep. And I'm actually shocked and amazed that Dubya is handling this event with as much aplomb as he is. Totally blows me away, and I didn't expect the way they're handling this at all. No flight suits on carefully positioned aircraft carriers or any such.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-16 03:31:10.3798+00 by: Diane Reese

Agreed, good news. Gives me pause, though, when I hear Dubya saying things like, 'Of COURSE the Iraqis should be "involved" in any trial of S.H., we'll work on figuring out a way for them to be involved.' ?? This is the guy who tortured and slaughtered the Iraqis for years: they should LEAD the effort to prosecute him, perhaps through an international tribunal, not "be involved in some way that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield decide might be sufficient".

I found remarkable the reports of the Iraqi Council members who interviewed S.H. on Sunday. Their observations that, were the tables reversed, they would have been tortured and then cut up into pieces, were startling in their truth. (I also liked their references to the times when he would cuss as, "He was exercising his French language skills." :-)

Anybody notice that among the few things S.H. is willing to say, he insists that he did not have WMDs and was never affiliated with bin Laden? I'm actually willing to believe him on those two points.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-16 14:53:22.902855+00 by: Dan Lyke

As I hear it, he's also convinced that the gas attacks against the Kurds came from Iran (a possibility our intelligence sources haven't discounted).

I think it ended up in one of the boxes of books to John, but this is a good context to plug Talk of the Devil

, which I mentioned in June. I think that like most dictators, he probably honestly believes that everything he did was for the good of the country, but that's okay because that fiction of nationhood overriding the needs of the individual justifies any means.

This is why this invasion bothers me so much: All national leaders believe this to some extent. Some are more violent about it than others, but there can be no end to the potential enemies list, especially when unilateral action is the name of the game.

#Comment Re: Saddam Hussein captured. made: 2003-12-17 16:28:52.228772+00 by: Shawn

Larry; true words, except that it's not forgone that we should be over there at all, capturing him as a "bad boy", in the first place. The connection to Bin Laden - and 9/11 - was nowhere near substantiated, and it increasingly appears the WMD issue was all-but-fabricated as well.

It's not a fair comparison to equate our leaders to Saddam today, but they're certainly marching down that road. Will they stop before crossing the line?