Wow, he's sure let himself go lately.

Yeah, ever since Farm Aid...

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Well, it is good to see that they were finally able to track down our former ally and capture him. The prospect of having us go through an agonizing withdrawal and have him pop up again would be pretty horrible. 'Course, I'm not sure what Iraq is in for now. Apparently celebratory gunfire in one town today killed 8 people as those AK rounds mysteriously, somehow or other...fell back to earth. Whether his capture has a positive effect on anti-US insurgent activities remains to be seen but should be pretty plain to see from casualty reports (...at least those that the military choose to disclose. I guess injuries, maimings and amputations are just not a "hard" enough outcome to be relied upon. Only the deaths will do, or so it seems.)

I note the term "arrested" in the thread title with interest (where I think of it as captured). "Arrested" implies violation of a criminal statute as opposed to an armed conflict. That sorry SOB probably broke every law in the books a thousand times over, but it seems like one of the diciest things on the immediate agenda is how to put him on trial. I have to ask: Was this not discussed and planned for in advance? Sounds like he's been whisked away in mystery. So, will he be hung in Baghdad?, displayed in the dock in the Hague, locked up with Brainiac in Guantanamo?

The hallmark of this post-conflict conflict has been piss poor planning based on unbelievable arrogance and a cavalier attitude. "Oh, no. We have all the troops we need!" I wonder how long ago Saddam might have been captured (and perhaps how many casualties might have been avoided) if the Rumsfeld crowd actually planned to the mission instead of their fancy -- like even put enough force in place to secure huge ammunition dumps.

The absolutely coincidental timing of the capture relative to the recent endorsement of Howard Dean by Al Gore is remarkable. I think that endorsement sealed the fate of candidacies like the faux-Democrat Lieberman and eliminated any chance of a Hillary White Knight maneuver at the Democratic Convention, but the capture now gives failing Democratic candidates a stick to beat their leading candidate with, perhaps assuring 4 more years of Shrub, the Nincompoop.

It's a long way to November 2004, though, and I hesitate to predict what may happen in the U.S., in Iraq, and in the world at large. Meriting only a footnote to today's Saddam news was the (2nd) attempted assasination of Pervez Musharraf. Could they have really missed him by 30 whole seconds or was Osama really just sending him a reminder to not send nosey troops into the border regions?

Fascinating to listen to the different reactions to the Saddam news on NPR this AM. Senator Bill Frist said "a defining moment for the Iraqi people" three times, I think. An MP sergeant from Fort Drum figured now that we've got Saddam, now we'll be able to ask him where the WMD are.

Nothing in the news today made me feel any better about what a cock-up this whole adventure has been both from a no-planning/arrogance standpoint and in terms of the damage done to our country's relations and reputation. Oh, and we were lied to big-time, too. Oh, and maybe this is all just to fulfill some folks' wacky notions of Armageddon. The top bad joke of the new century.

It's funny, but I somehow always think of billionaire financiers as market-driven cuthroats -- hard core Republicans. It is with much interest, then, that I hear more and more about George Soros. Maybe he used to be a mean guy and just recently turned nice. Maybe he's got a crafty hidden agenda I just can't figure out and maybe he is actually a meanie under the "nice" facade. Anyhow, he wrote this really interesting essay in the Atlantic Monthly and the Atlantic was nice enough to publish it on the Web. I don't know that he has all the answers, but I like what he has to say.

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