Yes, it's great news that a murderous tyrant has been captured. Predictably, there'll be a lot of premature dancing on our graves by the Bush gang.
One problem: the graves are empty. We're not dead.
You'll see a lot of finger-wagging and hear a lot of hubris about how the capture of Saddam Hussein has taken all the wind out of our sails over here on the left, and more specifically in the Howard Dean Camp. But that's false bravado hard at work.
Finding Saddam was one of MANY problems that've been angering us. Moreover, what we thought was a done deal back when we bombed the snot out of Baghdad turned out to be an eight-month long ordeal. And this was all out of a pre-emptive strike we initiated over intentionally false evidence tied to the war on terror - a campaign which alienated too many countries who originally wanted to help us go after the REAL terror threats.
When you get right down to it, it's an event. A formality. A hooray-for-us sidebar to a much bigger problem - one which the Bush administration started itself. The American public was lied to by the president to get to this point. The world was manipulated and lied to as well. And we're shutting many of our allies out of the rebuilding process - extorting military aid from them if they want any of the action.
Above all, try as they did to make this square peg fit a round hole, none of this had any tangible link to the 9/11 attacks.
Saddam's capture is a triumph of our troops. It is they who deserve the credit and honor. But it is not the conclusion of the Iraq episode or the hostile nature of this administration. Not by any standard.
By the way, that link above - OpinionEditorials - has opinions from a regular team of wingnut writers. They do have a stable of "guest" and "op-ed" folks who are...surprise...more wingnut writers. Guess it depends what your definition of "op" is.
