Saddam Hussein

LET'S BE CRASS and assess the politics of the capture of Saddam Hussein. No one is boosted more than President Bush, the beneficiary of so much good news this fall (surging economy, 10,000 Dow, Medicare drug benefit). For him, only one more thing has to fall into place to assure re-election. That's a sharp turn for the better in the twilight war against the Baathist diehards and their motley allies in the Sunni triangle of Iraq. The grabbing of Saddam, a pathetic, cowardly Saddam, could lead to exactly that--but not necessarily.

HOWARD DEAN wants Osama bin Laden to get 30 years to life. No hanging by the neck until dead. No firing squad. Not even a lethal injection for being the mastermind behind the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans.

That's the upshot of Dean's exchange with Chris Matthews last night, an exchange ignored--and in one case glossed over--by a Dean-friendly press.

MATTHEWS: Who should try Osama bin Laden if we catch him? We or the World Court?

DEAN: I don't think it makes a lot of difference. I'm happy . . .

A NEWSWEEK article by investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball about the memo linking Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dismisses a recent WEEKLY STANDARD report as "hype" and concludes, the "tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-al Qaeda complicity is far from closed."

While it's refreshing to see the establishment media pick up the story, the News

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT late Saturday, November 15, issued a statement that began: "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate."

The statement didn't specify the "inaccurate" news reports, but most observers have inferred that the main report in question was an article in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD--

Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank reported that "Vice President Cheney . . . in an interview this month with the Rocky Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of information' an article in The Weekly Standard magazine detailing a relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda based on leaked classified information."

Here's the Stephen F. Hayes article to which the vice president was referring.

-JVL

DAVID KAY'S interim report on the investigation into Saddam Hussein's weapons programs leaves open as many questions as it answers. Exactly what was underway and at what stage of development is still unknown. But it does establish to a certainty the critical point that Saddam had every intention of reconstituting chemical, biological, and nuclear programs as soon as he could.

ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2003, "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Vice President Dick Cheney whether Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks. Cheney's answer was characteristically straightforward: "We don't know."

The reaction was furious, even by Washington standards.

PRESIDENT BUSH has a surprising defender of his contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction--Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. "The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent" in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning.

KIDS KNOW exactly when it comes--the point when you're repaving a driveway or pouring a new sidewalk, right before the wet concrete hardens completely. That's when you can make your mark. The Democrats seem to understand this.

For months before the war in Iraq, the Bush administration claimed to know of ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. For months after the war, the Bush administration has offered scant evidence of those claims. And the conventional wisdom--that there were no links--is solidifying. So Democrats are making their mark.

GIVE THE UNITED STATES military some credit. After wiping out Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, with a barrage of small-arms fire and TOW missiles, they not only put their bodies on display--they made them look presentable (after those initial photos that could have appeared in Fangoria). No, it's nothing like Lenin, Mao, or even Ferdinand Marcos. But then again, they didn't have much to work with. Qusay took bullets straight to the head while his brother suffered blunt trauma (also to the head). In the end, both men looked like props from Madame Tussaud's latest exhibit.

MUCH OF THE RECENT political controversy about the existence in Iraq of a nuclear program (and WMD) has focused only on the narrow issue of the alleged attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from the small African country of Niger. Ignored in the debate have been Saddam Hussein's public statements on the subject. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in Washington, D.C. has documented several of these statements in three separate dispatches between November 2001 and June 2003.

GET THEM ON TELEVISION. On Tuesday, CENTCOM confirmed the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul, Iraq. According to Lt. Gen. Rick Sanchez, "The bodies are in a condition where you could identify them." It may sound gruesome, but the Bush administration should work expeditiously to provide the world with evidence--photographic if it can be done tastefully--that Saddam's murderous sons are, in fact, dead.