I get letters, oh yes I do:

I wasnt sure if you were going to blog about this, but I was wondering what your thoughts were on Saddam's capture.

David responds:
My thoughts are that Saddam Hussein was captured on a day that was quite inconvenient for me, given that I had a wedding to report on, holiday gifts to purchase, and many important work deadlines. Where were you, Saddam Hussein, when I was grasping at straws for things to write about? I know, I know, you were down in your spider hole—what on earth is a spider hole?—letting your beard grow out in your best impersonation of the Wacky Homeless Man I often catch peeing near the playground in Central Park. By the way, Wacky Homeless Man, if you are reading this, what’s up with that? There is a public bathroom just down the path, and it has running water and everything. All are welcome.

Seriously, my thoughts are myriad and contradictory. On the one hand, I feel joy. I have an unquenchable passion for justice in the world, and those exceedingly rare times when someone who has brought so much pain and misery upon a group of people can be made to answer for his or her actions are what give me hope for our collective future.

But the tragic truth is that Saddam Hussein did not act alone. He may not have had any weapons of mass destruction this year, but at the time he did, he obtained them from the United States and its allies, and he used them with our blessing and assistance. Meanwhile, lying hypocrites such as Donald Rumsfeld, who were deeply involved in helping Hussein consolidate his power and strengthen his arsenal, have only prospered from their crimes against humanity.

As for the practical results of his capture and potential trial, I am happy that many Iraqi people will be able to rest easier knowing that he will not return to power. This will give them a sense of closure and, I hope, awaken them to the potential for peace in their land. But sadly, I do not believe that Hussein had much of a connection to the current chaos of insurgency, which has continued unabated since his arrest. Even our National Embarrassment was cautious about the prospects for immediate tranquility. The general impression seems to be that most of the violence stems from those who would like to replace Hussein, not those who were trying to aid him.

We shall see.

There seems to be a meme brewing in the media that the capture of Saddam Hussein will help our National Embarrassment win the election in 2004. This is a possibility, if only because most Americans are idiots with the attention span of rabid squirrels. This misguided and illegal war was begun ostensibly because Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat to the interests of the United States. As it became obvious that this was a complete fabrication, the stated causes shifted by the day. Of course, the goal was to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but that was accomplished early on. Suddenly finding him buried in a backyard, while an interesting development, should not be trumpeted as a triumph tantamount to winning the war. Indeed, the war was won months ago by corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, who are profiting beyond all comprehension thanks to their no-bid contracts and their increased influence over the executive and legislative branches of our government. The runners up are the think tank, Project for the New American Century, and the highly placed administration officials who concocted the cockamamie invasion plan years before it was implemented for their own nefarious reasons.

The rest of us—from the American citizens who will have to pay for this nightmare in increased taxes and lost benefits (these are not the same as those who are making money hand over fist from it); to the unfortunate soldiers who are enduring danger and misery in the desert as they fight for a lie; to every Iraqi citizen who has endured unimaginable hardship before and since we took over their country; to Saddam Hussein himself, whose first mistake was to believe that the American criminals who supported the horrors of his regime would continue to do so beyond the point at which they personally profited from it—are the losers.