Command Post can tell you about it (along with lots of links, some to Iraqi bloggers), and I wrote a whole bunch of stuff at my blog.

[Sorry for the self-linking]

I think the most important effect of this will be that millions of Iraqi people will no longer be afraid to speak out or help the coalition forces. The specter of Saddam's possible return to power has probably been the biggest pscyhological barrier to truly reforming that country. This should convince the Iraqis that this isn't going to be like Desert Storm, we are not going to abandon them to their fate again.

This is wonderful news for the Iraqis and the U.S. troops. I'm biting my tongue (keyboard?) to keep myself from making angry comments about certain Democrats on the morning news shows (e.g. John Kerry now noting that he voted for the war resolution - geez!). Oops, sorry!

Why this is so cool? Easy Dean, one less murderous dictator in the free world.

Reportedly he will go on public trial. As a practical matter, I hope he is executed. Dead dictators don't come back to Waterloo.

I have alway been against capital punishment. Another old notion of mine bites the dust...

Yours,
Wince

Why is this so cool? Because he is reportedly talking. I'd be willing to settle for him getting life at Club Fed if he will confirm what were the agreed upon targets and the shipment from Niger in the memo which just surfaced.

Of course, we could all just bop on over to Eschaton and let Atrios explain to us why all of this really is irrelevant. Unbelievable.

Out here in the wild west, we're filling the sky with bullets. It's a good day.

Atrios merely demonstrates how small, childish, and ultimately vicious his world view is. I'm glad to find myself on the opposite side of cynical fools like that.

By the way, don't you just love that little gleam of fear in Saddam's eye?

Priceless.

The Iraqis can be sure he will never be coming back. WOo Hoo! Now the Bush haters can't use the "we didn't even capture Saddam" line as an argument anymore.

Dean

I dont think the gleam was fear as much as it was Saddam was just ready to give himself up. Imagine how he must have been living the past few months? He just didnt have the cojones to fight for his life. It's obvious by his face that he was already resigned to the fact that he was done for.

I for one love seeing the video of the hole he lived in, like the disgusting parasitic rat that he is.

Let's hope whatever court judges him treats him with the same mercy he had for his people.

Val Prieto,

He didn't have time to shoot himself - like all cowardly dictators, he doesn't want to face the music, but we moved too quickly, it would seem.

From what I've heard on the news, he's still defiant (apparantly calling the people celebrating his capture the "mob"), but as someone observed on that same news, we have the leverage of how Saddam is treated, how he exits this world...after a trial (with just the slight chance - in Saddam's mind - he's allowed to live), or turned over to the "mob" to be strung up ala Mussolini...we might be able to get a lot out of him.

That is insanely awesome. I'm very disappointed in Saddam. Supervillains aren't supposed to get caught. Sheesh. You suck, Saddam. Are they going to parade him around the world so that people can spit on him?

This is a significant and satisfying day in history, a day of freedom and hope for Iraq. Saddam has been captured; he has been removed from the scene. Thanks to the coalition forces who found him; thanks to the Iraqi people who helped.

Speaking of which: will the Iraqi people decide his fate?

I think his fate has pretty much been decided...who gets to carry it out?

Mark Noonan,

I dont think its that Saddam didnt have the time to kill himself, I think he just didnt have the guts.

Oh, I doubt that, Ara. I think he will either be tried by the United States or by the United Nations, and the possibility of UN involvement in Iraq *or* Afghanistan dwindles every day. I hope he's tried, and I hope he has to live forever in prison. As someone who does not believe in an afterlife, a lifetime of imprisonment is worse than the death penalty. Let him linger on.

On the other hand, I'll be interested to see what this does to conditions in Iraq. No doubt the insurgents will try to use it to their advantage, as will everyone when an event this large happens.

I'm a cynic, but I'm glad they caught him. I hope the Iraqis who actually suffered under him see justice done.

Well said, John.

I seriously hope they fry him. To imprison him leaves only opportunity for nutjob terrorists to hijack a plane or something to demand his release. Forget it. He needs to die.

John Kusch,

It would be best, in my view, if the Iraqi's could try and execute him (understanding that there's no chance of a "not guilty")...but this might have lots of complications...certainly, whatever tribunal he's brought before, the presiding judge, at least, should be Iraqi.

Even though I can't see a scenerio where he'd be found "not guilty", if you're interested in a fair trial, getting Iraqis to try him would be the equivelent of having a murder trial with the entire jury being composed of the murder-victims close family.

I'm glad they finally nabbed him. Too many of our brave men and women have died there for him to be coddled or released. I say he must be either imprisoned under harsh conditions or executed. It would be just to give him the same treatment he gave to his victims. Apply to him the ancient Law of his own land: the Law of Hamurabbi. Eye for an eye.

I dropped by Dean's World this morning, right before I had to head out the door and leave for Mt. Hope. My eye lit on Val's comment at the end of another thread: "Saddam captured!!!!"

I didn't quite know whether I dared believe it— it was one of those moments. Then I hurriedly checked a few news sites, turned on my TV...

Yes! Yes!!! Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured.

I was exulting all the way down the gravel road this morning as I drove to Mt. Hope.

A great day.

I have a natural impulse toward mercy to the vanquished, but then I force myself to remember his victims. Its our duty to God and to the dead and to our own sense of justice to punish him.

Tadeusz

"I was exulting all the way down the gravel road this morning as I drove to Mt. Hope."

Now, that, Mr. Burgess, is what I call an epigram...

dowingba: normally I would agree with you on your concern about a fair trial, but let's be honest: the bastich is guilty as Hell. Almost literally. If anyone alive today has done Satan's work, it's this man.

I really do think we should turn him over to the Iraqis. Read the Iraq blogs: they want him. They want to see him (as the saying goes) hung up by the neck until he is dead, dead, dead. Not for vengance, but they need to know there is no way he can ever come back to hurt them again.

While I'm against the death penalty in the United States (a nation where brutality and injustice are at an all-time *low*), I think that for a nation like Iraq, where the people have been oppressed and brutalized and downtrodden and forced to live either in constant fear or in self-abasement to Saddam, that it would be wholly appropriate for him to be publicly hanged and his dead body dragged through the streets behind jeeps, the entire spectacle videotaped and broadcast through Iraq and the Middle East. Such decades of suffering just might require a violent paroxysm of retribution and collective rage to begin what will undoubtedly be a long and torturous healing process that could, if we're lucky, end in a free and democratic nation.

All these arguments aside, I simply don't care what happens to Saddam, as he is not worthy of consideration.

My band played a fan-fucking-tastic gig last night. Returned to town around 3:35 am and hung out at the drummer's house a bit, flipped on the TV.. there was the news. Was really too tired to jump up and down about it, but, WOW. And to think, our last song of the night was Metallica's "Seek & Destroy".

Correction: Hammurabi

I'm suprised Saddam gave up without a fight. It would have been enjoyable to see his corpse at the bottom of the hole he was in. Next up, Osama bin Laden. Hopefully the troops in Afghanistan will get lucky and finally get him this year, dead or alive.

the only good i see in the news is that you can get on with the real task at hand...the only real threat you guys have had is still out there plotting to deflate your egos and economy
where is the real enemy Osama

A SAD-LOOKING SAD-DAM

The end to a perfect day would be a picture in a national news magazine of the bedraggled, hang-dog looking, scraggly- bearded Saddam next to one of the scraggly-bearded Fidel Castro (La Grande Cucaracha), with a heading below Saddam Captured and then below Castro Next?

Think of the similarity: both always pictured in uniform, both known assassins, both killed and tortured opponents, both executed former friends and supporters to eliminate possible competition, with one living like a cockroach in a dark cellar and burrowing undergound, while the other is...a cockroach.

But, the coward lacked the guts to fight to the end, or kill himself. The Prophet will not grant him his 50 virgins nor paradise now. Its' SAD-DAMNING to think about, isn't it?

Great news, but in a way, it might be good that it took a while.

I don't remember whether it was Geraldine Brooks or Tony Horwitz, but one of them, in the memoirs they wrote after their husband-wife stint as Middle East correspondents, wrote about the reactions they observed in Iran when Khomeini died. Some of those who had had the most to hide under his rule (well-to-do families that weren't particularly devout Muslims) reported that when he died, their feelings of relief and joy were tempered by a strange sort of nostalgia. He had, after all, defied the West and restored primacy to Iran's cultural heritage, albeit in opportunistic form.

I have a few ethnic North Korean and Chinese friends who say the same things about those governments: they want them taken down, because the citizenry suffers; but at the same time, they enjoy seeing America (and Japan) reminded that our way of living isn't the only one to be proud of.

All of which is to say, as grateful as Iraq is for having Saddam's boot off its neck, I wouldn't be surprised if some Iraqis aren't also partially comforted that it took a few months of searching with hotshot Western technology before we were able to smoke him out.

"All of which is to say, as grateful as Iraq is for having Saddam's boot off its neck, I wouldn't be surprised if some Iraqis aren't also partially comforted that it took a few months of searching with hotshot Western technology before we were able to smoke him out."

Yeah. The brain-damaged ones.

Sean, have you ever actually read any of the Iraq bloggers? Or interviews with the man on the street? (no, I'm not talking about staged sound bites in the Sunni triangle)

These people couldn't care less about "humbling" the US; they want Hussein dead, dead, dead.

Oh, as for Iran: go over there today. Over half the population is under 30, and they want nothing to do with Khomeini, defying the West, or any of that bullshit. They want to emulate the West, not defy it.

Casey, I knew I'd get that reaction from someone, and I understand why, but I do think you're missing the point. Whether the people have love for their dictators is not the point--of course they don't (and yes, I read Iraqi bloggers and, living in a country with trade relations with Iran, meet a number of Iranians that, now that I think about it, suprises me). But you don't need to want to see the US humbled to feel sadness that your country often looks so bad in comparison, even if you realize that there's a good reason. I was, in a sense, riffing, but I was riffing on a kind of paradoxical reaction I've seen documented and observed in people I know intimately. National identity, like blood ties, evokes strange responses in people.