Well, Yippee-Ki-Yay, Motherfuckers:
In the houses of every viable Democratic candidate, a cry of "Goddamnit" went up into the rafters this morning. And then a quick, ashamed recapitulation of that thought, something like, "But, of course, it's great that we captured Saddam Hussein. He was eeevil." And in the White House, George Bush masturbated furiously at the thought of swaggering into the State of the Union address in January, Hussein's head in a bag, ready to hoist it high in the air and scream in triumph before the gathered members of Congress. "Fuck with me? Fuck with my Dad? See what you get, bitch?" he'll yell as he swings the head into Hillary Clinton's lap. And Hillary, good hedging hawk that she is, will toss the head aloft where it can be batted around like a beach ball at a Jimmy Buffet concert.

So, in case you're not a sentient being on this earth, we did indeed capture Saddam Hussein alive. And, you know, shit, of course it's great when vicious, murdering tyrants get captured. Some of us way over here on the left wanted Chile's Pinochet captured years before he was. We'd still like to see Uzbekistan's torturing thugs brought into custody. Oh, but, wait, that's right. They were and are allies. The capture of Saddam has more in common with Bush I's Panamanian adventure to hunt down Manuel Noriega. Both are cases of the United States cleaning up its own feces after it took a shit on the floor of international human rights in favor of opportunism and profit and expediency. And we killed a hell of a lot of civilians to do it.

And Saddam is captured. And the United States is not one scintilla safer than it was last week, before the raid. Not one act of terrorism will be halted because of this. Any battle that was going to "take place on our soil" will still take place here. Attacks on American soldiers in Iraq will continue, as the President indicated in his "lower your expectations" speech on Sunday. In terms of anything other than militaristic pride, the capture and trial of Saddam means nothing to America.

You know what's going to happen. Stocks will rally in an orgy of celebration. The media will declare the White House chances dead for all the Democratic candidates, with special piling on of Howard Dean. And Saddam in all this? Like a character in a Paul Bowles story, Saddam will be stripped and castrated; tongue cut out, he will be forced to wear bells on his shredded garments so that he may ring his bells and dance whenever Bush pushes him out to dance. In the election, fuck the economy, fuck the war on terror, fuck the environment, just watch Saddam dance. And America will smile at the sight of Saddam dancing for them. We will be filled with national pride that we got the monster.

But questions oughta linger, like the uncomfortable thought of Saddam saying he punk'd the U.S. on the whole weapons of mass destruction thing. Or the idea that now that Saddam is gone, and the attacks continue unabated, who are we gonna blame? Or have we set Iraq on the fast track to a "democratically" elected Islamic fundamentalist government?

Or maybe just this: now that, ding, dong, the witch is dead (or captured), when can we bring the troops home?