{"id":4880,"date":"2003-12-14T22:57:00","date_gmt":"2003-12-15T05:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4880"},"modified":"2003-12-14T22:57:00","modified_gmt":"2003-12-15T05:57:00","slug":"gotcha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/14\/gotcha.html","title":{"rendered":"Gotcha"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose a comment or two on Saddam’s capture is worth making.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Anyone who thinks this will end all the violence in Iraq is dreaming. Anyone who thinks this will make no difference is also dreaming.\n

    \"Paging<\/p>\n

  2. Familiarity breeds contempt. Saddam as distant and unknowable potentate was a terrifying figure. Saddam as Hughes-bearded fugitive hiding in a crawlspace <\/a>is a reasonable subject of scorn.<\/p>\n
  3. I don’t particularly expect those folks who were lambasting the Bushies for their inability to track down Saddam to laud them for catching him. By the same token, there are plenty of other folks (OBL, for one) who still need to be caught. Though, if the details coming out about the hunt for Saddam are any indication, it’s clear that nobody’s just sitting around expecting it to magically happen.<\/p>\n
  4. The temptation is to announce that he will be booted off the back of a truck at large public location X on day Y and leave him to his brief and grisly fate. In reality, he needs to be tried, and it probably needs to be done in Iraq, if a reasonable authority is available to do so. Trying him in the US seems a little problematic, though not without precedent. Trying him in the Hague is an amusing proposition to hear put forth with a straight face.<\/p>\n
  5. I was also amused to hear some imam in Yemen declare that Saddam was a “dissapointment” to the Arab world for not having had the decency to fight back or kill himself before being captured. That being said, I’m glad he was captured, not killed. It complicates things a bit, but it removes some aspects of martyrdom that he will doubtless be granted by some parties.<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I suppose a comment or two on Saddam’s capture is worth making. Anyone who thinks this will end all the violence in Iraq is dreaming. Anyone who thinks this will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3955,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/06\/same_song_next.html","url_meta":{"origin":4880,"position":0},"title":"Same song, next verse","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Mar-03 10:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"So here's my obligatory daily \"Hey, I agree with what this guy says about Iraq\" article which will make folks who agree with me nod and folks who disagree with...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4201,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/20\/also_from_the_b.html","url_meta":{"origin":4880,"position":1},"title":"Also from the “Birds of a Feather” page …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Jan-03 10:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"Saddam thanks anti-war demonstrators. I'll bet he does. To be fair, a lot of folks against war in Iraq are certainly not fans of the Baghdad regime. 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Sure, he was elected to a sixth term as president of Cuba, but with only 97% -- far behind the 100% enjoyed by Saddam Hussein. I suppose...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5601,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/02\/12\/through_a_glass.html","url_meta":{"origin":4880,"position":4},"title":"Through a glass darkly","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 12-Feb-04 10:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Early descriptions of a classified Pentagon study of the Iraq War from the perspective of Iraqi army officers is revealing some interesting tidbits, including: Saddam was so convinced that there...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3753,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/02\/wheres_saddam.html","url_meta":{"origin":4880,"position":5},"title":"Where’s Saddam?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Apr-03 7:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"From Day 1 of the war, when a \"decapitation\" strike was launched to try to take out Saddam Hussein from where inside intel had him hunkered down, there have been...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}