Eric Alterman.

I kind of feel the terrorists have won by making me write this, since it ought to be obvious to any idiot, but yes, I’m quite pleased that a monstrous mass murderer (though a former ally to Messrs. Reagan, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) will be brought to justice and will not be able to threaten anyone ever again. However, just as obviously, it does little to justify what remains a dishonest, self-destructive, hubristic adventure that continues to undermine our security and the stability of the region with each passing day, but there it is.

And what does it all mean? Fred Kaplan takes a stab at this question and comes up with "either not much, or a lot, depending...." I concur.

On the other hand, now that the Bush administration has the world’s attention, Saddam’s capture offers them the opportunity to reverse course on just about everything and begin to ameliorate some of the catastrophes caused by the arrogance, mendacity, ideological obsession and incompetence. Yeah, right. In the meantime, let’s all hope for a speedy recovery for Colin Powell.

Speaking of whom, last night at the 137th anniversary dinner for the Nation—watching a moving, poetic and deeply patriotic speech by Robert Byrd* followed by a belligerently moronic one by Aaron McGruder--I sat between this incredible guy who had been on death row for eighteen years before being freed by the Innocence Project at Medill Journalism school (the winner of this year’s $100K Puffin/Nation prize) and Joe Wilson, winner of this year’s Ron Ridenhour prize. I asked Joe why Powell had turned out to be such a wimp—failing to use any of his prized credibility to put the breaks on his lying colleagues, and instead telling all those falsehoods at the UN and convincing a boatload of gullible reporters of a whole mess of stuff that just ain’t so. Wilson—whose speech repeatedly termed the members of the administration to be "fu**cking assholes and thugs" said he had no idea. But I wonder if we went to war in part the way we did because Powell was too sick to mount a fight and did not have the courage to resign. It’s just a hypothesis, but you know, the course of the early Cold War had a great deal to do with FDR’s various secret maladies. Just a thought….

Geez. Those asterisks really do a lot to clean good old Joe up, don't they? The rest of this is just lunacy. Don't forget to read Byrd's speech.

*Whose leftist credentials protect him from a past that would mean political extinction for any conservative. In fact, in our media culture, leftist credentials grant you immunity from almost anything. An ex-Klansman speaking at the Nation, for God's sake.

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002