He's Dead.

Now what?

This from the NYT...

Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity
By MARC SANTORA and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Saturday, Dec. 30 — Saddam Hussein, the dictator who led Iraq through three decades of brutality, war and bombast before American forces chased him from his capital city and captured him in a filthy pit near his hometown, was hanged just before dawn Saturday during the morning call to prayer.

The final stages of Mr. Hussein’s life came with terrible swiftness after he lost the appeal, six days ago, of his death sentence for the killings of 148 men and boys in the northern town of Dujail in 1982. He had received the sentence less than two months before from a special court set up to judge his reign as the almost unchallenged dictator of Iraq.

His execution was announced on Iraqi state television and was confirmed by a senior American official in Baghdad and a Bush administration official in Crawford, Tex. No details were disclosed and Iraqi officials had said it would not be shown publicly.
...

Andrew Young tells the story of a eulogy that the famous Reverend Vernon Johns once preached over a man for whom he had little regard, but for whom the family and deacons forced him to conduct a funeral service:

"So and so lived a trifling and worthless life.

He went around Montgomery daring someone to cut his throat. Saturday night somebody obliged him.

He lived like a dog; he died like a dog.

Undertaker claim the body."

Pure poetry, and that’s about all in the way of words that the passing of murdering tyrant and longtime United States ally Saddam Hussein deserves, but his hanging makes not one iota of difference to the situation on the ground either way.

Like a quarterback doing an end zone dance when his team is losing 105-6, this was the closest thing George W. Bush will see to a victory lap until they plant him, mocked and unmourned, once sunny day many years from now.

Dubya had one more card to play in the only game at which he ever excelled: executing people. And he was going to play it as big and loud as possible, and scripted to make all the Year End lists and talking head shows.

Saddam’s trial -- far from the sober, impartial and meticulously serious affair the world should expect when a truly murderous dictator has been deposed and has fallen into the just hands of the last superpower -- became both bloody and buffoonish. It transformed what should have been serious proceedings with international implications into farce, and the tyrant into a clown. And so in this most anticlimactic death of a cartoon villain since Boba Fett, the only reaction I have is “So what”?

I mean, great. Bad man dead. Good. But other than being the unsurprisingly small, brutish and creepily personal denouement of our own small and brutish Ahab-In-Chief’s private Moby Dick, can anyone fit this into a larger context that sheds any fucking light whatsoever on the only question that matters?

Why are in Iraq?

If it was regime change, we’re done. Boy howdy, are we ever done. Regime changed…with extreme prejudice.

If it was to roll up all of the House of 52 Cards in the famous, cutsie war deck, well aren’t they all gone now?

If it was to get rid of those WMDs, well they ain’t there.

They weren’t “…in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

We have not found them on a boat.

We have not found them with a goat.

We have not found them near Saddam.

They were not there. It was all a scam.

So in the end all we had was Saddam in a cage and now he’s danced his Danny Deever for the twitchy satisfaction of George W. Bush

…
"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes that front-rank man fall down?" said Files-on-Parade.
"A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun", the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground;
An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound --
O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!
…

and is as dead as Dillinger.

Way to go.

Mission Fucking Accomplished.

Can we leave now?