Swinging With Saddam

By now, you all know that Saddam was executed yesterday. The grim news really does not portend great things for Iraq, America or the rest of the world.

Although Hussein has been in captivity for a great while, there has been no let up in the extremist violence. It seems that much like the carnival whack-a-mole game , when you knock one down, several more extremists pop up in their place.

While Hussein was hung, we know that our illustrious President was busy clearing brush, avoiding tornados, and generally playing about his toy ranch in Crawford Tx.. The president, with irrepressible swagger, spills more of his dualistic rhetoric to peddle the fear he and his administration are want and capable experts at selling the American people:

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," he said in a statement released Friday night from his Texas ranch. "Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress."

The threat of violence comes at a time when Bush is completing his weeks-long effort to change U.S. policy in Iraq.

The president's statement had a sober, measured tone that contrasted with his offhand remark after U.S. troops found the deposed Iraqi dictator in an underground hideout in 2003.

"Good riddance," Bush said then. "The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein."

Therein lies the irony: We are better off without you Saddam, but the threat of violence continues. So, the broader question remains, are we really better off now that Saddam is gone?

And we are left with an even more troublesome query: How much of and what parts of America swung with Saddam on the gallows yesterday?

There was a time, however, when the U.S. government tolerated, even facilitated, Hussein's inhumanity toward his neighbors and his own people -- most notably when Iraq was at war with Iran in the 1980s.