There’s something pathetic and familiar about the way Saddam Hussein looked when he was captured this weekend by coalition troops. It took me all day to figure it out, but I finally realized that, in that gray beard, nappy hairdo and especially those disheveled robes, he reminds me of ‘old Ben Kenobi,’ living like a hermit somewhere in the treacherous, dry hills of Tatooine. There’s nothing nearly as benign about this murderous former dictator, though, and for the fact that his capture will provide a more definitive kind of closure to Iraqis, this turn of events strikes me as significant, and in a storybook fashion, a real triumph of justice. On the other hand, I am bracing myself for the political ramifications, the trickery that the Bush administration will undoubtedly employ in order to reap the benefits of this big win, and the confused, panicked scurrying among Democratic contenders for the Presidential nomination as they try to make sense of their diminishing chances in 2004.
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