Is That All There Is?

There should be champagne popping and people dancing in the streets tonight in every city, town, and village in the United States, because Saddam Hussein is dead. With no Iraqi connection to al Qaeda, with no weapons of mass destruction, with democracy stillborn in Iraq, this is the payoff, the only payoff, for almost 4 years of war, for hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, for 3000 dead Americans, for tens of thousands of severely wounded Americans, for hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, tens of billions of that plundered under the indifferent eye of the Bush Administration, for the loss of America's moral stature in the eyes of the world, for the crippling of our armed forces, for the fracturing of our political comity. For all that and more, we get one dead former dictator. So pop those bottles and shake a leg. This is the only opportunity to celebrate that this war is going to give us. So let's keep dancing.

You were expecting more?

Update: I'm sorry, stupid me, I didn't realize that Saddam's execution is going to mark a significant turning point in Iraq. Apparently it's going to have as big an effect as Saddam's capture, the killing of his sons, the various elections over there, and Saddam's conviction (have I missed anything?). Freedom's on the march.