I caught a little bit of the James Lileks interview on the Hugh Hewitt show this afternoon, and he revealed compelling evidence for French involvement in Saddam's months on the lam. I'll quote this as accurately as possible:

"Obviously the French had been advising Saddam while he was in hiding. When they found him, he had a loaded pistol but surrendered without firing a shot."

Today, Lileks broke out of his semi-hiatus to post a brilliant Bleat regarding the capture of Saddam Hussein:

What struck me was his expression when the doctor poked around in his maw for a suicide pill – he had the standard reflex familiar to anyone who’s been in a dentist’s chair. The intimacy of the act makes you look away. You look up; you endure; you disengage until it’s over. Saddam humiliated himself. A big bald Yank stuck a stick in his mouth and he couldn’t even look him in the eye.

This was their hero? His army evaporated. His statues came down like cheap plastic bowling trophies. He ran away. He hid in a hole. There’s your man, O brave foes of American imperialism. It’s Ozymandias in reverse, really – in Shelley’s poem, the stumps of the great statue punctuate the vast and trackless desert, and when we are asked to look upon Ozymandias’ works and despair, it’s a comment on the smothering hand of time. Nothing remains. But now the entire world can look upon Saddam’s works, and despair for different reasons. We see what he did.

I suspect that as we continue to translate the IIS files and work with the newly-freed Iraqis, we will see everything he did. Be prepared to be horrified.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is