Hussein's capture

On the news that Christmas came early for the Bush administration in the form of Saddam Hussein's capture, I have little to say that hasn't been expressed elsewhere. Of the responses I have bothered to read, Billmon, Patrick Cockburn, David Corn, and David Lindorff seem to contextualize this event best.

At an objective level, the capture is a welcome development. I would prefer that our American war criminals weren't overseeing it, but the chance that Hussein might be brought before a tribunal of sorts to account for his crimes of the past 2+ decades is something that can be seen as a boon to international justice. The least we can hope for is a open trial with international oversight, if not outright coordination, where Hussein and his accusers are both given liberty to present a fair case.

Unfortunately, the prospects look dim for a full accounting since the United States cannot be too eager for Hussein to air the dirty laundry about US support in the 1980s, the greenlight over the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, where Iraq got the bulk of its weapons program, what happened to the weapons program following 1991, the effects and rationale of the sanctions, the run up to this past year's war, etc. This narrative contains a whole slew of inconvenient details that reveal the American preoccupation with "justice in Iraq" to be an outright sham. I cannot imagine the US government allowing this material to be documented in a heavily scrutinized, public forum.

On the homefront, this development contains significant amounts of political capital for George Bush, mostly because it helps further obscure the reasons offered for going to war, along with the true motives related to geostrategic positioning. The impact this will have once the '04 election rolls around will depend on a bunch of factors, most significantly how the recolonization reconstruction goes, how many US soldiers are killed and maimed, and how much continued resistance is offered by the amalgam of Baathists, non-Iraqis, and, yes, ordinary Iraqis.