I think it is an important irony that the Iraqi people had the chance to see that in the end, Saddam was forced to live exactly as he had forced his own people to live....in constant fear, in filthy squallor with rats and bugs, sleeping on dirt rather than silk sheets, restlessly moving from place to place (hole to hole) to stay alive any way he could, always looking over his shoulder for enemies/traitors, terrified of speaking or being seen knowing that sooner or later someone he thought he could trust would turn him in in exchange for personal favors, unable to bathe, and perhaps scrounging for food from wherever it could be found.
This was a man who not only convinced an entire nation that he was invincible, but he had convinced himself of it for so long that his living conditions at the end had to have been extremely humiliating, and yet the will to keep living was stronger than his pride. What a lesson the Iraqi people learned yesterday in a split second decision by Saddam to not use the gun he had in his possession when that piece of styrofoam was moved to reveal his 'home'.
TONI
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"As fallen dictators go, Saddam is lucky. He was not strung up and spat upon by the mob, as Mussolini was, but taken out of his squalid little hole, cleaned up and shaved, and is now, no doubt, sitting somewhere quite warm and safe, and most of all, alive.
Thank God.
I say this, not because I have a soft spot in my heart for ruthless tyrants, but because only a living, breathing Saddam Hussein has the power to destroy the illusionary Saddam Hussein that, like The Wizard of Oz, seemed so vastly greater than life size to those whom he had so long terrorized. Just as Dorothy and her friends needed to see the small and insignificant little man feverishly manipulating the switches and pulleys behind curtain, in order to free their minds once and for all of the image of the omnipotent and angry Oz, so the Iraqi people needed to see the small and insignificant little man who had haunted their collective psyche, and who would have continued to haunt it for as long as it was possible for the Iraqis to imagine that, one day, he would return. That fantasy is now dead, once and for all.
But there is another reason to be thankful that Saddam Hussein is alive. The man who called upon his countrymen and fellow Muslims to sacrifice their own lives in suicide attacks, to blow themselves to bits in order to glorify his name, failed to follow his own instructions. He refused the grand opportunity of a martyr's death, or even that of the hardened Hollywood gangster, determined that the cops would never take him alive. Instead, Saddam Hussein surrendered meekly and was, according to the reports, even cooperative.
We took Saddam Hussein alive, and, in doing this, we have done a great deal more than simply knock down a statue of a dictator -- we have vanquished a collective nightmare. We have turned the light on a bogey-man, and revealed him to be a broken old man, hiding fearfully in a six by eight hole."
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