Saddam's Gone – Why Aren't We?

[Qanisqineq]

Saddam's Gone – Why Aren't We?
by Mark Anderson
January 11, 2005
http://antiwar.com/orig/anderson.php?articleid=4302

When Saddam was first captured, the accolades bestowed upon Mr. Bush were empirical proof enough for me that there would be a permanent presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. The successful snatching of Saddam was enough to validate the entire unconstitutional war in the minds of many Americans. Critics of the war were told to shut up.

But wasn't apprehending Saddam supposedly what the war – and the debate over entering the war – was all about in the first place? So the Bush administration accomplished what it said it wanted to accomplish. It seems to me that the logical response to the capture of Saddam would have been a speedy and hasty withdrawal. Objective accomplished.

Instead, the capture of Saddam was used to score points for a continued occupation of Iraq: political grandstanding at its worst. Every day of U.S. occupation after Saddam's capture is evidence that the war has absolutely nothing to do with Saddam, and everything to do with nation-building.

The Saddam factor has morphed into whatever suits neocon propaganda. The capture of Saddam was enough for neocons to deify Mr. Bush. But like Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's 1984, Saddam never really goes away. Only Saddam "sympathizers" and "loyalists" wish for the war in Iraq to end, according to the neocons.

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