perfidy

Go read Charles Krauthammer. Now. I'm no expert on the Arab world, so I can't speak to the accuracy of his historical context, but this is dead on:

The race is over. The Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject, goes to . . . "Saddam's Dental Exam."

Screenplay: 1st Brigade, U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

Producer: P. Bremer Enterprises, Baghdad.

Director: The anonymous genius at U.S. headquarters who chose this clip as the world's first view of Saddam Hussein in captivity.

In the old days the conquered tyrant was dragged through the streets behind the Roman general's chariot. Or paraded shackled before a jeering crowd. Or, when more finality was required, had his head placed on a spike on the tower wall.

Iraq has its own ways. In the revolution of 1958, Prime Minister Nuri Said was caught by a crowd and murdered, and his body was dragged behind a car through the streets of Baghdad until there was nothing left but half a leg.

We Americans don't do it that way. Instead, we show Saddam Hussein -- King of Kings, Lion of the Tigris, Saladin of the Arabs -- compliantly opening his mouth like a child to the universal indignity of an oral (and head lice!) exam. Docility wrapped in banality. Brilliant. Nothing could have been better calculated to demystify the all-powerful tyrant.

[And then a bunch of stuff about myth-building and imported Stalinism]

On the run, Hussein enjoyed one final moment of myth: the ever-resourceful, undaunted resistance fighter. Perhaps, it was thought, he had it all calculated in advance, fading silently from Baghdad like the Russians withdrawing from Moscow before Napoleon, to suck in the Americans only to strike back later on his own terms in a brilliant guerrilla campaign masterminded by the great one himself.

And then they find him cowering in a hole, disheveled, disoriented and dishonored. After making those underground tapes exhorting others to give their blood for Iraq and for him, his instantaneous reaction to discovery was hands-up surrender.

End of the myth. It is not just that he did not resist the soldiers with the guns. He did not even resist the medic with the tongue depressor.

Absolutely. The most evil of men are still just men, and I seem to remember something about... what was it? Sic transit something something.

Glory. Right. Sic transit gloria, you murderous jackass. Lucky for you, we don't use woodchippers.