There were two columns on the WaPo op-ed page to gladden hawkish hearts: I was a tad disappointed a few days ago that we wouldn’t get to have a Roman triumph with the shaggy dictator paraded through the streets in shackels. Charles Krauthammer shows how much better it is this way. He awards kudos to “the anonymous genius at U.S. headquarters who chose this clip [of the Saddam being checked for lice] as the world’s first view of Saddam Hussein in captivity.” Krauthammer calls it “docility wrapped in banality” and notes that it will be effective in combating a certain form of “a particular kind of deformed Arabism.”


Carnegie Endowment senior associate Robert Kagan’s column is an antidote to those of us who lack cable and therefore glean our war news from the networks. “Faithful consumers of the American media can be forgiven for believing that the Iraq war has created searing divisions in the American body politic of a kind not seen since the nation was torn apart in the later years of the Vietnam War.” Kagan offers another view.