Saddam is Dead

Al Hurra reports that Saddam has been executed.

UPDATE: Posting at The Washington Monthly, Steve Benen points to Josh Marshall's analysis, which Steve calls "the most accurate and poignant I've seen," and I totally agree:

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

...This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.

And I'm not even sure that this is "getting it right." Leaving aside any debate about the ethics of capital punishment for a moment, I'm not remotely convinced that turning Hussein into a martyr to satiate our need for vengeance is the wisest strategic decision in the long run. In my estimation, there was every reason to lock him up and throw away the key, and, beyond that, little about which to be certain. And death is well fucking certain.