If you aren’t familiar with DEBKAfile, you might want to fix that. It’s a site run by an ex-Mossad agent who still has, and uses, his old contacts. The site is decidedly pro-Israel, as you’d expect, but as long as you bear the bias in mind, it’s a great source for information and analysis. Case in point: an article on the site which argues that Saddam wasn’t in hiding, he was a prisoner, perhaps held by another clan which was in blood feud with him and his clan. That would certainly explain his odd submissiveness.

I don’t subscribe to Time, so I was late in reading Charles Krauthammer’s Nov. 17 column, in which he flatly declared, “The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it.” I regret the delay; imho, Krauthammer hits the nail on the head most of the time, and this column is one of his best. He does a valuable service in exploding the myth that Le Monde‘s famous “We Are All Americans” editorial actually signaled a real shift in French attitudes (or anyone else’s) toward our country. Read their editorial and his column, and see what you think.

Denver’s pretty fortunate in its newspapers; I wouldn’t call either the Rocky Mountain News or the Denver Post world-class, but they’re better than a great many major newspapers in this country. (Detroit? Uggh.) That still puts them well below the papers we enjoyed in Canada, but the Great White North seems to be unusually blessed in that department. The key thing is that the Denver papers, unlike many, have a number of writers worth reading; and one of them, News columnist Bill Johnson, is currently on assignment in Iraq, and sending back good material. I recently discovered his Dec. 11 piece, covering his initial impressions of Baghdad; it’s an interesting column all the way around, but particularly so for his report of an event that didn’t get any other play in the US media, so far as I know: an anti-terrorism rally in the city’s Furdoise Square. From his description, it doesn’t sound like all that much, but hey, it’s a start.

The capture of Saddam Hussein is the biggest news this world has seen in a while, but the way in which he was captured was almost more interesting–he could have suicided, as he’d always said he would do, he could have fought back (his position was ultimately hopeless, but he could have killed as many soldiers as he had bullets if he had wanted to), but instead he meekly submitted. Judging by the initial reactions of the Arab media, I think his submission might mean more in the end than the fact that he was captured.

When the previous President Bush fought Saddam, the fact that Saddam remained in power was a tremendous boost to the Iraqi tyrant’s image, because it allowed him to present himself as a survivor who could never truly be defeated. So much for that.