Talking about news that Saddam Hussein may be executed within days, Josh Marshall says:

The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren’t grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it — for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic “So There!”

Absolutely right. With the end of the Cold War, there was no great historical adventure for the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Kristols, and all the other warmongers to engage in. They wanted to be remembered for something, and Saddam was what they had, so they cynically went after him. Finding Osama bin Laden, who, after all, really was the guy who financed/conceived of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was just too damned hard or too slow an endeavor.

The pop psychologists have been telling us for years that Americans want instant gratification; whether you believe that or not, the invasion of Iraq was a prime manifestation of the Bush Administration’s desire for just that. We’ll be paying that price financially and morally for a long long time.