The King is Dead! Long Live the King! So Saddam Hussein is captured, and the people are rejoicing. Elated supporters of the Iraqi war effort feel as though this is the beginning of the end. The a priori assumption here is that the insurgents currently fighting the U.S. are fighting in support of Saddam Hussein. If that's the case, they may be right. Then again, these same Saddam supporters may be provoked to fury at seeing their leader humiliated and humbled. My reading of the situation is that the equation is far more complex than the Bush Administration erroneously assumes. Only the neoconservative logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" could make such a scenario plausable. In order to accept this argument, you have to discount the following. a. The colonial history of Iraq. b. The humiliation of the Arabic world due to the fate of the Palestinians, etc. c. The anti-American sentiment present in the Arab world prior to the war. d. The belief that the war itself was contrary to international law. e. The fact that thousands of Iraqis have died in the "Shock and Awe" campaign. f. The fact that the U.S. supported Hussein during the first Bush presidency and provided him with chemical weapons we're currently searching for--we know he has them--Rumsfeld kept the receipts. Time will tell. I would love to be wrong, but I would guess that this will have little or no impact on the state of affairs in Iraq.