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It’s hard to not be glad that Baghdad has fallen. And honestly, I hope Saddam and his whole inner circle were in one of the bunkers when they were “busted” by a JDAM. A friend of mine said she felt a bit guilty feeling happy he might be dead. While I understand her point, I don’t share her guilt. I’m really more concerned that he might be alive. He has a long history of phoenix-like ressurections, and if he’s still alive he may well be a driving force behind persistent outbreaks of intra-Iraq terrorist acts against our troops and his own people for years to come. If he’s not proven dead, someone could exploit his legacy of fear to accomplish the same. Either scenario will only increase the need for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq as a police force. Now that we’ve uncorked the bottle, we can’t leave until there is relative stability. Achieving that amongst three mutually hostile tribal groups will be more than a small challenge. The Muslim culture seems to preclude democracy. There are no useful examples of Muslim democracies. (A point which G.W. seems to have overlooked in his rhetoric.) There are dictatorships; good ones, bad ones, and lots of ones in the middle – but no democracies. The chances of a tri-cameral Kurd/Sunni/Shia government emerging are about as likely as me taking up quilting as a hobby.