Who's in Denial?

Saddam Hussein's on the front page of the local paper, of course. The blurb under the headline calling him "smart-alecky" declares that he refuses to fess up about his links to the Iraqi resistance, the location of his weapons of mass destruction, or his past cooperation with al-Quaeda.

Maybe it's because there's nothing to tell?

OK, he was probably playing a role in the resistance. If he'd simply gone to ground and hid, or fled the country altogether, the U.S. military probably wouldn't have gotten the tips that led them to where he was.

But it's seems pretty damn likely that he didn't have a huge arsenal of WMDs, because he didn't use any of them. Maybe there's a small stash of them somewhere that he never got a chance to use, but it could be that his denial is actually factual.

And anyone with access to any intelligence (the spying kind or the regular kind) knows that Hussein and bin-Laden weren't in cahoots. Osama hates Saddam, whom he regards (correctly, I might add) as a secular infidel despot. Despite widespread popular belief among Americans that the two are linked, the only basis for it is a little bit of tenuous circumstantial evidence, some wishful thinking and innuendo on the part of the Bush Administration, and an easily-confused public. (I'm sure that many Americans' first thoughts upon hearing that Saddam was captured was, "Now we'll make him pay for 9/11!" followed - maybe - by, "No, wait, that was bin-Laden.") In the 1980's (before Saddam invaded a key supplier of our oil), we had better relations with him than bin-Laden and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan did.

Actually, I do expect Saddam to admit to an alliance with al-Quaeda eventually. Interrogators couldn't get him to say anything while he was still weak and groggy following his capture, but true or not, I'm sure they'll beat it out of him before he's executed.