Ace In The Hole

Sunday, Dec. 14, 2003 - 8:12 a.m.

Early this morning, I was in bed sound asleep -- when the wind and rain suddenly smashed into the side of the building with such a force, it woke me up. As is my custom. I had been sleeping with a small pair of headphones on so I could listen to the radio without disturbing John. My regular radio station of choice is KGO, a news talk station here in San Francisco that I've been listening to since I was sixteen years old.

Upon awakening, I heard the news.

Saddam Hussein was captured alive near his hometown of Tikrit. He'd been hiding in something called a 'spider hole' which is basically a small cellar big enough for one person to lay beneath the floorboards in a house. He was found with two AK 47s, about three quarters of a million dollars in cash, and some mice and rats.

Originally I thought he'd been killed back in April by a 'bunker buster', which is a powerful subterranean bomb that was dropped on a building that had been known to be one of his meeting places. He has four known doubles, so apparently one of -them- had been reduced to protoplasm instead of him. (I'd also been wondering what would happen to those doubles if Saddam survived this war effort except for the loss of an arm or a leg.)

I think I'm going to enjoy watching the news even more than I usually do; I will be very interested in how we managed to track him down.

And I hope the pockets of resistance will cease and that no more soldiers will lose their lives.

However, my sad prediction is this: The capture of Saddam Hussein will have about as much effect on the terrorism in this world as the assassination of Carlos Escobar had on the cocaine industry.

Oh well. At least the anti-war people will finally quit misusing the word 'Unilateral'. :)

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Yesterday morning, I got a pleasant surprise: My friend Kat in Philly called me. We had a good visit, during which we concluded that if you're not careful, the love of God can sometimes be mistaken for a drug. Or something deep like that. Substitution of one addiction for another. Good existential bullshit that really sounds good when you're drinking a cup of tea while expounding. I guess you had to be there.

I heard from Todd Thalimer last night. His head cold is somewhat better, but the cough has settled in his chest. I am still worried about him, though, because he lives in Colorado where the first big batch of flu deaths occurred. Yeep. Feel better soon, my friend.

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And sympathies to John, because the news channels will probably be on all day here.

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