DECAPITATION?

The fact that it’s still possible that Saddam and his odious, murderous sons are dead or severely wounded is immensely encouraging. If we don’t see a better image of Saddam than his impersonation of Dame Edna Everage last night, I’m going to assume the best. His old mistress has claimed that the tape was not the real man. There are other reports of one of Saddam’s sons having a brain hemorrhage. Who knows? But here’s hoping. It could save many lives.

A ‘TWO RESOLUTION’ GAFFE? Interesting detail from British government leaks about the negotiations that led to war against Iraq. Obviously, some of this is self-serving from London. More obviously, it will tick off Bush. Here’s the most telling detail:

Another senior British official said: “There was tremendous in-fighting in Washington. The drafts of the speech went back and forth. I think there were 28 versions before the final text was agreed. For us the key phrase was Bush’s commitment to seeking a new UN resolution to disarm Iraq. We were only sure we had it 24 hours before the speech. For some reason this was left out of the text on the teleprompter as Bush was reading it, and he had to improvise. He managed to ad-lib a sentence saying ‘we will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions’. But instead of saying ‘resolution’ he said ‘resolutions’ in the plural. That’s how we got stuck with the French idea of two resolutions.”

If that’s true, it’s an amazing screw-up. All of the last few months’ agony because of a teleprompter mistake? Somehow, I doubt it. But stranger things have happened.