SHAMELESS:

Still no mass weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth (Derrick Z. Jackson, 12/17/2003, Boston Globe)

With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant. Civilian deaths constituted justifiable homicide. America was again above the law. We have taught the next generation that many wrongs equal a right. In arrogance, we boasted, "We got him!" The shame is that we feel none for how we got him. The capture of this dictator, driven by the poison of lies, turned America itself into a dictator.

It may come as a surprise to Mr. Jackson, but in warfare there is no doctrine of "fruit of the poisonous tree". If you capture a mass-murdering dictator and it turns out that he has no WMD you can still try him for starting two wars, using WMD repeatedly, killing hundreds of thousands (as many as a million?) of his own people, and maintaining a brutally repressive dictatorship for decades.

Of course, under Supreme Court jurisprudence you might indeed have to let him go, but luckily the Justices don't have votes on this one.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2003 8:17 PM