Operation Red Dawn?

Look, I'm as happy as the next guy that we've nabbed Saddam Hussein in a raid near his hometown of Tikrit (he's apparently been hiding in a "spider hole" in a basement for the past few months). But Operation Red Dawn? Come on! I could reach into a Scrabble kitty and pull out a better codename. Must all of our military planners be 100% irony-free, and still living in the 80's to boot?

But good for the Iraqi people. Having Saddam in custody must give them a certain sense of closure that's been lacking since the war began. At least his reign of terror won't be making a return appearance in Iraq, which I think was a lingering fear in minds of many people who had suffered under his rule. If anyone thinks however that as a result of this indisputably good news that the ongoing insurgency against the "Coalition" occupation is just going to magically disappear, well you don't need to look much further than this morning's report of a suicide bombing against a police barracks in Khalidiyah that killed 17 to dispel that notion as wishful thinking in the extreme.

Fun fact: although Reuters and the BBC reported this attack, it was featured on none of the "newscrawls" on any of the major television American news networks, all of whom were too busy shamelessly offering up hosannahs to the Bush administration and incorrectly describing this as a victory in the War on Terror to confuse Joe Sixpack with any evidence that Saddam's capture - however good for the average Baghdadi - isn't going to make a damned bit of difference in what we've gotten ourselves into in Iraq.