I have a great many reservations about shooting guns in the air.  One main one is that if you shoot a bullet up into the air it must come down.  Where is that? This is the same question, only in another direction; if you shoot at a squirrel, deer or turkey, where does the bullet go if you miss. It might hit something or someone else.  It is a weapon of destruction and, I THINK, it should be regulated.  The bullets should be licensed, permitted and accounted for when the powder explodes.

This is not the case in the lawless country of Iraq. The disaffected Iraqis who wanted Hussein back or the Americans out still have guns.  They have a great many explosives they are using against our soldiers and a great many other targets and only they know who and why. When the news came out that Saddam Hussein was captured, “We got him”, a great many Iraqis who were ill-treated by this dictator’s regime, waved red flags (I saw the communist hammer and sickle on some) in the air and others fired off weapons while dancing with emotion. Why do they (the Muslim men in the street) do this?  Where did they get the guns?  Shouldn’t those guns and ammunition for them be confiscated? Should not Iraqis be disarmed?  I think so.  Does the American Rifle Association think it is a good thing for a defeated nation to retain its arms to use against our soldiers who are managing the peace?

There are many ways to celebrate.  I think that a good deal of thinking in the current Administration’s think tanks is about the President’s reactions and those of the other “responsible” officials who we know were jubilant.  This was something they needed to clinch the coming election no matter who the Democrats put up as the frontrunner in opposition to their man, the unstoppable Commander-in-Chief and the President Selected by the Supreme Court in the 2000 election.

It was a curious end to Saddam Hussein whose ignominious tired and disheveled face was shown as his head was inspected for lice and mouth probed for hidden suicide pills. He was a murderer of thousands of his own countrymen, a “leader” who used poison gas to subdue a religious minority in the north and a religious antagonist against his southern neighbor, Iran. He sent thousands of his soldiers to die in a senseless war.  Hussein was Bush the First's target in the first Gulf War when that dictator invaded Kuwait and threatened our old and steadfast friend, Saudi Arabia. Our fight against Iraq and Hussein is still about oil although we pretended it was weapons of mass destruction. Now we might find out what happened to them.

We have defeated Hussein and his armies but his people still have their guns and shoot them in the air while not shooting at our soldiers. Do we still intend to make these people like us and be just like us?