Michael Barone whips another salvo of unadulterated wisdom at you, post-Saddam-Iraq-style.

I'd forgotten about Bush's non-negotiables: right to property; free speech, assembly, press, elections, trial by jury. And the way Barone's talking, State may have finally lost the administrative battle with Defense - another good sign that Iraq won't be managed by the people who have, for decades, done business with Arab dictators and loved every minute of it.

Knee-slapper: In the restroom, the amiable fiftysomething we all affectionately call "Ski Bum" stopped me.

"Did you hear?" he said, eyes wide. "Saddam Hussein killed both of his sons."

"Killed them, or 'was killed with them?'" I asked, wondering if I'd somehow missed breaking news.

"Killed them. With his bare hands." A grin split his face. "Caught 'em drinking Busch Beer."

Awad Nasir, premier Iraqi poet, confronts and dispels the misanthropic, soft bigotry that passes for "appreciation of cultural nuance" and the "difficulty of establishing democracy in regions that have never known it":

Can Iraqis rule themselves?

There are some who say "No." They base their claim on pseudo-political mumbo-jumbo according to which the destruction of Iraqi civil society by Saddam Hussein has drained our nation of the resources it needs to create a people-based government.

Anyone with any intimate knowledge of Iraq would know that claim to be not true. Iraqi people have been fighting Saddam Hussein's tyranny since 1968, long before the U.S. and the rest of the world got wise to his evil schemes and methods.

The ease with which the U.S.-led Coalition captured virtually the whole of Iraq in two weeks is, at least in part, due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of our people did not, would not, fight in support of their oppressor.

Today, the U.S. and its allies have almost all of the 24 million Iraqis as their friends.

Indeed, they will view us as friends in liberation and partners in reconstruction. Britain's a stalwart ally, but they're thicker into socialism than Vermont; whatever Blair wants for economic reform may be well-intentioned in its unfortunate poisonousness. Even more remarkable is the idea that the United Nations - recall, the same body that three weeks ago could not even sensibly enforce its own authority - should have any significance in reconstruction. Unless I'm mistaken, the species best known for avoiding the burdens of combat but all-the-more-willing to benefit from victory are vultures and hyenas. Not the most trustworthy beasts. Next to France and every other country using the United Nations as a power broker, that is.

Again: the United Nations ostensibly opposed the liberation of Iraqis, and fairly well demonstrated to the history books that "stability" means more to them than "democracy." They're obviously hostile to the idea and about as good a choice for administration of instituting freedoms as China might be for, say, hosting a summit on the importance of peaceful assembly and free elections.

On principle, the idea is ludicrous. Put into practice, it spells a nightmare. God help the Kosovars, and God save the Iraqis.

America, move in and let capitalists show the way.

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, William Rees-Moog applies particulars to why the United Nations is second only to the Islamofascist threat to democratization.

UPDATE II: I thought I'd say a thousand words of my own. Iraq doesn't need them, nor does the entire world. Put 'em with the League.

As to be expected, Time magazine is quoting the usual sources who tentatively rule out any possibility of a Saddam Hussein body double close enough for prime-time:

In Washington, debate raged: Was it really him?

Was the tape made after March 19? Skeptical commentators suggested we might be seeing one of the doubles Saddam has acknowledged using. But U.S. officials say the cia has no information that he has ever used doubles for close-ups like that one. The agency believes he uses stand-ins in motorcades and long-distance appearances, just as a Secret Service agent who looks similar to a U.S. President might take a decoy car around Washington. But officials say there's no evidence that any Saddam double is identical enough to fool the camera.

Time stands on a somewhat thin argument, aided only by the fact that the allies haven't cracked Saddam's code of public conduct; but really, is reasonable doubt for an unreasonable man strong enough? Not understanding a magician's intricacies and methods does not imply a reality to their tricks. Besides, if we knew how extensively Saddam used his doubles, the only source we could trust would be archives in Baghdad or Tikrit. In that case, we'd know who they were and what they looked like - no mystery left.

But always in these statements are significant qualifying statements. From an MSNBC story just last fall (emphasis mine):

A U.S. official told NBC News, however, that while they can confirm that Saddam has used doubles in decoy convoys, they doubt Saddam uses lookalikes for official appearances. [...]

"Its not a Dave kind of deal," said the official, making reference to the movie "Dave"” in which a job training specialist fills in for a comatose president. "We have reports in the past of him using lookalikes and while you can’t put anything past this guy, we kind of doubt it that he has been using doubles for official appearances."

Intelligence doesn't know, and they prefer to give a fiercely paranoid madman the benefit of the doubt. It's their analytical choice, but its seems more out of conservative doubt than sound intuition. CIA, you'll recall, is dogmatic about a complete absence of links between the Ba'athists and Islamists - an idea that is hardly credible with what we've learned over the past two weeks including the Nasiriyah mural, the al Ansar Islam camp, the Islamofascist rhetorical leaning by the Saddam stand-in and others, and the clearly terrorist tactics - including murder bombings - employed by Fedeyeen Saddam and other Ba'athist forces.

The crux of the Saddam identity debate appears to be political, and wielded on the part of liberation opponents. From Time:

Despite a year of making the case that Iraq's leader was too terrible to tolerate, the White House does not want victory to hinge on his confirmed demise. President Bush's unfulfilled promise to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" is a haunting reminder of how hard it might be to get Saddam. Administration officials have taken to saying, as Central Command spokesman Jim Wilkinson said Friday, that "our campaign is much larger than any one single personality." But it's doubtful that much of the world would judge the war a success while Saddam's fate was unresolved.

Moving goal posts. The article also continues on to snigger about bio-chem-atomics that have not been found, though Time neglects to mention how impossible that would be for allied forces so occupied with defeating the enemy that they are practically unable to bathe, and without unfrightened Iraqi scientists to help navigate to laboratories through what will undoubtedly prove to be a country-wide, covert labyrinth.

Which leads us to this thoughtless remark:

But if [chemical weapons] aren't found, that would lead many to question the war.

Those who question the war will question it for whatever pathetic nit they can lay their claws on. It's nice to know that in nearly two years following the epiphany of September 11th, Time magazine is still ambivalent on the subject of oppression and liberation.

A German source, however, believes not only that Saddam maintains two or three body doubles, but that the dictator has not been in public for five years (Go here for cut-and-paste translations). Turning a Howard Hughes is a little far-fetched for me, but when a German coroner confirms that differences between Saddam and his doubles include shoulder breadth, I'm left to ask skeptics how they can account for Saddam's head to grow by about 30%. Yes, faces can bloat after trauma or while under the influence of anesthetics, but not to this degree.

Besides, watch the video footage of Saddam meeting and greeting Iraqis.

He toddles like a grandfather; not a brutal Stalinist. Watch how he grins, half-heartedly pumps his fist and then gently motions at one point for the crowd to part - hardly the motion of even a well-disciplined dictator while in a besieged city.

Finally:

The top left and bottom right are who I am certain are counterfeits. They are from footage clearly produced after the March 20th bombing and this past week, respectively. The top left belies his identity not only facially but by the fact that Saddam, no matter how addled, could rattle off exhortations like a nursery rhyme. The bottom right, obviously a different man, is self-explanatory.

The top right and bottom left are most likely Saddam himself, but from footage of inner circle meetings that could have taken place any point in time before the deposition. Besides, if these clowns could hold central meetings, the Iraqi resistance would not be characterized by the degree of confusion and aimlessness as it is by Centcom.

From honor comes assent to the consequences of a decision.

I am anticipating, perhaps in vain, a response from the throngs who tore their hair and wrung their hands, all in the name of a great many superlative virtues, to the al Zubayr slaughterhouse and the many others like it yet to be found.

Murder. We have found institutionalized murder. Systematic torture and execution, cold-blooded catalogs and anonymous burial in secret sands - a horrifying, well-oiled, butchery machine that would have continued unabated if reactionaries on the left and far right, various clergy, irresponsible world leaders and all other nescient fools had their way.

This is not the first time.

But it can be made the last. Fitting redress would be a mortified lamentation, followed by a complete retraction of every vomitous comparison of the President of the United States to demons of the modern age such as Saddam Hussein; every usurpation of moral authority as a dialectic weapon against liberation; every bald-faced lie painting the Iraqi people as being in any semblance of lucid solidarity with their oppressors; every blind eye turned to the manifest abominations occurring daily inside Iraq; every sickeningly hollow prayer to God for "peace" and "justice" to presumably fall from the sky like confetti while the opportunity for forcible emancipation, true peace and true justice, went unseized for year after year; and the vile, unctuous arrogance sustaining every prevarication aforesaid, passive crimes all against one's fellow man, done in spite of sheer evidence.

Those culpable to this moral evasion are, unwitting or volitional, stubborn patsies for evil; every one.

I call for one shred of honor. Will they please sit down.

Today's imposter:

The real Hussein some time ago with such distinctive discrepancies as a nose nearly one inch more leptorhine, ovalish eyes, a different complexion and slighter jowels, mesocephalic and not brachycephalic, far broader shoulders:

Moral of the story: do not pass off a counterfeit to a visually operative society. Sorry, Ba'ath.

The Ba'athist general thuggery has made a public statement threatening "non-conventional" actions against the allied liberators.

Our boys are ready, Baghdad. If you wish your descent into hell to be as incendiary as possible, be our guest. Destination remains the same.

As no one pays me to either forecast or bet on horses, I've got the leeway to speculate. Here goes:

Thursday, March 20, 2003; Baghdad. Dawn.

Scores of cruise missiles demolish a Ba'athist palace in the city before four bunker-busters burrow deep into the facility's fortified bowels.

Saddam Hussein is inside. Saddam Hussein is hit by the blasts. He is killed or incapacitated. Instantly.

Whoever else has been caught in this strike - hailed by the Pentagon as "decaptitation" - is irrelevent. Lunatic as his sons may be, the Butcher of Baghdad has not coveted power for two decades by a lack of strength or coldhearted resolve. He alone is the shadow of fear that drives other men to barbarous oppression through this country; though the men have been twisted beyond human compunction and will lay waste to innocents in the coming weeks, they are, without Saddam, sheep wont to stray and tire themselves to death.

Seconds or minutes after the explosions have occurred, Ba'athist elite scattered about in bunkers across the arid land discover what has happened: who was where, and when. Communication signals are sent discretely. No response from Saddam.

A great fear wraps the Ba'athist inner circle. No significant bombing preceded or has now followed the strike. It's obvious: the Americans acted with great deliberation because they knew Saddam's location. How? The man has moved with such stealth over the years as to impress even those minions whom he places the highest kind of tenuous trust a totalitarian can afford. But the Americans knew. And they weren't gratuitous or sloppy, or clumsy. A series of missiles and bombs, go the reports from party members in the street, and then nothing more. If the Americans knew where to find Saddam, could they have known exactly with what to kill him?

The fear widens into a gaping maw of morbid panic. The Ba'athists begin to feel the American threat as if it were omniscient, and in their terror, they tip their hand with fatal overestimation. If the Americans knew where to find Saddam, think the Ba'athists, and they knew how to kill Saddam, they will know that they have killed Saddam.

Communicators frantically try to raise the dictator. No response.

In their minds, the Ba'athists can feel their empire crumbling before the battle begins: Bush will confidently be informed of Saddam's destruction. Unchallenged by any confirming presence of Saddam, the American president or his men will announce to the world the end of Saddam's reign.

Horrid manacles of fear dispelled, the inherently disloyal lower ranks will revolt before any preventative measures can be taken.

This cannot be.

The Ba'athists rouse one of Saddam's doubles and give him orders at the proverbial or literal gunpoint: get out of bed. Dress in these fatigues.

A double, plucked from obscurity in his Iraqi hometown years ago thanks to an unfortunately coincidental likeness to his governmental captor, has served in parades and public opportunities. He looks like Saddam, has been trained to act like Saddam; he sounds like Saddam. He is instructed to appear before a camera and exhort both his continued vigor and will to fight.

But, unlike Saddam, the poor marionette is quite unfamiliar with the "Unity, Freedom, Socialism" doctrine of 1940s Pan-Arabist ideologies. This man never knew Michel Aflaq, veritable founder of the Ba'athist party, nor did he spend his adult life murdering and scheming like an apostolic mafioso stallion to earn a devil's sovereignty. He is thoroughly incapable of controlling his tongue to spout the words of an conquerer, visceral in a celebration of holding fast to a nation's destiny. He cannot spontaneously deliver a standard of resistance.

And he's nearsighted.

Maddeningly annoyed, pen and paper are obtained by the Ba'athists. Phrases are furiously scribbled down to roughly resemble a speech. They fetch his glasses - the only correction this poor man could ever afford.

He is told to memorize as best he can - but time is running out. A swift rebuttal must be accomplished. He can't verbally falter for lack of material. Reluctant at first but more desperate with time, the Ba'athists let him keep the papers.

A camera rolls, a signal is broadcast. An imposter is made transparent to the world. Saddam has fallen.

Excellent news; better than yesterday's snippet of administration debate.

If Colin Powell himself is announcing the White House's plans to keep anti-liberation forces' designs off of post-Saddam Iraq, it's a good sign that the debate is over - and for those of us anxious about the critical course of democratic nation-building, that we have nothing to fear for the moment.

The Times of London is reporting a "row" within the Bush administration over post-Iraq governance. State, naturally, wants to insert hardened diplomats who will be ever-so-friendly to Islamists and police states. Multilateral statecraft, seeking support and advice of all the world from such municipally rich places as China and Russia to the ever-morally clear France, is wonderful for the first six months of photo-ops; not so good in the reality of years down the road, when a stumbling, corrupt, Islamist-infested Iraq is no better off than when the Ba'athists ran it. Barbara Bodine, better known for her obstacles set in front of the FBI's U.S.S. Cole investigation in Yemen - it was distressing the poor locals - is apparently being held up by Rumsfeld & Co.

The rest of the diplomatic staff, from gingerbread-cookie mineclearers to apologists for Al Jazeera, isn't much to look at, either.

Mr. Rumsfeld: for the good of world stability, please persuade your superior to give Ms. Bodine and her motley crew proverbial elevator passes for the one-story building.