The Neo Con Blogger(TM)

I remember reading accounts of the way the US Army handled Herman Goering after he was captured at the end of WWII, especially Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary. There was a press conference that he had where, bedecked in his Luftwaffe uniform, save the gold baton, answered questions reporters had about his involvement in the rise and fall of the Third Reich. However, toward the end of the interview, the beguiling and humorous Goering turned more solemn and obstinate when questions about his involvement in Hitler’s Final Solution surfaced. Ultimately, Goering cheated the death he deserved by chewing on a cyanide tablet. But in the months leading up to his untimely demise, Goering, in the hands of his captors, reminds me of how Saddam Hussein is performing with his American and Allied jailers in Iraq.

The similarities of Goering and Saddam are interesting:

· Both sanctioned mass murder
· Both provided material, financial, and political means for mass murder
· Both have denied complicity or responsibility for their involvement in mass murder
· Both have psychological profiles of crippling dementia, megalomania, recalcitrance, delusions of grandeur, and profound self-deception
· Both demanded to be recognized as legitimate even after capture and incarceration (Saddam has not been put on trial yet – ultimately will be found guilty of all the same crimes as Goering and that lot – Humanity, Peace, etc., unless the case is tried by the Michael Jackson jury!)

The most salient difference in these two men is that the Saddam was Iraq’s #1 - the Dinars literally stopped with him, while and Goering on the other hand, imagined he was.

Still, the press is much different today then in 1945. There has not been a despot in recent memory that was called a despot by the press. (Chrissy Amanpour had trouble calling Ceauceascu a bully). So, in the case of Saddam, his journey from absolute ruler to absolutely screwed will play out in a world that is more concerned about his toe nail clippings as opposed to the people he tortured, raped, gassed, maimed, beheaded, blinded, castrated, eviscerated, and socially re-engineered.

Herman Goering said that in 50 years after his death little statues of him would be put up all over Germany in celebration of his legacy. Let’s hope that in a post-Saddam world, 50 years from now the only bombings taking place in Iraq will be that of pigeons aiming for the head of all the George Bush statues in front of ex-Saddam palaces.