Comforting the Comfortable

A frighteningly large number of my friends seem to think Anne Applebaum is something other than a pernicious force in American life, a rightwing hack who spends her days exploiting mass killings abroad as a bludgeon against domestic progressive forces in the west. So, I dunno. Maybe I should hail today's column with its thesis that Saddam Hussein was a bad man and that human rights groups who pointed out what a farce his trial was are churls. After all, what does the world need more in its moment of crisis than a pundit with the courage to speak the uncontroversial (Saddam bad!) in the service of bolstering popular support for a dismally failed war on the very morning of America's midterm elections.

She even manages to mention how awesome it is that Iraq has a prosecution in motion over Anfal without mentioning that the trial will never happen since it's going to be ruled moot by Saddam's pending execution and that this whole thing has been arranged to avoid political embarrassment for the Bush administration.