It has now been three days since the deaths of Uday and Qusay. Rather than surrender, the brothers decided to go out in a blaze of glory against astronomically overwhelming odds, kind of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
And we were all too happy to oblige them.

Yet doubts about their true fates persist among some Iraqi people. Perhaps this is because of years of ingrained fear, or because of questions about our commitment to that country.
This last point really shouldn't surprise anyone. The US has a long history of giving up when the going gets tough. Prime examples of that would be our hasty exits from Somalia in 1993, and Lebanon ten years prior to that. So with or without a Hussein at the top, various elements in Iraq will continue to try to wear us down until we throw in the towel.
But there are also questions about credibility and competence which are far more serious and go will beyond the borders of the middle east. For most of 2002 and early this year we were repeatedly told to trust our leaders. Even when the UN inspectors kept failing in their attempts to find the weapons of mass destruction, we were told to just be patient. They are there. We have the evidence, but--oh, so sorry--it's classified.
Then there was the manufactured story about Jessica Lynch's dramatic firefight with the enemy. Yes, it was inspiring. Yes, it did provide a morale boost to the country when it appeared we had gotten bogged down. But it was also a baldfaced lie.
And the postwar situation in Iraq remains murky, chaotic, and extremely dangerous. Even if we get Saddam "the Big Cahoona" Hussein tomorrow, there appears to be enough resentment towards our continued presence that it won't effect the security situation in the least. It is now painfully obvious that no one really had a plan on how to restore order in a dysfunctional country decimated by war and years of corruption.
Our leaders, however, continue to insist that virtually all opposition will end if and when that happens. But these are the same people that manufactured the Lynch story, as well as insisted that Iraq was knee-deep in chemical weapons while actively shopping for uranium at the Niger Costco.
This air of deception continues to cloud the future of the Bush Administration. CIA Director George Tenet and Stephen Hadley of the National Security Council have already fallen on their swords for their boss. If true, that should put to rest accusations that the President lied in his State of the Union address. But what does that say about the competence of the people leading us? That's the question that should have everyone worried. And doesn't the responsibility ultimately fall to the person who actually stood on that podium in January and delivered the speech?
President Harry S Truman used to say that the buck stopped with him. But that was then, and now the buck seems to be stopping everywhere except in the Oval Office itself.