---

CAPTURING SADDAM HUSSEIN OR FIDEL CASTRO?

Hooray, they've captured a disheveled Saddam, found him in a cellar, hiding underground in a coffin like pit he'd buried himself in, bearded (like La Grande Cucaracha), dirty, tired and stripped of his uniform, just a tired, dirty, little old man. His days of glory, of signing decrees for executions, of condoning and paying for murders in other countries, are finished.

And this, to me, is a vision of things to come for La Grande Cucaracha, Fidel Castro, the grinch who stole both Freedom and Christmas from the Cuban nation, the tyrannical dictator who has terrorized his nation for 44 years.

As Saddam goes, so should Fidel Castro follow. Send him fleeing to the mountains again and then hunt him down like a wild pig, find him and bring him to his knees. There is no legal justification for him to remain at the helm in Cuba, no reason for him to be granted the privileges accorded to elected officials of other nations, nor any right to hold the station he occupies in the world community.

Compare Saddam and Fidel, the use of uniforms to give them an authoritarian appearance, the publicity, the terror, the tortures, assassins and killers both, neither deserving of the adulation they sought and received because they are nothing more than common criminals.

Saddam and Fidel are alike, two aging, dirty, bearded old men who are no more than world terrorists, delusional at best, insane at the worst. They belong in a special classification in a footnote: The Garbage Pit of History.