The Pentagon Knows How to Spike the Football: Saddam’s Fleas and Osama’s Home Movies

The Pentagon’s image makers have again displayed their skills (or was it the CIA?).

What image comes to mind when we think of Saddam? It is not of a Saddam defiantly discharging a rifle or even a subdued Saddam stepping up to the gallows. Rather it is the bearded and disheveled Saddam being checked for fleas after his capture. Saddam’s image would never recover after that.

Osama understood publicity. He cultivated the image of the rugged warrior, rifle at his shoulder, marching on treacherous terrain, ready to kill the infidels. With the release of Osama’s home movies, his lasting image will be the hunched, elderly-looking Osama-couch-potato admiring himself on the TV screen.

The Pentagon has delivered the deepest cut of all: “Osama Watching Osama.”

Brilliant!