A Man and His Trophy Gun

Did anyone else find it in rather poor taste that the president has proudly kept his trophy of a gun taken from Saddam Hussein after he was captured in the so-called spider hole last December?

Sure, at first blush, it perhaps seems a reasonable thing to do. In fact, some of the right most wing of the NRA (and no, I don't think every member of the NRA is a wingnut like "pry this gun from my cold, dead hands" Chuck Heston) would have pilloried him had Bush publicly refused to do so.

But for a group so offended by the opulence in which Saddam lived while his people starved and the unabashed violence of his rule, this administration was quick to seize his big, lavish, air conditioned palaces in which people like Bremer could ensconce themselves, grab the torture rooms of places like Abu Ghraib to inflict more torture, and to proudly carry around his gun as a symbol of the president's um... manliness.

Ah, but there's where my opinion and the right wing's would surely differ because I think the Iraq War was all about symbols for this president. He's not lost a wink of sleep - nor his mother had to worry her "beautiful mind" over the hundreds of coalition force deaths or the thousands of civilian deaths in order that he may have such a symbol of potency to show his friends.

Even Vietnam did not quite have this degree of stench attached to it, or quite the pettiness of symbology.

(See how grumpy I become when I don't sleep?)