"There's always something..."

In the ensuing weeks (if not already) we'll understand that Bush's "immigration reform" proposal wasn't meant to ease the plight of immigrants but to massage Latino voters and provide cheap labor to agribusiness. His "moon, then Mars" announcement, already seen as a silly "hid the weenie" ruse (the weenie being all of his other failings), will turn out to be the first step in the use of the moon as a launching pad for weapons.

And now the formal announcement of POW status for Saddam Hussein. To protect his rights? Hardly. The significant protection might have been freedom from interrogation, but they've already had him in their grip, incommunicado, for a month, thereby either getting what they wanted from him or learned that they weren't going to.

No, my hunch is that such status is solely for the US to retain control over his prosecution so that his defense can't raise at his trial those nasty tidbits of US's manipulation of his regime over the last two decades.

Apparently, the Iraqi Governing Council is miffed that the CPA didn't consult with them before making the POW determination, but it plans nevertheless to go forward with its trial of him this summer. I wouldn't be so sure they'll get their way. To be sure, the Bushies would like that ongoing drama during the pre-election period, but without US control? That could be dangerous, feeding out too much information about our cynically corrupt policies in the Middle East. I think, rather, the Iraqi trial will be postponed until after the 2004 election (as will Saddam's POW-War Crimes Trial), or the Iraqi trial will be somehow controlled by the US to avoid embarrassing Bush during the pre-election period.

[Update: The Iraqis react to the US announcement of Saddam's POW status. They're onto Bush.]