Not alone

It's good to see that I'm not alone in wondering what additional information will come out about Saddam and his capture:

It�s tempting, and not entirely wrong, to react emotionally to the pictures of the Iraq war that we do get to see. The capture of Saddam is a huge accomplishment. Who doesn�t hope that at last he will be held accountable for his brutal crimes?

But our reactions can�t stop there. We can not look at these pictures naively, because they are not naively taken or distributed. Each has an explicit purpose--to create a war hero, to inspire our troops and demoralize the enemy, or to boost the president�s poll numbers. Almost always when a picture has a purpose, its truth is diluted.

We now know, of course, that Jessica Lynch was not really the hero, shooting to the last bullet, that the military portrayed her as; that the serious fighting wasn�t really over when the president landed on that aircraft carrier and said it was; and that the turkey was a prop. What will we eventually know about the capture of Saddam Hussein that contradicts the picture released on Sunday?