McDermott would be jumping the gun if he said that it was definitely the case that Saddam's capture was staged, but our Military has been crawling all over Tikrit for months. If they didn't know he was there, then they are much less effective than we have been lead to believe. Now, that wouldn't be all that surprising (they're still pretty durn good.)
I am reserving judgement until WMDs are found (Hans Blix says he thinks they probably were all destroyed in 91, with maybe a few laggards in 92. Even <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97537,00.html">Faux News</a> agrees on this.) and Bin Laden is in custody. If WMDs are found at all, I'll be a bit suspicious, and the timing of a bin Laden capture could be critical, particularly if it comes close enough to the election that there is no time to rebut.
For now, though, I'm going to take it at face value, and reserve the possibility of agreeing with McDermott later.
Oh, and LD, that quote you pulled out of the Dean speech does not blame all the ills of the world on Shrub & Co. It just says that, regardless of their recent success, it's still a botched job that could have been done better and cheaper without alienating any of our allies. It says nothing about ignoring the warnings about 9/11, or scrapping Clinton's <a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.08A.wrp.lies.htm">plans to go after al Qaeda</a>, or scrapping Clinton's intiatives to prevent a nuclear North Korea, or scrapping the Kyoto protocol, or reneging on campaign promises to lower CO<sub>2</sub> emissions or any of the other things that have made this the single worst presidency since at least Buchanan, perhaps ever. One runs a risk when one criticizes the Bush administration that one will be accused of taking cheap shots because the malfeasance and incompetance and mismangement is so blatant that all the shots are cheap, even when they're absolutely true.