Meanwhile, back on the fifth estate, Ted Koppel is still mowing the lawn

The broadcast news media's credibility to cover anything this side of J Lo and Ben's nuptials is called into serious question frequently these days, no more so than today, when just about every cable news outlet decided to politicize the capture of Hussein by asking for comment from the Democratic presidential contenders. Howard Dean, acting paradoxically presidential about it, refused comment beyond saying it was a great day for President Bush and the American and Iraqi nations. Just about every other cannibalistic idiot running for the nomination took the bait of dead flesh from the media in reacting to it, notably Joe Lieberman (below) and Wes Clark.

I've got two points to make here.

1. It's not really a political issue. This one is about Our Team scoring one that we all agree we had to.

2. If the democratic nominees want to get Bush re-elected they (other than Dean) are going about it the right way -- to play into the cheap notion that this has domestic political importance. If that's the case, as I'm sure Karl Rove would like it to be, it can only play into the Bush camp's game plan to talk about everything except the dumb war plan, the dumb war, the dumb pretexts, etc.

OK, one more point:

3. In light of 2, does the media asking irrelevant questions about Hussein of the dem nominees actually change anything about the core issue of the war and its aftermath? Does capturing Hussein change anything at all other than, we hope to god, making the process of mopping up the anarchy a little easier? No and no.