For all you wannabe cowboys, I’ll say this: Saddam? Bad guy. He meted out his share and more of ugly death. Though I oppose the death penalty, there have been times I couldn’t muster the high-flown idealism to oppose it. This is one of those times, and the other in recent memory was Timothy McVeigh’s seeing-to.

Having said that, I found one sidecar fact in that whole poorly-managed, low-tech affair utterly disturbing. Who knows if it’s even true, but the New York Times reported that our boy Bush slept through the hanging. When asked why Dear Leader hit the hay, spokesman Scott Stanzel said, “[Bush] knew that it was going to happen.”

So that’s cleared up then.

What Bush really did during the hanging is probably unknowable, but what I find most disturbing is that the Karl Rove brand of nonsense politics invading everything but one’s choice in bog roll is still White House style. What is it the ultimate political branding machine wants us to hear about Dear Leader? That he’s such a tough guy he can sleep while his dirty work is being done?

That message might be a little undermined when you consider that Bushie boy was at brush-clearing central in Crawford, Texas. The execution took place at 6:10 a.m. on a Saturday in Iraq. That’s 9:10 p.m. Friday in Crawford. Should these guys really be announcing that the leader of the free world is such a lightweight he goes to bed on Friday nights in time to sleep through a 9:10 p.m. anything?

Guess he got overwhelmed by some nice warm Ovaltine.