With the deaths of Odai and Qusai Hussein, President George W. Bush has said it is the most significant sign yet that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone and not coming back.
Isn't this what the public was being told back in May at the supposed end of the Iraqi war?
That two of Saddam's highest-ranking officials, namely his sons, are dead makes little difference to the American soldiers and families of soldiers who are still suffering casualties while occupying Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that only a few holdouts loyal to Hussein are keeping the area from being stabilized.
Will the deaths of Odai and Qusai make these "holdouts" less loyal? Will it force soldiers of the Fadeyeen, Iraq's paramilitary force, to lay down their weapons and discontinue their guerilla war against the occupying force?
The answers to those questions are doubtful at best. As the news of the deaths of Odai and Qusai was being reported, separate American convoys near Mosul and Ramadi were being ambushed, killing two more American soldiers and bringing the total number of Americans killed during the Iraq war to 155, eight more than the 1991 Gulf War.
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Throughout all of this, the president has stood firm after declaring the end of major combat three months ago. But Americans and Iraqis continue to die every day and there is still no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. And where is Saddam Hussein?
If Bush wished to put a stamp on American history with a successful war deposing a hated dictator, he is failing. The American public is growing tired of its soldiers dying, erroneous intelligence reports and the failure to nab who they were going after in the first place, Saddam himself.
Bush's approval rating is slowly dipping with each violent and tragic reminder of the situation in Iraq and the deaths of Odai and Qusai will not stop his downward political spiral.
Bush will take his place in American history alongside his father as an American president who failed to accomplish the goals he set for himself and the promises he made to the American people.
