COLUMBUS: Great news today about all seven of our POWs getting out safe. That was a capper on quite a week.

Saddam is out, maybe dead. If he is alive, and his Iraqi enemies get a hold of him, he’ll wish he had surrendered to us when he had a chance.

There’s nothing left of him in Iraq except for some statues, and they are coming down fast. One still standing in Tikrit has him mounted on a horse. I kinda hope they can cut him down but leave the horse.

President Chirac announced Wednesday that the French are rejoicing. That’s something the French excel at, is rejoicing. Used to be they were good at most things, but lately they just specialize in rejoicing. They leave the fighting to somebody who’s good at it. They just watch, and as soon as the fight’s over they toast the winner, no matter who he is. They don’t waste champagne on a loser, unless he paid for it in cash.

France is conferring this weekend with Germany and Russia. They’re all pushing for the United Nations to have a big role in Iraq. Now that we’ve pushed Saddam out of power they want to come in and clean up.

I think President Bush is liable to tell them, “How ’bout if you folks take on the nuclear threat in North Korea instead. That way we can bring our troops home from South Korea; after fifty years they need a rest. Now, just as soon as your diplomats disarm the Koreans, then you can help us rebuild Iraq.”

After this war is over, President Bush must do one more thing to guarantee immortality, or at least nomination for a second term. He must avoid, at all costs, holding a conference. (See quote below)

Everybody rejoices in their own way. I read in the paper that in 1945, after we ran the Germans out of France and beat Hitler, the French celebrated by looting and killing 40,000 of their own. It didn’t say if that was before or after they uncorked the champagne.

In New York they hold a parade and throw confetti.

In Jessica Lynch’s West Virginia hometown they celebrated last night with a potluck supper. Then they got up early and went to church to celebrate again.

In Iraq they’re looting and stealing, even from hospitals and museums. We went to the trouble of not dropping bombs on all these important buildings, and they destroy ’em from the inside out. Of course, they may have got the vandalism idea from watching some of our football and basketball hoodlums. And just like over here, it only takes a few to give everybody a bad name.

Mr. Rumsfeld says not to worry, they need a chance to rejoice over their first taste of freedom in thirty five years, and they’ll start acting civilized in a week or so.

Iraqis have their way of rejoicing, and the French theirs. For me, I’ll take my chances on a potluck supper.

Excuse me for hurrying, I’ve got to work on taxes.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“America, a funny thing about us, we never was very good in conference. We are great talkers but we are mighty poor conferers. We have a unique record, America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. We can, I think, without any degree of egotism we can say, with our tremendous resources we can lick any nation in the world single-handed and yet we can’t confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.” Radio broadcast, April 6, 1930