The NYT indicates that that Saddam has already been factored into the market of public opinion for the Iraq war. Unfortunately for Dubya, the Iraq support index is still falling.
What could have been a triumphal bookend to the American invasion of Iraq has instead been dampened by the grim reality of conditions on the ground there. Mr. Hussein’s hanging means that the ousted leader has been held accountable for his misdeeds, fulfilling the American war aim most cited by the White House after Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction proved nonexistent.
But that war is now edging toward its fifth year, and the sectarian violence that has surged independent of any old Sunni or Baathist allegiances to Mr. Hussein has raised questions about what change, if any, his death might bring.
“Saddam’s face has been on this process from the beginning and here goes that face,” said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. “But in many respects, he’s a bit player now.”
The White House concluded that even a development as dramatic as Mr. Hussein’s hanging could not be used to renew support for the war.
“Americans have already taken that into account,” said Frank Newport, the editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. “The benefits of deposing Saddam Hussein are far exceeded by the cost of the war.”
Indeed, a Gallup poll taken Dec. 8 to 10 showed that 64 percent of Americans said the costs of the war outweighed the benefits. Only 33 percent disagreed, saying the benefits — including the ouster of Mr. Hussein — outweighed the costs.
It is a striking change in thinking, Mr. Newport said, considering that since the first Gulf war a wide majority of Americans have supported the removal of Mr. Hussein. It was a chief reason, he said, that polls showed that more than 60 percent of Americans initially supported the war in Iraq.
In June 1993, after the failed attempt by Iraqi government agents on the life of the elder Bush, 53 percent of Americans said of Mr. Hussein in a Gallup Poll that they supported “the extreme action of having him assassinated to remove him from power,” while 37 percent said they did not.
Those sentiments, of course, were expressed a full decade before the invasion that began the current war.