It was to be expected.

Following the capture of one of the most despicable leaders of recent history, a man who was responsible for the torture and/or murder of hundreds of thousands of people, the equivocations and qualifications are everywhere.

Is the capture of Saddam a good thing?

The answer is, of course, yes.

The answer of nearly every left-leaner I've seen since yesterday is: "Yes, but..."

Yaga's already provided a couple in the comments of yesterday's entry. Here are some of the main ones making the rounds:

"Yes, but it probably won't help the security situation (and will probably make it worse)."

"Yes, but why haven't we completely thought out what we're going to do with him?" (Answer: We have...we're going to squeeze every bit of possible info out of him, then put his ass on trial.)

"Yes, but what about Osama bin Laden?"

And on and on and on.

I was going to ask people to come up with their favorites, but that's too easy. Instead I'd like to issue a challenge to find a left-leaning columnist/blogger/commentator who answered this question in the affirmative, without using it as a springboard for more criticism.

I mean, how hard is it to acknowledge that this is a very good thing (after all, almost all of the anti-war folks admitted that Saddam was bad, and have continually been critical about the inability to capture him) and then leave it at that for like, ten goddamn seconds?