Timing

How might feeble attempts to manipulate public opinion be identified? Perhaps by prime timed execution and lack of impact. The interim Govt has been installed. Saddam has been handed over. Bremer has flown at the bequest of his publicity advisers.

smh 26/06/2004
key British officials are urging the much-disliked American administrator to pack immediately and make his flight out of Baghdad a big media event, in the hope that Iraqis might believe that occupation has ended.
(Paul McGeough)

(pffft, Bremer in the air means the occupation has ended? Well we all who blog know how little physical presence means when it comes to meddling in other countries politics).

Yes, insincerity is all in the timing.

As for trying to raise some kind of handclap in palming off Saddam - puleeease besides it avoids the real issue; how are future tyrannies best prevented? Prevention would tend to be the more important issue one might think, tyrant removal being the tricky and seemingly too often ineffective business that it is. One might observe that an expired tyrants structures are too easily claimed by other tyrannical bodies, while the period of anarchy following a tyrants demise primes a populace to accept almost anything in replacement for the sake of order. It would be better to consider ways of avoiding tyranny in the first place. Tyranny is best avoided by considering the circumstances under which tyrants come to power and then addressing these issues. While prevention is preferable, it is worth noting that tyrant removal is perhaps best conducted by those who have suffered the tyrants boot, rather then by some mock after the fact "here we caught the fox, now you can play with it" trial.

Meanwhile archbishops write in protest to Blair, mothers mourn and arms flood into Iraq.