Saddam's daughters prove their love for dad is blind

It is quite possible that by the time this editorial is published, Saddam Hussein will have been captured or killed. U.S. forces in Iraq were closing in on Saddam Monday and military officials said he was being forced to move every four hours.
"It's just a matter of time," said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, 4th Infantry Division spokesman. "He can't stay in one place very long."
Regardless of his fate, the Butcher of Baghdad can take solace from the fact that his daughters, Raghad and Rana, aren't among the Iraqis who wish that he burns in hell. Indeed, to hear Raghad and Rana tell it, good old dad was a jewel of man who loved his family and, even with his world crumbling around him, had time to give his grand kids sweets.
Such blind loyalty to a man who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, especially the Kurds, and others -- remember Iraq's invasion of Kuwait 13 years ago? -- is hard to fathom. But it is even more unbelievable considering that Saddam had ordered his daughters' husbands killed in 1996.
But there they were last week on CNN, telling the world about this gentle soul, this man with a heart of gold.
"He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart," said Raghad. As for sending a message to dad, she said, "I love you, and I miss you."
'Our friend'
Rana described Saddam as "very tender with all of us," adding, "Usually the daughter is close to her mother, but we would usually go to him. He was our friend."
The Saddam portrayed by the two daughters certainly isn't the Saddam most Iraqis had come to know and fear. Mass graves are still being unearthed; they contain the remains of the dictator's enemies, both real and imagined.
The horror of his attacks on the Kurds -- he used chemical weapons on defenseless old men, women and children -- will forever be memorialized in the photograph of a baby's body twisted in agony.
But the most insulting part of the interview was the regret Raghad expressed for what she characterized as a betrayal of her father by his associates.
"With regret, those my father trusted, whom he had put his absolute confidence in and whom he considered on his side -- as I understood from the newspapers -- betrayed him," she said.
Not once through that soppy interview did the daughters express any regret for their father's reign of terror; not once did they offer any words of condolence to the families of those who had been brutally murdered by Saddam's ruling Baath Party.
Raghad and Rana aren't the first children of monsters attempting to redraw the face of evil -- and they won't be the last.
But they will only be successful if the world forgives and forgets.
It is our hope that Saddam Hussein is taken alive and then prosecuted for crimes against humanity.