The Bush administration's head-fake on Iraqi WMD has apparently inoculated the American public against a whole class of related afflictions, to the point that otherwise concerned adults determinedly schlep everyone to the mall, slogging through the day, repeating, as with a mantra, "must ... enjoy ... holidays ..." despite the news that al Qaeda is now deeply engaged in a persistent, high profile campaign to seize control of a substantial nuclear arsenal capable of inflicting unprecedented catastrophic damage on India, Israel, Iraq, and countless others across an already volatile region.

One can only hope that responsible government officials are doing the best they can, given the obvious resource constraints, to sift through the haystacks and connect the dots, before the timer expires. Meanwhile, a satiated public idles away the days in front of the television before exercising their democratic rights to select the first "World Idol."

Next week, a well-paid columnist will juxtapose the numbers for American voters in the "World Idol" competition with those of the 2000 Presidential campaign. In a few months, the numbers will reappear alongside those for the first few 2004 primaries.

American military officials confirmed today that Saddam Hussein had been captured alive in Tikrit on Saturday night.

They confirmed that it was him based on DNA evidence.

President Bush secretly traveled to Baghdad and paid a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to US troops Thursday in a mission to boost the morale of forces in Iraq amid mounting casualties.

The case began with a dead fish and a rose in an aluminum pan, left on the hood of a car parked on a Los Angeles street. Taped to the windshield of the car, which belonged to a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, was a piece of cardboard with a single word: "Stop."

"There is a dramatic gulf now between Iraqis and a lot of other Arabs. Young people here want to move on. In 10 years, this will be a very different place. If I can be a part of it, it will be like Hong Kong or Korea — but with an Iraqi face."

Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation, prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas facilities.

"We were underestimating the amount of attention al Qaeda was paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey, a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we previously thought. An attack is a question of when, not if."