Anyone who doubts America's rightful claim to goodness need look no further than the evil one himself. Saddam Hussein may be a tyrant, a murderer, a dictator, a torturer, a bully and a coward, but he's no fool. In captivity, face-to-face with his fellow countrymen, to whom does Saddam look for protection? Not to his own people, but to us.

In a Reuters story from Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi official described Saddam as a broken man who sought the mercy of Americans.

"When we were asking him difficult questions and throwing accusations, reminding him of his crimes, he was looking at Ambassador (Paul) Bremer and General (Ricardo) Sanchez, as if he was asking the Americans to protect him," Muwaffaq al-Rubaiye, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, was quoted as saying.

"He felt safer with the Americans."

And why would that be? Because we're murdering, immoral, invading, occupying evildoers? Or because Americans are known to be decent, generous, fair-minded and trustworthy. Even the lowest slime seeks higher ground when his survival depends on it.

How ironic that Saddam sees what even some Americans can't or won't see, that we are the good guys. That in a contest of moral rectitude, even in war, we have few if any peers. This isn't just gratuitous chest beating, but a statement of fact as demonstrated repeatedly by our men and women in the armed forces, often to their own detriment.

What did the soldiers say when they pulled Saddam out of his rat hole? Just a few polite words: "Regards from President Bush."

What goes around comes around, they say, and history has proven the maxim true. As well as this: Evil begets evil, and good eventually comes to good. In other words, Merry Christmas, Iraq.