I was sitting in my audio booth the other day, reflecting on my career. I had grown listless and bored. The thrill of my job had faded to a malnourished pall. There was nothing exciting going on in the world. True, four or five Americans die every day in Iraq, but really, that’s E block stuff. That’s so page A-32. I thought back to the last time I had strolled in at 4 in the morning to find absolute havoc rampaging through the station as the show had to be totally revamped due to the latest really exciting breaking news to take place. The last time was when our troops caught Saddam in his little spider hole. Half a million US bucks in a suitcase, and not a razor to be bought.

I thought about it, and it stuck in the back of my mind. Whatever happened to Saddam? A constant question, over and over again through my mind. For the rest of the day. For the rest of the week. Three weeks later, it was really bugging me.

Hello? What the hell happened to Saddam?

For a week, that was all they could talk about. Saddam. We got him. Woooo! He is surly. Uncooperative. We got him. He didn’t shave. Spiderhole. We got him.

We got him.

Well, where is he? What’s happening to him? What’s he saying? Anything? What does he do with his days? What does he think about Uday and Qusay biting the big proverbial johnson? Is he P.O.’d? Does he like what we’ve done with Iraq so far? Or not so much? Does he want to vote in the first election? Or is he not a big voter? What’s on his mind? Who’s he talking to? Is he watching anything on TV? What did he think of The Simple Life? Isn’t that Paris a piece of work? Since he cornered the market on Iraqi romance novels, is he maybe considering trying to break into the American market now?

I don’t even have a journalism degree, and I still have enough questions in my head to fill a two-hour special. I know the government wouldn’t give up the info, though. I know they have their reasons. I know most of the reasons are the working class stiffs in camouflage who are working in Iraq in the name of our country. But I’m sure there are other more shallow reasons, and they probably have to do with stacks of hundred dollar bills. Something else, I have a dark feeling, is being hidden.

There hasn’t been new video, and you’d think there’d be that. No new pictures. No audio tapes. The government, via the media, sure blabbed on and on before the war about Saddam’s body doubles, but you notice they don’t mention that anymore.

The government, via the media, don’t mention anything.

They give nothing.

I have seen the stories on Yahoo News, every now and then, which do the courtesy of bringing Saddam’s name back up, but its all rehash. It’s all the same old boring tripe. It all might as well be a cut-and-paste job. If you read the story on him that I saw from last week, and compare it to the ones from two months ago, it’s the same. No new information. No new facts. If he’s saying anything, it’s not quoted. He might as well be dead.

I know it’ll come out someday, once the actual importance of what is going on in Iraq has become simple history and the name Saddam Hussein has become an embarrassed mutter. I know it’s not all going to come out immediately. The U.S. Army is still working on translating German documents from World War II, and all the paperwork on JFK has finally sped up to a slow trickle. Information can travel faster than it ever has, and still, it’s not there. It’s hidden. Suppressed. Slow in coming as it ever was. And I know, too, that it’s strictly none of my business. That’s fine. Maybe what bothers me is that they don’t even try to amuse me with a made up story anymore. Nowadays, the government gets to hang on to everything with complete impunity. Nowadays, they don’t even have to care. That either means they’ve gotten really good at hanging onto the facts when they want to, or the bubbleheads in the media have gotten really lazy. Maybe it’s both. But even the lazy journalists haven’t gotten the small stuff out of the government, like what he is eating, what he watches on TV. The down-time stuff. The Entertainment Tonight stuff. Even that would be something.

What bothers me, and makes me sniff the air suspiciously as if I have some squashed dog grumpy on the bottom of my shoe, is that there isn’t even that. There’s a complete void, and voids are hard to find nowadays.

It’s like a magic act. Now you see him, now you don’t.

Prediction:

You’ll hear more about Janet Jackson’s scandalous boob, and for a longer time, than you heard about Saddam Hussein once he got nailed.