For no apparent reason, the Guardian is running a story on the limbo status of the Koran that Saddam Hussein commissioned to be transcribed in his own blood:

Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur’an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight — locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant’s legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.

There’s not much to the story beyond that. But it’s worth noting how little we heard of the “Blood Koran” back when the media was doggedly making the case that Saddam was not only secular but also averse to Muslim zealotry. Today, with no argument to make against Bush, the invasion, or its rationale, the press can begin to examine the truth — apropos of absolutely nothing. In any event, better to be stuck with this grotesque document on our hands than the man who dreamed up its execution.