Will he also brag about invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

Many American presidents have kept prized possessions within reach during their White House years. Franklin D. Roosevelt cherished a 19th century ship model of the U.S.S. Constitution. One of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s favorite gifts was an engraved Steuben glass bowl from his cabinet. And sitting on John F. Kennedy’s desk in the Oval Office was a paperweight made from a coconut shell he had carved with a distress message after his PT-109 was sunk during World War II.

The objects have been bequeathed to the American public, accessible through a visit to each man’s presidential library and museum. And so when the library for George W. Bush opens in 2013 on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, visitors will most likely get to see one of his most treasured items: Saddam Hussein’s pistol.

So... just under 5000 soldiers dead and plus 30,000 maimed so Georgie can brag about getting the Mustache of Doom who dared to insult his Poppy?

Go for it, Bush. It will show you are really high class.

Update: Think Progress has more.

Don't psychopaths keep items of their victims?

WTF Tuesday

Why is Bill Kristol's immediate response to anything to bomb it? What is his problem?

Will Cheney really get away with trying to declare that the Iraq war actually saved lives (SAVED lives? Like the almost 5000 soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?) and blaming 9/11 on one of the only people who was running about yelling about al-Qaeda months before, Richard Clarke? And now confesses that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11?!

Why is no one paying attention to more than 40 law clerks who have signed their names to a letter supporting Judge Sonia Sotomayor?

Why are we surprised at the end result? When we pay cash to impoverished young tribesmen every time they drop a GPS device to mark the Taliban hideouts for a CIA drone strike, they start dropping them all over the place just for the money?

Will anyone listen to the generals... especially when one of them calls for a truth commission?

Why is Norm Coleman destroying his legacy with idiot behavior?

WTF?

And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn....

So. Trillions of dollars later and hundreds of thousands dead, a destroyed infrastructure and ruined country, a depleted uranium-poisoned environment, a broken and misused military, and thousands of young terrorists in the making.... all for...

Continuing where Saddam left off:

Baghdad, Iraq (AHN) - Iraq's government approved Tuesday a $3 billion deal with a Chinese company to develop an oil field in the central Shiite province of Wasit.

China Petroleum National Corp. will make the Al-Ahdab oil field produce 25,000 barrels of oil per day in the first three years making it the first foreign company to be awarded a service agreement to tap Iraq's oil reserve since the ouster of former leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The same agreement revives a $700 million joint venture deal between Iraq and the company signed by Hussein's regime in 1997 but was scuttled because of United Nations sanctions and the war following the U.S. invasion of the country.

How's Cheney taking the news? Planning any air raids on al-Maliki's house and the irritatingly functional democratic Iraqi parliament?

How are the real head honchos taking it? Not Deciderer Commander Guy Georgie Bush, but Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP?

Saddam had crumbs of yellowcake on his evil mustache

Daniel De Groot of Open Left:

I noted last night that a supply of uranium from Iraq had been successfully moved to Montreal in secrecy.

If you check into this, you'll quickly find that the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government. It was legally in Iraq according to international law.

I wondered if the right wing echo chamber would use this as "proof" that the WMD claims were true after all. I got even better than I hoped, as not only do they use it that way, but they reveal how dishonest they are by the way they have done this.

De Groot then quoted from the blogs that proceeded predictably to do this very thing.

Bush was wrong. We know he was wrong. The American people know he was wrong. The world knows he was wrong. His glorious shiny 6 week war that would pop the clogs off Saddam and pop Chalabi into office went horribly horribly wrong. The wonderful war and decider commander guy president that would ensure a thousand year Republican Reich didn't happen. There were no weapons of mass destruction because the weapons of mass destruction Rumsfeld sold him had gone past their 'use by' date. Soldiers and innocents have died or been maimed in this glorious war on weapons of mass destruction program related activities. Saddam died, Georgie got his gun, but still the war grinds on.

Why did we attack and invade a sovereign country that had nothing to do with 9/11, Georgie? You'll be explaining yourself for the rest of your life, you know.

After all, it's your legacy we're talking about.

What really happened

Was what 99% of the media was not reporting. McClatchy reporters respond to McClellan's book:

Enough self-aggrandizing trumpet-blowing. OK, Scott, What Happened?

Here's what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:

* The Bush administration was gunning for Iraq within days of the 9/11 attacks, dispatching a former CIA director, on a flight authorized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to find evidence for a bizarre theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Note: See also Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on this point).

* Bush decided by February 2002, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (Yes, we reported that at the time).

* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney, began making the case for war in August 2002, in speeches and reports that not only were wrong, but also went well beyond what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.

* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going, were ignored, excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson and all of the State Department 's Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).

* The Bush administration didn't even want to produce the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs that's justly received so much criticism since. The White House thought it was unneeded. It actually was demanded by Congress and slapped together in a matter of weeks before the congressional votes to authorize war on Iraq.

* The October 2002 NIE was flawed, no doubt. But it contained dissents questioning the extent of Saddam's WMD programs, dissents that were buried in the report. Doubts and dissents were then stripped from the publicly released, unclassified version of the NIE.

* The core of the administration's case for war was not just that Saddam was developing WMDs, but also that, unchecked, he might give them to terrorists to attack the United States. Remember smoking guns and mushroom clouds? Inconveniently, the CIA had determined just the opposite: Saddam would attack the United States only if he concluded a U.S. attack on him was unavoidable. He'd give WMD to Islamist terrorists only "as a last chance to exact revenge."

* The Bush administration relied heavily on an Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, who had been found to be untrustworthy by the State Department and the CIA. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were given millions, and produced "defectors" whose tales of WMD sites and terrorist training were false, fanciful and bogus. But the information was fed directly to senior officials and included in official White House documents.

* The same INC-supplied "intelligence" used in the White House propaganda effort (you got that bit right, Scott) also was fed to dozens of U.S. and foreign news organizations.

* It all culminated in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 making the case against Saddam. Virtually every major allegation Powell made turned out later to be wrong. It would have been even worse had not Powell and his team thrown out even more shaky "intelligence" that Cheney's office repeatedly tried to stuff into the speech.

* The Bush administration tried to link Saddam to al Qaida and, by implication, to the 9/11 attacks. Officials repeatedly pushed the CIA for information on such links, and a separate intel shopwas set up under Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith to find "proof" of such ties. Neither the CIA nor anyone else ever found anything resembling an operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* An exhaustive review of Saddam Hussein's regime's own documents, released in March 2008, found no operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* The Bush administration failed to plan for the rebuilding of postwar Iraq, as we were perhaps the first to report. The White House ignored stacks of intelligence reports, some now available in partially unclassified form, warning before the war about the possibilities for insurgency, ethnic warfare, social chaos and the like.

Read the report for the links and for what real journalism should look like. Thank you, Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay.

Rook of Rook's Rant talks about the savaging of McClellan by both sides.

Spocko of Spocko's Brain also shows sympathy for McClellan's dilemma.

Digby speaks.

Jamison Foser of Media Matters.

Dan Froomkin.

emptywheel.

Glenn Greenwald:

One of the most amazing aspects of this week has been watching network media stars feign shock over the fact that anyone could suggest that they were "deferential, complicit enablers" of the Bush march to war. It's as though they never heard anyone ever suggest such a thing until George Bush's own Press Secretary mocked them for being meek, uncritical disseminators of government propaganda, and now -- they seem to want to convey -- they're just so confused and astonished that anyone could possibly think that about them.

We could have saved so many lives and so much money

If we had just bought Saddam off for one billion dollars. But then Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld wouldn't have realized their glorious PNAC wet dream of owning all of Iraq's oil.

Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars:

On March 17, 2003 President Bush issued the warning: “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing ,” yet now thanks to a transcript leaked to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, we learn that more than three weeks prior to that Bush had told former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that “The Egyptians are speaking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he’s indicated he would be prepared to go into exile if he’s allowed to take $1 billion …” When confronted about the leaked transcript yesterday, Whitehouse spokeswoman Dana Perino did not dispute its accuracy.

Just last week we learned from former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan that the real reason behind the war in Iraq was oil , and now we are finding out that the entire war could have been averted for letting him get away with $1 billion. That’s just than one tenth of 1% of what this insane invasion and occupation of Iraq, that continues claim the lives of our country’s bravest men and women, has now been forcast to cost. Think about that just for a second. Every single death, Iraqi and American coalition alike, could have been saved and Bush could have had Saddam’s oil, but apparently he didn’t even seriously consider it. Topping that, he then lied in public to the entire world about it just so he could have his war regardless. How’s that for compassionate conservatism?

An historical file?

Or just fucking hysterical? Via Ripley at Zen Cabin, the Chicago Tribune:

WASHINGTON—Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.

The assessment on post-Hussein Iraq included judgments that while Iraq was unlikely to split apart, there was a significant chance that domestic groups would fight each other and that ex-regime military elements could merge with terrorist groups to battle any new government.

The second NIC assessment discussed “political Islam being boosted and the war being exploited by terrorists and extremists elsewhere in the region,” one former senior analyst said. It also suggested that fear of U.S. military dominance and occupation of a Middle East country—one sacred to Islam—would attract foreign Islamic fighters to the area.

The former senior [intelligence] official said that after the NIC papers were distributed to senior government officials, he was told by one CIA briefer that a senior Defense Department official had said they were “too negative” and that the papers “did not see the possibilities” the removal of Hussein would present.

They knew. They lied. People died. Impeach, convict, jail.

Saddam signed his own death warrant

When he decided to shift from the U.S. dollar to the Euro when selling his oil.


(via whig at Cannablog)

We went to war for control of oil and to stay the sole superpower. But we already knew that.....

Update 5/8: Via Sorghum Crow, this video of Robert Newman and his hilarious yet stunning History of Oil:

Bill Moyers

And his movie "Buying The War".
How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

The link has the movie as well.

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake has a review.

Having done graduate work in security studies and had classes through the years with people who have actually looked at these issues for a living, I can honestly tell you that certainty of the evidence on something like this is a dead giveaway that someone is selling you a load of crap.

The White House Iraq Group did an excellent sales job. And the people that should have been the most skeptical fell for it hook, line, and sinker…because it was easier that way on their immediate personal connections, on their reputations, on their corporate bottom line. And on their immediate political aspirations, in the case of far too many elected representatives.

After watching the Moyers special last night, I was infuriated. This morning, sipping my first cup of coffee and trying to make some sense of it all, I'm still angry. So I'm going to watch it again later, with a pot of tea, and see if I can glean something beyond "the truth really, really hurts…all of us."

Update: Glenn Greenwald:

For those who have been following these issues, there was no single, specific blockbuster revelation that was not previously known, although Moyers' focus on the superb (and largely ignored) pre-war work of Real Journalists at Knight-Ridder (now at McClatchy) does cast a new light on the profound malfeasance of our most influential media outlets. Most of all, the documentary very powerfully compiles some of the most incriminating facts, and it unapologetically identifies many of the guiltiest and most destructive wrongdoers in our government and in the press.

For that reason, the documentary is -- in one sense -- a very valuable historical account of the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions which deceived the country into the invasion of Iraq. But on another, more significant level, it illustrates the corruption that continues to propel our political and media culture.

[snip]

Moyers' documentary is a superb piece of journalism and makes inescapably clear how profoundly corrupt our dominant political and media institutions were prior to the invasion. But most national "journalists" will simply ignore the whole program (as Digby notes, The New York Times, one of the principal culprits, did not even review it).

They will almost certainly dismiss Moyers as a liberal partisan, not a real journalist, and continue to insist that they are doing a superb and even-handed job. They will continue to revere the most guilty parties responsible for the deceit and destruction of the last six years.

And, worst of all, the sicknesses documented so potently by Moyers will continue to pervade our dominant media and political institutions. Comparing 2002 and now, however, there is a significant difference: as Moyers' documentary illustrates, as does the emergence of political blogs, more and more people are increasingly recognizing how pervasive those deficiencies are, and consequently, are developing multiple alternatives to the rancid governing Beltway system.

Georgie, Dearest

I'm sure we will be seeing a host of these types of books for decades. Here's one of the first: "The Occupation of Iraq," by Ali A. Allawi, published by Yale University Press:

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

- The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

- Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party - from government, school faculties and elsewhere - left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

- An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

- The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

- Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

- The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.

Exactly.

Bryan of Why Now? says it best:

The US was attacked by Sunni fundamentalists on 9/11/2001. Without capturing those responsible, we turned our attention and military might on the most secular state in the region, and are now being belligerent towards a Shi’ia country. By doing this we have allowed our attackers to recover and rebuild their organization after the initial damage caused by the war in Afghanistan.

[For those who came in late: Saddam was an enemy of al Qaeda and Iran, Iran was an enemy of Saddam and al Qaeda, and al Qaeda was an enemy of Saddam and Iran. None of the three was allied in any way to the other two. This is why Iran has benefited from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: two of its major enemies have been weakened.]

The US finds itself bogged down in two wars, winning neither, anticipating a third, while the world is distancing itself from us. Our military is sagging under the strain and the Treasury is in debt to the world.

We are selling weapons to Iran.

Russia sells new missiles to Iran:

"Russia has said that it has delivered new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and said it would consider more requests from Tehran for defensive weapons.

Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defence minister, told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday that Russia had supplied Iran with the modern short-range anti-aircraft systems TOR-M1.

"We're developing our military and technical cooperation with Iran in accordance with international law and will continue to develop it," Ivanov said.

"And if Iran wants to buy defensive, I underline defensive, equipment for its armed forces then why not?"

The United States has accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear arms and undermining security in the Middle East.

The United Nations has banned sensitive nuclear trade with Iran but there are no sanctions on conventional weapon deals."

Then this (via Taylor Marsh)
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fighter jet parts and other sensitive U.S. military gear seized from front companies for Iran and brokers for China have been traced in criminal cases to a surprising source: the Pentagon.

In one case, federal investigators said, contraband purchased in Defense Department surplus auctions was delivered to Iran, a country President Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil."

In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting U.S. missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a U.S. company that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say those parts did make it to Iran.

Sensitive military surplus items are supposed to be demilitarized or "de-milled" - rendered useless for military purposes - or, if auctioned, sold only to buyers who promise to obey U.S. arms embargoes, export controls and other laws."

So, are any of the tinpot dictators paying attention? When you buy weapons from the US, it means we have intentions of invading or attacking you later. Remember Noreiga? Remember Saddam? They were our pals before they were suddenly and conveniently Enemy number one. When the US offers to sell you arms, you should either write your will or say no.

Don't say I didn't warn you....

Update: Whig of Cannablog has the most to the point hilarious video.

Saddam is dead

so we can go home now, right?

CNN is wrong

Riverbend tells us what Saddam really said with his last breath.

Update: But CNN has been wrong before, taking their notes directly from the White House.

Another update: This time CNN is being oh-so-clever and mixed up Osama/Obama. Isn't that ever so funny?

Iran the final focus of the Big Surge

Juan Cole cites Larisa Alexandrovna's post that Saddam's execution was deliberate and timed to assist an attack on Iran.

Jeff Hubner at Larisa's blog agrees:
"I don't like to fall into full-bore paranoia, but after watching the Bush administration for six years, I'm more inclined to credit conspiracy theories than I am to believe in coincidence. One the eve of Mr. Bush's New Year's announcement about his new Iraq strategy, I more than suspect that America is about to be pushed into a full-bore neoconservative policy of militarization from which it will take decades or longer to extract ourselves."

And if I can see it from my lowly perch in front of my computer here in Southern California....why on earth can't others?

The blowback has already begun

over Saddam's death:
Rush to Hang Hussein Was Questioned:
"American officials in Iraq have been reluctant to say much publicly about the pell-mell nature of the hanging, apparently fearful of provoking recriminations in Washington, where the Bush administration adopted a hands-off posture, saying the timing of the execution was Iraq’s to decide.

While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government — frustrated at what they call the government’s failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.

But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday."
[snip]
"None of the Iraqi officials were able to explain why Mr. Maliki had been unwilling to allow the execution to wait. Nor would any explain why those who conducted it had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.

But the explanation may have lain in something that Bassam al-Husseini, a Maliki aide closely involved in arrangements for the hanging, said to the BBC later. Mr. Husseini, who has American citizenship, described the hanging as “an Id gift to the Iraqi people.”"

Update: Glenn Greenwald:
"As Chris Floyd notes, many of the "facts" reported by the Times article are almost certainly rank fiction emanating from the White House with the intent of distancing itself from this grotesque affair -- hence, all of the oh-so-concerned Bush officials oh-so-worried about the need to adhere to legal constraints, urging the Iraqis to slow down and carry out the execution in a dignified, orderly and legal manner, and consenting only because the Iraqis asserted the prerogatives of their sovereignty.

But as Floyd also correctly observes, Saddam was in U.S. custody until the very last minute, and both the fact and the terms of the execution required the approval of Bush officials, which they gave -- implicitly, if not explicitly, by handing over Saddam for his middle-of-the-night noose fitting. Comparisons to the relatively dignified and orderly Nuremburg executions only serve to highlight how far America has tumbled under this administration, on every level that matters.

So this is the grand and noble achievement which the President and his band of bloodthirsty followers are reduced to celebrating -- a lawless, thugish hanging, carried out in clear and deliberate violation of the law, by a bunch of homicidal street thugs and militia foot soldiers who themselves will be included among our next kill targets once our glorious "sustained surge" begins."

Booman reminds us that we let Saddam think we were his friends, until he became a better enemy.

Michael Roston at TPM Cafe has more on the shabby execution and the cellphone videos that are out on the net.

Update: Americablog notes that now the Sunnis are really angry:
"Until Saddam's execution Saturday, most Sunnis sympathized with militants but avoided taking a direct role in the sectarian conflict -- despite attacks by Shiite militia that have killed thousands of Sunnis or driven them from their homes. The current Sunni protests, which appear to be building, could signal a spreading militancy.

Sunnis were not only outraged by Saddam's hurried execution, just four days after an appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence. Many were also incensed by the unruly scene in the execution chamber, captured on video, in which Saddam was taunted with chants of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada."

The chants referred to Muqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand Shiite cleric who runs one of Iraq's most violent religious militias. He is a major power behind the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki."

Right-wingers declare anyone who is not gloating over Saddam's hanging

not an American, not patriotic, and obviously supports terrorism.

Larisa Alexandrovna at her blog At Largely explains to wingnuts why this logic is faulty:

"Let me help you by explaining that one can oppose executions without supporting the crimes committed of those executed. Wow, hard to digest? I know, inbreeding will shrink your brain, did you know that?

But more importantly, this fringe that is the "enemy within America" just so happens to include the Vatican (hardly left leaning) and a cadre of Conservative voices (also hardly left leaning) who have a myriad of reasons for opposing this execution.

Some people oppose the execution because it was based on a flawed trial. Think about it, Saddam Hussein was a monster, we all know this. So why is it that he was only convicted for 148 deaths dating over 25 years ago? Ask yourself that question. Because if signing a death sentence warns execution, then should President Bush not also stand trial?

Clearly there is a reason why other crimes were not brought up or allowed, at this administrations request, to be introduced.

But you don't want to know facts. You don't even want to know where Osama is (remember him, wanted dead or alive?). What you want is some sort of feeling that you matter and that you are a real American. Unfortunately, real Americans like you, are the reason Saddam came to power to begin with.

Those opposed to the execution are not mourning the death of Saddam. What they are mourning is the loss of our own national conscience. Some are, as I have pointed out, not happy with the farce of a trial in a country to which we are attempting to (so they say) export democracy. Some are not comfortable because of the timing, which just happens to be during a holy time in Muslim religion. Not that you would know this as xenophobes are busy only with flag waving and gay bashing."

Execution of Saddam

does not stop world from turning. Bush thought execution of Saddam would be an exclamation point rather than a small comma.

December the deadliest month of 2006 in Iraq

For both the US and Iraqis.

Just curious, does the hanging of Hussein go in the Iraqi column or in the apparently uncounted evildoer column? Bush apparently thinks killing Saddam makes the war all worthwhile....

CNN asks the question:
Will Saddam Hussein's hanging help bring stability to Iraq?

Holy Crap! Josh Marshall proves the pen is mightier than the sword

leaving no warmongering cheerleader standing:

"The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren't grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one -- claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade "prissy and finicky." Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.

What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road? A signal of American power or weakness?"