Month: January 2007
After Botched Execution, Saddam Becomes a Sunni Martyr
Bush’s incompetence has turned Saddam Hussein into the last thing we wanted him to be: a martyr for Iraq’s Sunni minority.
What has Pres. Bush accomplished in Iraq? Until last week he had one notch on his holster: The capture and trial of Saddam Hussein. Now, in the wake of the former dictator’s botched execution, even the capture of Saddam has turned into a fiasco.
After grainy cell-phone video of the dictator’s final moments was released, the world sees his death as a lynching by the Shia-controlled Iraqi government — and it has turned Saddam into the last thing we wanted him to be: a martyr for Iraq’s Sunni minority.
Saddam’s martyrdom will undoubtedly grow over the next weeks and months now that a new video showing the condition of the dicator’s corpse immediately after his death has been released:
The 27-second video was posted on an Iraqi news Web site that is known to support Saddam’s outlawed Baath Party.
“A new film of the late immortal martyr, President Saddam Hussein,” the web site said in a headline over a link to the video.
The footage is gruesome:
The second clandestine video from Saddam Hussein’s execution appeared on the Internet Tuesday, showing the deposed Iraqi leader’s corpse, with a gaping neck wound, after his hanging.
The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.
The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30.
As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam’s head and neck.
His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.
In the era of George Bush, we ask a lot of what-ifs: What if he’d inspired courage among Americans after 9/11 instead of fear. What if he’d sent the military into New Orleans in the first hours after Katrina. What if he’d kept us out of the Iraq quagmire instead of creating it.
Now we have another one: What if Saddam Hussein had been sent to the Hague for his war crimes trial, as other brutal dictators have been. Or, at the very least, what if Saddam had been executed in private, under tightly controlled circumstances — you know, the way we kill criminals in the United States.
On This Date – January 8
2007 – Today has been an urban emergency “breaking news” kind of day:
- This morning,cable newsers were practically hyperventilating about a mysterious natural gas smell in lower Manhattan.
- Mid-day, bomb squads blew up a palette of provisions near a cruise ship in Miami. It tested positive six time for the plasitic explosive, C-4.
- A tanker truck began leaking a noxious gas in an industrial section in Sugarland, Texas. Last I heard, a cloud of poisonous gas was headed toward Houston.
- This afternoon, I read that downtown Austin was closed today after 63 dead birds were discovered.
- Tonight, a sudden, devastating brush fire has taken out eight houses – including homes of as-yet unnammed “celebrities,” according to KCBS — near Pepperdine University in Malibu.
More Rumors of Cheney Ouster
In November, we predicted that Vice Pres. Dick Cheney would be ousted in 2007, “resigning” purportedly due to health problems or an overwhelming need to get back to the private sector.
There are rumblings from the capitol today that Cheney’s resignation could be in the works:
Spurious rumor alert: Negroponte to State to replace Rice, who is tapped to replace ailing Cheney.
Our prediction was that John McCain would take Cheney’s place (despite the president’s loathing of him, and vice versa), and will stick to that scenario for now.
Appointing the first woman and first African-American into the second chair may appeal to Bush as a much needed positive bullet point on his legacy, the GOP powers that be would likely prefer having someone like McCain waiting in the wings for 2008.
Quote du Jour
What will people say — in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.
— Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882), German novelist
Giant Impeachment Protest in San Francisco
Over 1,000 people assembled at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, on Saturday, January 6, 2006, to form the word “Impeach!” in giant letters. Protesters said they hoped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents the city of San Francisco in Congress, would see their message.
Post-Partisan Depression: Schwarzenegger to Cut Children’s Welfare
Republicans can’t resist the call of the dark side. It’s always a mistake to vote for them.
Wow! That didn’t take long! It was just last Friday, during his inauguration ceremonies, that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised Californians a new era of what he called “post-partisanship.”
Three days later, we learn that one of the governor’s first actions in his second term will be as Republican-partisan as a politician can get: He’s going to cut welfare payments to poor children:
“It’s ironic that the governor is proposing healthcare for poor kids while taking away their breakfasts,” state Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) said of the cuts, which would affect more than 40,000 families. “Even Republican Gov. [Pete] Wilson, at the time he negotiated welfare reform, agreed that children should not suffer for the behavior of their parents.”
The plan alarmed advocates for the poor, who predicted that eliminating the cash payments of several hundred dollars a month would substantially increase the risk of homelessness for those families.
Schwarzenegger’s proposal also would eliminate this year’s cost-of-living increase for welfare recipients.
The governor made a wild swing to the left last year in order to get re-elected, so it was predictable that he would swing back toward the conservative dark side after his second term was secured. But who knew it would happen so fast.
House GOP Leaders: Dems Must Honor Minority Party ‘Rights’ That GOP Rejected in 2004
In June 2004, after House Democrats had endured 10 years of heavy-handed, authoritarian control by the Republican majority, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put together a “Bill of Rights” for the party of out of power, promising then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) that if he adopted the new rules, the Democrats would abide by them too, if they were to take control of the House again.
How did the Republicans react to the future-speaker’s proposal? By ignoring it:
In keeping with the general atmosphere of the House these days, aides to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he will not respond to the two-page proposal from Minority Leader [Pelosi].
What was in the proposal? Essentially, Pelosi proposed changing the tone in the House:
Pelosi’s document… says: “Too often, incivility and the heavy hand of the majority” have silenced Democrats and choked off “thoughtful debate.” She called on the majority to let the minority offer meaningful amendments and substitutes to important bills; to limit roll-call votes to the normal 15 minutes rather than keeping them open to round up needed votes; and to let all appointees to House-Senate conference committees participate in meetings and decisions.
“When we are shut out, they are shutting out the great diversity of America,” Pelosi said in an interview. “We want a return to civility; we want to set a higher standard.”
In the 2004, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), reacted to Pelosi’s proposed Minority Bill of Rights with his patented unctious smarm:
[Drier] said in an interview that Democrats are crying about the process because they are losing policy debates over job creation and progress in Iraq. His mission as chairman, he said, is “to move our [Republican] agenda, and to do it in the fairest and most responsible way possible. And I do it in that order … Yes, we have done, as we have had the responsibility of governing, some of the things we criticized when we were in the minority.” But he said he feels the Hastert leadership team has struck a fair balance.”
No one believes the Republicans managed the House of Representatives well, and the charges of unfairness against them during their 12 year reign are legion.
So now that the House Republicans are in the minority, how do they feel about the Democrats using their own tactics against them:
“I am very disappointed,” sighed David Dreier of California.
So disappointed that his colleagues have come up with their own “Minority Bill of Rights,” which is basically Pelosi’s 2004 proposal, word for word.
It is, said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., “based on the exact text that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi submitted in 2004…” He added it would ensure “all sides are protected, that fairness and openness is in fact granted by the new majority.”
Right… And what happens now if the Republicans’ rather flamboyant hypocrisy is pointed out to them:
During a House GOP press conference about the new rules Thursday,[Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Florida), said the Democrats “missed [an] opportunity to really change the way that the House does business.”]
Rick Klein of the Boston Globe, referring to Pelosi’s 2004 attempt at that same inclusion, asked, “What stopped you from taking that opportunity when you were still in the majority?”
Putnam quickly tiptoed away from that mine field: “Well, I’ll let Chairman Dreier speak to that.”
Return of the Closeted Gay Republicans
Finally, on a slightly different topic – two of the spokesmen for the House GOP in this article, representatives Dreier and McHenry, bring with them some unresolved baggage from the 109th Congress that demands acknowledgement. Both are allegedly gay men who hide their identities from their constituents while routinely vote against gay civil rights.
Prior to the elections in November, we heard rumblings that the American talibanis (a.k.a the GOP base) were planning a purge of the Gay Republicans on Capitol Hill. Maybe all this sable rattling from Dreier and McHenry is meant to show that even Gay Republicans can be good solidiers for the party.
House GOP Leaders Whining: Dems Won’t Honor Minority Party ‘Rights’ Document That GOP Rejected in 2004
In June 2004, after House Democrats had endured 10 years of heavy-handed, authoritarian control by the Republican majority, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put together a “Bill of Rights” for the party of out of power, promising then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) that Democrats would abide by the agreement when they took control of the House again.
How did the Republicans react to the future-speaker’s proposal? By ignoring it:
In keeping with the general atmosphere of the House these days, aides to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he will not respond to the two-page proposal from Minority Leader [Pelosi].
What was in the proposal? Essentially, Pelosi proposed to change the tone in the House:
Pelosi’s document… says: “Too often, incivility and the heavy hand of the majority” have silenced Democrats and choked off “thoughtful debate.” She called on the majority to let the minority offer meaningful amendments and substitutes to important bills; to limit roll-call votes to the normal 15 minutes rather than keeping them open to round up needed votes; and to let all appointees to House-Senate conference committees participate in meetings and decisions.
“When we are shut out, they are shutting out the great diversity of America,” Pelosi said in an interview. “We want a return to civility; we want to set a higher standard.”
In the 2004, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee was Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) reacted to Pelosi’s Minority Bill of Rights with his patented unctious smarm:
[Drier] said in an interview that Democrats are crying about the process because they are losing policy debates over job creation and progress in Iraq. His mission as chairman, he said, is “to move our [Republican] agenda, and to do it in the fairest and most responsible way possible. And I do it in that order … Yes, we have done, as we have had the responsibility of governing, some of the things we criticized when we were in the minority.” But he said he feels the Hastert leadership team has struck a fair balance.”
So now that the House Republicans are in the minority, how do they feel about the Democrats using their own tactics against them:
“I am very disappointed,” sighed David Dreier of California.
So disappointed that his colleagues have come up with their own “Minority Bill of Rights,” which is basically Pelosi’s proposal, word for word..
It is, said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., “based on the exact text that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi submitted in 2004…” He added it would ensure “all sides are protected, that fairness and openness is in fact granted by the new majority.”
Right… And what happens now if the Republicans’ rather flamboyant hypocrisy is pointed out to them:
During a House GOP press conference about the new rules Thursday,[Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Florida), said the Democrats “missed [an] opportunity to really change the way that the House does business.”]
Rick Klein of the Boston Globe, referring to Pelosi’s 2004 attempt at that same inclusion, asked, “What stopped you from taking that opportunity when you were still in the majority?”
Putnam quickly tiptoed away from that mine field: “Well, I’ll let Chairman Dreier speak to that.”
Finally, on a slightly different topic – the spokesmen for the House GOP in this article, representatives Dreier and McHenry, carry some unresolved baggage from the 109th Congress that demands acknowledgement. Both are allegedly gay men who hide their identities from their constituents while routinely vote against gay civil rights.
Wasn’t there going to be a purge of the Gay Gops on Capitol Hill by the American talibanis? Or has that been postponed until Romney or Brownback are elected president?
How Bad is This?
The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.
The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.
