Blind Justice (New Year's Thread)

 

Saddam is dead, but our Thug-In-Chief is very much alive, albeit politically wounded.

I don't know why the news about Saddam's hanging fails to stir any emotion in me. Well, other than being incensed by the reaction from the left. Thanks to Jim @ Gateway Pundit for the display of liberal bullshit, such as this classic from Huffington Post

Saddam indeed was a brutal dictator.

The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.

I believe that every execution is controversial; Hussein's probably the least of all in terms of accumulated guilt -- he certainly deserved to be put to death by his people.

But Saddam had lost his power and remained for years nothing but a shaddow of his cruel past. Not so our Thug-In-Chief, even though he was dealt a political blow:

With the results of the twin elections held in Iran last week officially established, it is clear that the electorate have dealt the ultra-radical President Ahmadi Nezhad [Ahmadinejad] his first significant political defeat. Despite some attempt at spinning the results, it is clear that the electorate wanted to serve notice on Ahmadi Nezhad about its concerns over his populist domestic policy and poker-like foreign strategy.

The first and politically more important election concerned the choice of 86 mullahs to form the new Assembly of Experts (AOE) who has the task of electing and, if need be, dismissing the "Supreme Guide." Since the "Supreme Guide" holds almost unlimited powers under the Islamist constitution, many analysts regard it as the true powerhouse of the Khomeinist system.

Don't you just wish justice could also deal with our Thug-In-Chief. Don't forget, he has blood on his hands, plenty of it.

During the crackdown on universities in 1980, which Khomeini called the “Islamic Cultural Revolution”, Ahmadinejad and the OSU played a critical role in purging dissident lecturers and students many of whom were arrested and later executed. Universities remained closed for three years and Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guards.

In the early 1980s, Ahmadinejad worked in the “Internal Security” department of the IRGC and earned notoriety as a ruthless interrogator and torturer. According to the state-run website Baztab, allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami have revealed that Ahmadinejad worked for some time as an executioner in the notorious Evin Prison, where thousands of political prisoners were executed in the bloody purges of the 1980s.

In 1986, Ahmadinejad became a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards and was stationed in Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. Ramazan Garrison was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “extra-territorial operations”, a euphemism for terrorist attacks beyond Iran’s borders.

In Kermanshah, Ahmadinejad became involved in the clerical regime’s terrorist operations abroad and led many “extra-territorial operations of the IRGC”. With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. He was the mastermind of a series of assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack, according to sources in the Revolutionary Guards.

He too deserves to die at the hands of those thousands he tortured, maimed and killed.

Comments

[gringoman]

from GDYou get more weird all the time gringo... How about Dubya and his merry pranksters made a breathtakingly bad strategic choice, and then based on political ideology, executed so badly that it will be a central point of study at War Colleges for the next several decades.

Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Monday, January 01, 2007 at 09:14 PM

from gringoman The difference between Bush and the anti-Bush loudmouths: Bush is pc and inadequate; They're pc and insufferable. Your faith in Democrats and wiki (two examples of the unaccountable) seems pretty devout, GD. In fact, so much so that I''ll now turn the other cheek. But if you don't mind, I won't say which one.

[Jeremayakovka]

David Horowitz, "Revenge is Justice":

It's a pinch myself day when the lead news story is about recriminations and regrets that Saddam Hussein, a man who incarnates evil, was not treated more decently at his belated hanging. And the editorial hand-wringing is that this was revenge not justice. As though being nice to someone who put human beings in plastic shredders -- head first -- and boiled even his relatives in oil, would make us more civilized rather than less. Revenge is justice. Saddam should have been drawn and quartered. The best thing about his execution was the presence of Shi'ia muslims taunting him with the memory of one of his Shi'ia victims. The shameless left and shameless liberals who would have kept this monster in power and are now shedding tears over the fact that he was killed should have the decency to let the Iraqis have their moment of revenge, pitiful as it is compared to the crimes this monster committed. Thankfully, at least one liberal -- the editor of the New Republic Marty Peretz -- has had some sensible things to say on this subject in today's Wall Street Journal.

[igout]

I'd have kept the old pos around just in case the locals get very uppety. He had a way with the religion of peace-niks.
If he had to swing, I'd have preferred it have been in public, with brass bands and cheerleaders.

[efexor21]

I'm glad he was executed at last. And I'm glad I made some money with his stock during his last days as he skyrocketed :) http://www.trendio.com/word.php?wordid=120&language=en

[Ghost Dansing]

 

 We are so "over" Saddam. The question of course; what is to replace the ancien régime 

And the backgrounds fading
Out of focus
Yes the picture changing
Every moment
And your destination
You don´t know it
Avalon
When you bossa nova
There´s no holding
Would you have me dancing
Out of nowhere... Roxy Music

Avalon

[Gina Cobb]

Just stopping by. Happy new year, Alexandra! Looking forward to more of your great work in 2007!

[Alexandra]

Happy New Year everyone!

Sorry I haven't been here. I decided to go away at the last moment and didn't have the time to post and let you know. I can see though you have been having fun so I have made it a New year's thread in case of any important developments!

[weekenderman]

Exodus 15:21: "And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; The horse AND HIS RIDER hath he thrown into the sea. (ASV)

If the children of Israel could rejoice when their enemy was destroyed by an act of God (Romans 13 tells us that human governments are instruments of God), why should we who love freedom NOT celebrate when an evil dictator who murdered many (possibly millions) of his own countrymen is escorted into the afterlife?

[Ghost Dansing]

Slowtrain, I agree with your comments.

Here is an interesting excerptation:

This week’s parsha, Vayishlach, opens with Jacob facing an adversary of long ago, his brother Esau. The Torah describes Jacob’s apprehension at meeting this brother, who comes to greet him with 400 armed men ready to battle.

" And Jacob became very frightened and it distressed him."

This fright, says the Midrash, was his fear of being killed. The distress he felt was that he might be compelled to slay others. It was obvious to Jacob that if a battle would ensue, it would be to the death. Jacob faced the tragic dilemma of kill or be killed. He was living The Most Dangerous Game. The great medieval commentator, the Ralbag (Rabbi Levy Ben Gershom), writes that the term "distress" expresses a greater sense of emotion than it does fear. To Jacob, the thought of needing to kill pained him more than the thought of being killed.

This no-win predicament is the sad circumstance our people face whenever we need to raise our weapons in self-defense. Golda Meir summed it up so poignantly when she said, "We can forgive our Arab neighbors for killing our sons, but we can never forgive them for making our sons killers."

This conflict of emotion did not deter Jacob from preparing for the battle at hand, and it should not deter you, Steven. War may be necessary, but it is still war. Killing a sworn enemy may be essential, but it is still killing. This realization, however uncomfortable and paradoxical it may be, must both plague and steel the conscience of your soul.

By Rabbi Yakov Vann 

 

[Ghost Dansing]

Well there's the definitive historical interpretation: Israel was a Nazi plot!... these guys really gotta pick up a book every once an awhile... or at least avail themselves of the Wikipedia.

I think Atlas Shrugged had the right idea on this particular story:

Springtime for Hitler 

[slowtrain]

Good people,

The facts about Saddam are irrefutable; his brutality towards his countrymen, his evil ambitions towards his neighbors, his hatred and ill-intents towards America.

Without question, Saddam deserves to pay fully for his crimes, perhaps he has. Nevertheless, there is something uncanny about celebrating the violent death of a human being, regardless of how barbaric that human being might have been. Of course, my reservation is not to the benefits of Saddam or anyone like him for that matter, rather it is in the interest of our decency.

The eradication of evil from our midst sometimes requires the extraction of the ultimate penalty from the agent of evil. Nevertheless, we must not loose our sensitivity, with regards to the magnitude of that penalty. The loss of such sensitivity is inevitably accompanied by the erosion of decency and high-mindedness.

In our struggle to overcome evil, we must be careful not to sacrifice the good in us to defeat the evil outside us, to do so would amount to cultivating evil in ourselves. We must not become guilty of the same evil that we seek to overcome (i.e. the disregard for human life), for if we fail to do so, we would have given victory to the evil by recreating it. I am not a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, but I must admit that he might have said it best, even if in irony, that “Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Happy New Year!

[Red Violin]

Iran: Hitler was a Jew

Advisor to President Ahmadinejad claims Nazi leader was Jew who conspired with USSR and Britain to establish Jewish state

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3347309,00.html

[Red Violin]

Happy New Year everyone.

Please write your rebuttles to Los Angeles Times to an op-ed by M. Javad Zarif / M. JAVAD ZARIF is the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. Iran sponsors terrorism and proxy terrorists across the globe, but this did not bother those at the Los Angeles Times who printed this vile propaganda of M. Javad Zarif / M. JAVAD ZARIF: "The case for Iran" is an unrebutted Iranian propaganda article. Please don't let the propaganda machinary of IR get away with this using our free press. Thanks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-zarif30dec30,1,1787018.story

If you wish you can use below articles to back up your arguments:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA03Ak11.html (the most accurate descritption of Iran's foreign policy set by Khomeini in 1979)

Time is running out:
http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2007&m=01&d=02&a=4

[Ernesto Ribeiro]

Violence marks French réveillon; more of 400 cars have been set on fire

Reuters: Vandals set fire to around 400 cars during the night and the French police informed to have bound more of 250 persons, in a wave of violence that marked the celebrations of year in the France.

In an effort for maintain the order, 25 000 policemen were mobilized in all the country during the night, including 4500 in Paris, where the authorities prohibited pyrotechnic shows.

The police affirmed that, to the 6h (local schedule), 258 persons had been detainees in the entire country, including two infants of 8 and 10 years that set on fire garbage cans in Strasbourg.

Three infants with age between 10 and 12 years were detainees in a suburb of Paris, after will be caught in the act carrying buckets of gasoline.

Set fire on cars became a common event in the France during the commemorations of year, specially in the poor suburbs of many cities.

(And the left-wing treacherous press is so vagabond and impudent that stifles who are those poor: muslims.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRENCH FROGS!

[Ghost Dansing]

You get more weird all the time gringo... How about Dubya and his merry pranksters made a breathtakingly bad strategic choice, and then based on political ideology, executed so badly that it will be a central point of study at War Colleges for the next several decades.

[gringoman]

Speaking of today's quagged-up American, didn't Wilhelmina Shakespeare put it best?

The fault, dear Boobus, is not in Iraq,
But in our politically correct selves,
That we are quagmires of false cons
And devious libs, suckled by
The testy teats of wanton media.

[Lance de Boyle]

GD makes some good points, summarized in the conclusion:

"So, the execution of Saddam unfortunately serves to demonstrate, once again, the terrible double-bind placed on the American People by this Republican administration.

"Alas, we cannot unequivocally applaud the execution of a certifiable tyrant due to the way the overall mission has been botched."

I add that the ambiguity and ambivalence in our leadership reflects the same in the public.

The failure of leadership is the (apparent) attempt to have it both ways---to please all sides.

That is what is botched.

This could be over in a week if our leaders were unambivalently bent on winning.

Sadr? five minutes.

Syria. 15 minutes.

The situation is not the quagmire. The strategy of not finishing each mission, starting the next mission, and having to attend to unfinished past missions---that is the quag.

[Ghost Dansing]

Oops... messed up the link:

GOP Divided...

[Ghost Dansing]

So, anyway... the execution of Saddam remains ambiguous as to its full significance... questions remain regarding how much this demonstrates the maturity of Iraq's judicial system... the execution's effect on the insurgency... the propriety of the timing and manner of execution etc.

Apparently the "Rush to Hang Hussein Was Questioned" by American advisors putting the U.S. administration again in a strained relationship with the Shia-dominated Maliki government.

Here are some quotes fromt he article:

...Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein...

...The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end...
...The Americans’ concerns seem certain to have been heightened by what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in video recordings made just before Mr. Hussein fell through the gallows trapdoor at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday...

...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...

By John F. Burns and Marc Santora
Published: January 1, 2007, NYT

So, the execution of Saddam unfortunately serves to demonstrate, once again, the terrible double-bind placed on the American People by this Republican administration.

Alas, we cannot unequivocally applaud the execution of a certifiable tyrant due to the way the overall mission has been botched.

Certainly the next big question for Iraq in this New Year will be whether or not a surge in troop strength will improve the conditions as they currently exist.

GOP Divided...

[Ghost Dansing]

Liquid... I loved the Super Furry Animals...

Tiny Tidbit: ...the group was a techno outfit, yet they quickly evolved into a neo-psychedelic and progressive pop outfit.

The video is as slick as the lyrics...

I wonder what the kids are thinking?  

[Lance de Boyle]

GD, you use anecdotes to support very broad generalizations.

This is problematic.

It is giving me a bad rash.

And (follow me closely here) I have run out of cortizone.

You see the problem.

[Ghost Dansing]

1. "rightests attack a mythical 'left'"

An odd assertion since the left itself calls itself left.

In politics, left-wing, the political left or simply the left are terms that refer to the segment of the political spectrum associated, to varying extents, with socialism, anarchism, communism, social democracy, American liberalism or social liberalism, and defined in contradistinction to its polar opposite, the Right.

Liberalism in the United States of America is a broad political and philosophical mindset, favoring individual liberty, and opposing restrictions on liberty, whether they come from established religion, from government regulation, from the existing class structure, or from multi-national corporations.  Liberalism in America takes various forms, ranging from classical liberalism to social liberalism to neoliberalism.

Left Wing Politics

You will note that in the WIKI, there are a few disparate things sort of "lumped together".

I would say that the "left" and "leftest" monikers have been deliberately confused with the terms "Liberal" and "liberal" ... Liberalism being associated with "leftest" extremes that resulted in Communist Totalitarianism.

The Constitution of the United States and the governmental structure it produces is "Liberal" and "liberal". It is also represents a hybrid political philosophy that runs a center-line between  laissez faire economics (once called "Liberal Economics) and centralized totalitarian control of the economy... thus one has both robust Free Enterprise, and a robust, governmentally managed system of Social Security.

To embrace the Constitution and the founding documents is centrist, moderate, and conservative... thus embracing the Liberal foundations of the Nation.

While there may be those who call themself "left", the center-mass of "left" would only be marginally described, at best, as "center left", meaning they might favor to some degree more governmental regulation and oversight... but never at the expense of the capitalist economic engine. Even on the "Coummuist Party of America" website someone pointed out, one finds very little discussion of "workers revolution" or dicatorship of the proletariat... or even pure Marxist/Leninism. The largest Communist nation that exists, China, has launched itself into a massive boom by absorbing Capitalist economic strategies... Go figure.

Communist Party USA

Thus, righest hyperbole demonizing the "left" and "Liberalism" essentially bunched with or equated to Communism is, at root,  propaganda, and in reality a rightest attack on the political center.

The rightest phenomenon that took root in the Republican Party and that I call "modern Republicanism" is a rejection of the centrist, hybrid governmental structure that has become the status quo, intending in its place a regressive return to the age of robber barons and weak central government. Notions like Social Security programs and regulations for the "common good" are eschewed for a return to laissez faire, with governmental functions reduced to funneling public monies to corporate profit margins (no strings attached) and the President, elected by the majority to rule like a petty potentate or leader of  a third world kleptocracy... thus... Corporate Plutocracy; a rightest phenomenon that is analogous to Leftest Governmental Totalitarianism. Advocates of the latter barely exist in America.

The point is that a massive "rightest" influence is demonstrably operant in America, whereas for "the left" we have to drag out some poor little guy from Vermont named Bernie, that calls himself a Social Democrat.

2. "have a concept of governance that is simple 'majority rule'"

This is surely a bizarre statement. The right (from Plato on) traditionally has been wary of majority rule. An ill-informed and easily swayed (Athenian) public can vote to go to war with Sparta. [Not smart.]

Thus Liberalism as the centrist tradition in America... The Liberal tradition that Dubya and his merry pranksters have tried to undercut... the Liberal governmental structure balancing power blocks makes it virtually impossible for any group; rich, religious, corporate or political to achieve total hegemony. The Republicans made a darn good try to undermine this, but Abramhoff is in jail, and guys like Delay may meet him there shortly.

3. "with no protection of minorities."

Most civil rights legislation was passed under Republicans.

A Republican Party of bygone years that later absorbed the ejected segregationist Dixiecrats, nearly in total... not to mention exercising the "Southern Strategy" to wrest white male southern voters from the Democratic Party playing on bigotry against Blacks.

I believe LBJ actually signed the Civil Rights legislation that ensured the Democratic Party would eventually lose the South as a voting block.

4. "advocate for robust powers in the Executive Branch."

And this means? To make your point, you should say that the right wishes to weaken congress and the supreme court. But you can't make that point.

You're kidding right? Go ask Grover Norquist... you know Grover don't you?

Grover Norquist, a principal organizer of the conservative movement who is close to the Bush White House and usually supports its policies, says, "If you interpret the Constitution's saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws you don't have a constitution: you have a king." He adds, "They're not trying to change the law; they're saying that they're above the law and in the case of the NSA wiretaps they break it." A few members of Congress recognize the implications of what Bush is doing and are willing to speak openly about it. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic senator from California, talks of a "very broad effort" being made "to increase the power of the executive." Chuck Hagel, Republican senator from Nebraska, says:

There's a very clear pattern of aggressively asserting executive power, and the Congress has essentially been complicit in letting him do it. The key is that Bush has a Republican Congress; of course if it was a Clinton presidency we'd be holding hearings.

5. "are at heart Corporate Plutocrats."

This is an empirical question, and the data do not support the assertion. Some of the biggest corporations are run by leftists. Think media.

I'm afraid it's back to the thinking board, GD.

The other myth spread by righttests is that the Liberal Press (AKA The Free Press) is "leftest".Whatever doesn't fit your point of view is "leftest", is what I think.

Anyway, I'll be you cannot find a single solution to a social problem, like old people being able to get medicine less expensively, that doesn't involve somehow funneling tax payer's money to Corporations, who then "graciously" solve the problem (as far as you know).

In the example of pharmaceuticals, the Government wasn't even allowed to bargain for good prices based on buying power when the Republican law was passed.

Yes... Corporate Plutocracy

The first thing Cheney did when he became VP was gather-up all the Energy Mogols to "secretly" write the legislation intended to provide governmental oversight and regulation. Talk about letting the fox guard the hen house.

Oh, and when ENRON was defrauding the State of California, what was Dubya's response? "Oh... sorry California... you're on your own... no Federal intervention..."

When you vote for a political party that doesn't believe government has a function, you ensure poor performance... but those Corporate profit margins will, of course, continue to grow from public monies, though not much might be delivered by way of service to the public... at that Republicans are efficient.

[Liquid]

OMGOSH....this is a juxtapose moment!

*holds a mirror up to get the right angle of "the reflection"

This is a tale of two situations
Mutual appreciation
Away from narrow preconception
Avoiding conflict hypertension
Non-phobic word aerobic
This was my domain
'Til someone stole my name

You've got to tolerate
All those people that you hate
I'm not in love with you
But I won't hold that against you
Never poses as a liberal

[Lance de Boyle]

Ghost Dansing writes,

"In America, rightests attack a mythical "left", have a concept of governance that is simple "majority rule" with no protection of minorities, advocate for robust powers in the Executive Branch, and are at heart Corporate Plutocrats, regardless of their "religious" trimmings."

1. "rightests attack a mythical 'left'"

An odd assertion since the left itself calls itself left.

2. "have a concept of governance that is simple 'majority rule'"

This is surely a bizarre statement. The right (from Plato on) traditionally has been wary of majority rule. An ill-informed and easily swayed (Athenian) public can vote to go to war with Sparta. [Not smart.]

3. "with no protection of minorities."

Most civil rights legislation was passed under Republicans.

4. "advocate for robust powers in the Executive Branch."

And this means? To make your point, you should say that the right wishes to weaken congress and the supreme court. But you can't make that point.

5. "are at heart Corporate Plutocrats."

This is an empirical question, and the data do not support the assertion. Some of the biggest corporations are run by leftists. Think media.

I'm afraid it's back to the thinking board, GD.

Resist the temptation to substitute rhetorical flourishes for data. It's such a leftwing motif.

[Ghost Dansing]

Liquid was doing something that I always wanted to do. Let's see if it works.

 Sunday Girl

[Ghost Dansing]

http://www.cpusa.org/

My point exactly... someone running for public office as a "Communist" are about as likely to win grass roots affection as someone running as a "Nazi".

However, I can point to a current political party in America that got a bunch of rightests elected...

In classic scenarios... European... extreme rightests were/are in confrontation with extreme leftests and both hate the center as insufficiently zealous.

In America, rightests attack a mythical "left", have a concept of governance that is simple "majority rule" with no protection of minorities, advocate for robust powers in the Executive Branch, and are at heart Corporate Plutocrats, regardless of their "religious" trimmings.

[Lance de Boyle]

The left have a superfical Cliff's Notes version of history, and no long-term memory.

They don't remember how many persons Saddam murdered. How many were imprisoned in steel coffins. How many had their hands and tongues amputated.

All they saw was a guy who dressed well and looked like Ernie Kovacs.

[Ariel]

"kinda like finding true "leftests" in America"

Like these? http://www.cpusa.org/

If you need help, please ask.

[Ghost Dansing]

From Gateway Pundit:

"There is an enemy in America- Powerful -Shrill- Self-Hating - It has never been more obvious, it has never been more open... than it is today- mourning Saddam!"

"It is not a fringe element.
It is not a minority.
It is the voice of today's American Left."

Personally I think it is mainly the Crypto-Trotskyites that are failing applaud Saddam's death. I think that Pundit is unfairly painting the left with too broad a brush.

I mean, like... everybody knows that defeating Saddam is about the only victory Dubya has had in Iraq... and there really isn't much of a "left" in America anyway... so I think Pundit got it wrong...

Check out this quote from a Frenchmen commenting on the "American Left":

"Nothing made a more lasting impression during my journey through America than the semi-comatose state in which I found the American left."

"I know, of course, that the term "left" does not have the same meaning and ramifications here that it does in France."

"But at the end of the day, my progressive friends, you may coin ideas in whichever way you like. The fact is: You do have a right. This right, in large part thanks to its neoconservative battalion, has brought about an ideological transformation that is both substantial and striking."

"And the fact is that nothing remotely like it has taken shape on the other side--to the contrary, through the looking glass of the American "left" lies a desert of sorts, a deafening silence, a cosmic ideological void that, for a reader of Whitman or Thoreau, is thoroughly enigmatic."

"A Letter to the American Left"
Bernard-Henri Lévy
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/levy

Now... if Pundit is saying that failing to see Saddam's execution as a really big deal is a sign of being a politically "left", or being politically "left" results in not seeing Saddam's execution as a really big deal... well... maybe its a sign that maybe it's not a really really big deal... and the net change in the situation in Iraq will be pretty much nil.

I guess Republicans supporting Saddam and then later cheering his execution is just another instance of flip-flopping.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

But I for one am glad he's gone.

By the way, finding references to Crypto-Trotskyites on the WEB might be a little daunting... I like to use it though because it is kinda like finding true "leftests" in America.

[gringoman]

from The Huffington via Alexandra The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him[Saddam] are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.

from gringoman The Huffers are basically California, right?--the place that Fred Allen said is great for oranges. 'atrocities worse than' what? In the interests of bloviation control, GE (Gringo Enterprises) looked into the Saddamy these people are Huffing about.....

Dec30 Update for Gringommentary]

TO HANG IN BAGHDAD

Not even proxies of lawyer-drenched America could stop it or appeal it away. This was in effect Mesopotamia, not Washington, not ACLU turf, not the Ninth Circuit holding forth in San Francisco. Saddam Hussein finally kept his appointment with the gallows. Reactions, ranging from joy to measured satisfaction to distress, erupted instantly. Most Iraquis---Shia and Kurds--- cheered, many having volunteered to put the rope around their former master's neck. India objected---as it objects even to killing cows. Some Westerners worried that executing the executioner will make the jihadis angry. Saddam's once-dominant Sunnis agreed. The usual Hamas, Hezbollah, Osamaton suspects agreed---croaking Saddam will make them very angry at the infidels. Unhappy American liberals, seeking to feel Islamic feelings---short of outright aiding and abetting---warned (or hissed) that "this doesn't mean the war is over, don't you understand, don't you get it?" While some American women (right-wing?) report being "thrilled" at the monster's demise, there are also male-gendered who feel upset by such punishment---a sensitive New Age guy mentioned "stomach wrenches." The Pope denounces capital punishment. Left and media elites complain: Inadequate court! Unjust! So he's dead, what's that prove? Didn't the the U.S. help to make Saddam? Bush is lying again!

In all the din and clamor and politicking, nobody mentions a book that puts a real face on the sharp-dressing, Moscow-trained, former Sunni street thief who was hung in Baghdad by Iraqis, (with a little help from Yanks). "I WAS SADDAM'S SON" is by and about Latif Yahia, scion of a wealthy Iraqi family. Because of his resemblance he was ordered---you may say 'chosen'---to become a double for Saddam's elder son Uday---this Uday a very privileged homicidal maniac in his own right. Latif Yahia's account is often horrifying, yet always compelling, fascinating, intelligent and powerfully detailed. Although world opinion now calls the U.S. "torturers," the NY Times running Abu Ghraib stories for more than 35 consecutive days on its front page, here is "torture," not as defined by U.S. activist lawyers and "Pinch" Sulzberger, but as practiced under Soviet-tutored Saddam Hussein. In one of the book's countless episodes, Yahia, to "develop" him to become part of Uday's inner circle, is taken to headquarters of the al-Khass Intelligence Service. Here they show him dozens of torture videos done with their prisoners:

(At Dec30 GRINGOMMENTARY, some samples, plus one of Yahia's numerous eyewitness accounts of how the Saddam clan---in this case Numero Uno himself, after an ambush and a magnificent palace of his was ruined during Gulf War I---would take "justice" in their hands---literally, very literally--- Saddam far surpassing Hitler or Stalin in personal hands-on "management" of perceived enemies. Check it out if you dare.)

[Ghost Dansing]

..."*walking by Ghost's 'posts block'...kicking a can and as usual trying to make sense of his words that he might subscribe to and could be pasting from...I begin to hum a little tune as I narrow my eyes at the ghostly space ...
Tom Wait's What's He Building?"...

Tom Wait is so kewl... I thought I was the only one who liked him around here. :)

Ghost waves her crooked boney finger at Liquid 'n sez... you daresn't be snoopin' rown here youngin'... I'z gots sumpin special fer ol' mr amajad... he needs a little o me luv poshun numma 9... here's a majik sighn fer ya...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr1L-pppRsM&mode=related&search=

[Daniel DiRito]

To view a cynical and satirical visual of George Bush playing a round of "Hangman"...link here:

www.thoughttheater.com

[Alexandra]

Reading Ghost's comment prompted me to add this link to the main post:

Well, other than being incensed by the reaction from the left. Thanks to Jim @ Gateway Pundit for the display of bullshit, such as this classic from Huffington Post

Saddam indeed was a brutal dictator.

The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.

[Liquid]

Leave it to Ghost to blame the USA for Iran's Ahmadinejad! Ghost, BTW...How did you manage to do an entire post without using that favorite four letter word of yours: BUSH? I think that was a first for ya! Ha Ha...and what is up with the lyrical subliminal thingy? I have to admit I like that part! I guess we all can play that one with ya...

*walking by Ghost's 'posts block'...kicking a can and as usual trying to make sense of his words that he might subscribe to and could be pasting from...I begin to hum a little tune as I narrow my eyes at the ghostly space ...
Tom Wait's What's He Building?

[Ghost Dansing]

There are two things to remember about Iran. 1. It isn't Arab. 2. They did have, at one point, a Liberal Democracy.

The irony of it all is that America undercut Iran's Liberal Democracy and supported Saddam's brutal Baathist dictatorship.

The West really has to get its act in order too.

http://unitediranianfront.blogspot.com/

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/25/1534210

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Donald Rumsfeld (who had served in various positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including as President Ford's defense secretary, and at this time headed the multinational pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co.) was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish "direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein," while emphasizing "his close relationship" with the president [Document 28]. Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and the U.S.'s efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq's oil; its facilities in the Persian Gulf had been shut down by Iran, and Iran's ally, Syria, had cut off a pipeline that transported Iraqi oil through its territory. Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons, according to detailed notes on the meeting [Document 31].

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq28.pdf

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq31.pdf

..."Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!)
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument"

"I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives"...

Green Day

[Francis W. Porretto]

From your lips to God's ears, dear.

The Iranian theocracy might fall this year. Though it's difficult to be certain at this remove, it appears that it's committed enough political blunders and economic perversities -- specifically, over-investment in nuclear development at the expense of oil industry infrastructure -- that it might face a revolution of rising expectations, similar to what occured in France in 1789. If that should come to pass, let's hope that the good guys are poised to support those forces that would bring a free republican order to replace the mullahocracy left us by the late, unlamented, never to be adequately reviled Ruhollah Khomeini.