Bush, Cheney Pay Tribute to Martin Luther King by Sponsoring a Lynching

Ah, what timeless finesse and grace these compassionate conservatives display.

From the Mercury News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, officials said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism.

Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh confirmed the executions....

He also said Ibrahim's head was severed from his body during his hanging.

"In a rare incident, the head of the accused Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan was separated from his body during the execution," al-Dabbagh told reporters....

A lawyer for the two men told The Associated Press recently that they were taken from their cells and told they were going to be hanged on the same day Saddam was executed.

"The Americans took me and al-Bandar from our cells on the same day of Saddam's execution to an office inside the prison at 1 a.m. They asked us to collect our belongings because they intend to execute us at dawn," Ibrahim reportedly said. He said the two men were also told to write their wills."

Al-Bandar and Ibrahim were taken back to their prison cells nearly nine hours later, according to Ghazawi....

"...Iraqi authorities decided to execute Saddam alone on what National Security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie called a 'special day.'"

Thus Bush and Cheney helped make Martin Luther King Day a "special day" for Iraq too this year.

And while, in days of yore, Cheney surprised some by showing initial opposition to such a special day,

never ones to shirk from setting an example, Dick and Bush agreed on the aforementioned merry proceedings as a means of making January 15th their own special day by celebrating in their own special way.

Quote of the Day:
I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

--Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution"

Kucinich Draws a Line in the Sand

2004 Presidential dark horse candidate Dennis Kucinich on a ticket with now-DNC-Chairman Dean -- was far-and-away my first choice among candidates.

His chillingly brilliant speeches show depth, passion, and a reverence for Truth and the Common Good.

Aside from being one of the most vocal opponents of what Jon Stewart so aptly calls Bush's "catastrofuck", Kucinich suggested America could benefit from a Department of Peace to counter the snapping, insatiable maw of the military-industrial complex.

Makes damned good sense to me.

And, in the wake of the 2002 "election", when I first began sending out half a million emails to activists and members of the press about what Bev Harris, Greg Palast and others had uncovered, Kucinich was one of only three public servants who took the time to write a personal note expressing his own misgivings.

That's why I can't seem to wipe a smirk of delight off my face today:

...Kucinich announced that he has been named chair of the newly-formed Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, drawing cheers from the crowd. The subcommittee will have jurisdiction over all domestic agencies of the federal government, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Ah... sweet, sweet justice....

From the ever-amazing Raw Story:

While making an unannounced appearance at a media reform conference on Friday, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) - a candidate for president in 2004 and already announced for 2008 - was pressed by bloggers in attendance about impeachment.

Telling the crowd that while he didn't think immediate action was wise, due to fears that Bush might "accelerate the war even more," the congressman warned that "if Bush attacks Iran, all bets are off."

At the Free Press National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee, Kucinich announced that he has been named chair of the newly-formed Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, drawing cheers from the crowd. The subcommittee will have jurisdiction over all domestic agencies of the federal government, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

"Kucinich, among Capitol Hill's most outspoken critics of President Bush and the war in Iraq, had been ranking member of the National Security Subcommittee in the last legislative session," Jessica Brady reported for CongressDaily. "As the panel's presumed chairman in the Democratic-led 110th Congress, he had a ready platform to advance his antiwar agenda."

But Kucinich told CongressDaily that he "might wield more influence" as chairman of the subcommittee and that House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) "made clear that he's going to use the full committee" to address foreign policy issues. Kucinich added, "Domestic policy could end up having the most influence of any committee [because] it has oversight of all domestic policy in the US."

On media reform and subcommittee plans

At the conference Friday attended by RAW STORY, which included bloggers and alternative media journalists, Kucinich said, "I intend to hold hearings on media reform."

"Those hearings would address concentration of media ownership and other issues," he pledged. "We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda…The entire domestic agenda has been ignored while the focus has been on the acceleration of wealth upwards." Kucinich also pledged to hold hearings on restoring the Fairness Doctrine.

Asked by RAW STORY if he would support a federal shield law to protect journalists and alternative media members, such as blogger Josh Wolf, who has been in jail 144 days for refusing to turn over videotape of a protest demonstration, Kucinich replied, "I would be willing to hold hearings on journalists who have been prosecuted or persecuted because of their defense of the First Amendment. One of the founding matters in our country is a free and unfettered press…I think there should have been an inquiry into why Dan Rather was fired." He embraced Liz Wolf Spada, the mother of Josh Wolf, and asked her to contact his office with details of her son’s plight.

Kucinich stated that he would support a federal shield law and would restore Constitutional rights to prevent the government from eavesdropping on journalists without a warrant. "This surveillance society needs to be dismantled," he said. Kucinich called for repeal of the Patriot Act, adding that most members of Congress voted for it sight unseen.

Kucinich, who voted to reject the Ohio electors after the controversial 2004 presidential election, said he has held meetings with committee staff to set up hearings on the integrity of the electoral process. "This issue of election integrity is right up there with peace and healthcare and all the other issues that people are most concerned about," he told an election integrity advocate in the alternative media press corps. "I’m ready to work with you to heighten public awareness."

Kucinich suggested that his committee, which has broad oversight powers, could look into other issues, ranging from contractors involved in post-Katrina work to Bureau of Indian Affairs policies, poverty and neglect of American Indians.

"We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible," the presidential contender concluded.

On impeachment and Iran

Bloggers pressed Kucinich about the impeachment issue. While agreeing that the administration should ultimately be held accountable under international law, Kucinich opposed immediate impeachment proceedings. "We must keep the focus on our troops, Kucinich said. "The minute impeachment is on the table, this President will accelerate the war even more."

But he added, "if Bush attacks Iran, all bets are off." Later he added, "We need to safeguard our Constitution." If the President takes steps towards another war, Kucinich warned, Congress could make "an active effort" toward impeachment.

"The President is clearly trying to provoke Iran," he said, adding that the Bush administration is "treading on the thinnest ice it has ever been on."

Last week, in a press release sent out after Bush's speech on his "new strategy," Kucinich said that Congress should not "follow the President's path of war."

"Congress needs to take a stand against the President and take the necessary steps to bring our troops home," Kucinich stated. "We need to begin talks with Iran and Syria -- and not blame them for our misguided war in Iraq. Diplomacy is the only way to avoid a widening war. If we follow the President's path of war, we will get...more war."

On Friday, the presidential candidate also discussed a petition for redress signed by 1,000 active-duty members of the US armed forces, which he will presented to Washington on Tuesday.

"We are not supporting our troops by sending them off to a war based on lies," Kucinich said, also criticizing the Bush administration for failing to properly armor and supply solders in Iraq. "Support for the troops is listening to what they have to say."

Quote of the Day:

"Little darlin'
It's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darlin'
It seems like years since it's been here.

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say
It's alright."
--George Harrison, et al

A Pervasive Chill in the Air...

Journalists and bloggers across the board are echoing the same sentiment: Bush's behavior is getting scarier and scarier.

It's not just that he simply trod heedlessly over the will of the overwhelming majority of American voters and a proportionate bipartisan majority of Congress.

It's not that he deliberately chose to forgo even cosmetic consultations with the entire legislative branch before defying the will of 90% of the country.

It's not even that he seems about to launch an exponentially more perilous, ill-conceived, and devastating campaign apparently out of sheer wilfullness and adolescent machismo.

No, what's most frightening of all is that we, the peoples of the world, are reduced to speculation about what insane actions Bush will take next; the majority of six billion of us are not privy to the plans (if indeed they are plans) being made behind closed doors in Washington, DC -- plans that it's no exaggeration to say have the potential to exterminate all life on the planet.

There is a prescient tingling along my spine; an unpleasant creepy feeling of dread verging on goosebumps.

We are standing on the edge of a precipice. God grant that saner figures intervene before this madman pulls us all over the cliff with him.

On Your FEET, Soldier!

After all the noise about that perennial turncoat, the American voter, rightwing voices in America have finally determined why victory's taking so in Iraq.

According to the National Review Online, it's all because our men and women in uniform are a bunch of lazy, pampered bastards:

We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that....

And the only way to demonstrate a will to win is to go after the Iranians and the Syrians, as well as the terrorists already inside Iraq. God knows the evidence of Syrian involvement is overwhelming, and the latest information reportedly shows they are on both sides of the Sunni/Shiite divide. If we continue to blither ineffectually about how “unhelpful” the mullahs and the Assads are, everyone in those parts will understand that we do not yet have the will to win this war.

If we do not tackle Syria, we will simply provide the terrorists with more targets. If we do go after them, we may yet win this thing. As luck would have it, this is the ideal moment to go after the Iranians, since their supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is either dead or dying, and a vicious internal power struggle is under way in Tehran. We should propose a better solution to the Iranian people: revolution, leading to their freedom. That would require the president and the secretary of State to call for regime change in Iran and Syria, something from which they have always retreated in the past.

But if we want to win, that’s the first step. Anybody ready?

This from contributing editor Michael Ledeen. Meanwhile, Jim Hightower points to another, much more plausible culprit.

And really, in the final analysis, "victory" is all just a matter of perspective.

Quote of the Day:

He had white horses
And ladies by the score
All dressed in satin
And waiting by the door

Oooh, what a lucky man he was
Oooh, what a lucky man he was

White lace and feathers
They made up his bed
A gold covered mattress
On which he was laid

He went to fight wars
For his country and his king
Of his honor and his glory
The people would sing

A bullet had found him
His blood ran as he cried
No money could save him
So he laid down and he died

Oooh, what a lucky man he was
Oooh, what a lucky man he was

-- "Lucky Man," Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Citizen Protests Hatespeech, is Smacked Down by Disney

Nothing like a giant corporation shutting up American citizens who are tired of hearing rightwing radio DJ suggestions to electrocute people with sadosexual torture, assassinate Nancy Pelosi, commit indiscriminate ethnic genocide or kill members of the press.

Sure, their hate speech is, to an extent, protected speech, but when it's being propagated by a "family friendly" big-money corporation like our true and constant friends at Disney, yanking the mega-cash behind it is only good sense.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Neocon World

Courtesy of ABC, we have just learned that in the neocon halcyon reign of Ronald Raygun, Mad Dog Bolton personally had the FBI lean on witnesses that might be potentially damaging to the military-industrial pupeteer set's handpicked go-to guy on the Supreme Court -- the late, great, batshit crazy, running-through-the-hospital-grounds-in-his-pajamas-hallucinating Judge Rehnquist:

The FBI's file on former Chief Justice William Rehnquist made public more than a year after his death indicates the Nixon and Reagan administrations enlisted its help in blunting criticism of him during confirmation hearings...

Administration officials apparently hoped to prevent any surprises from sinking his nominations....

Alexander Charns, a Durham, N.C., lawyer who received the file and has extensively researched the FBI's relationship with the court, said the new disclosures show the two administrations went to some lengths to discredit Rehnquist opponents....

The documents show that the FBI was aware in 1971 that Rehnquist had owned a home in Phoenix with a deed that allowed him to sell only to whites. The restrictive covenant was not disclosed until his 1986 confirmation hearings, at which Rehnquist said he became aware of the clause only days earlier.

Also detailed in the declassified file was Rehnquist's 1981 hospital stay for treatment of back pain and his dependence on powerful prescription pain-relief medication. The FBI investigated his dependence on Placidyl, which Rehnquist had taken for at least 10 years, according to a summary of a 1970 medical examination.

When Rehnquist checked into a hospital in 1981 for a weeklong stay, doctors stopped administering the drug, causing what a hospital spokesman at the time said was a disturbance in mental clarity. The FBI file, citing one of his physicians, said Rehnquist experienced withdrawal symptoms that included trying to escape the facility and discerning changes in the patterns on the hospital curtains. The justice also thought he heard voices outside his room discussing various plots against him.

And that's just the tamer stuff. There's apparently even spookier stuff they still won't declassify:

"It would be nice to know what is still classified, three decades later," Charns said.

Small wonder then that the lunacy that is the Red House's "policy" in Iraq just keeps getting crazier and crazier. After booting General John Abizaid for having the temerity to question a forthcoming royal decree, Manchimp has decided to replace him with Admiral William J Fox Fallon.

Waitaminute... WTF?!? ADMIRAL...?!?

As in "Ahoy maties, hard to starboard" and all that shit?!?

Yes, that's right. George in all his Deciderial majesty has placed a Navy Admiral in charge of his desert war.

And that's not all; Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson has just gone on the record with CNN claiming we're operating (and I quote verbatim) "...a catch and release program" with top-level Al Qaeda agents in Iraq.

The better to perpetuate a profitable conflagration, we can only assume. Fortunely, our man's on the job to soon make future such flusterclucks decidedly less profitable:

Signaling a renewed emphasis on combating corruption at home and abroad, incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), introduced a package of bills Thursday targeting corrupt officials and private companies seeking to defraud American taxpayers and troops.

... Many Democratic Senators joined Leahy in reintroducing a bill creating criminal penalties for war profiteers and cheats who would exploit taxpayer-funded efforts in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.

That the Decider-in-Chief is also completely bonkers isn't even in question anymore; but there is a certain simian wiliness to his lunacy. Says Time's Michael Duffy:

...IS THE SURGE BUSH'S LAST STAND?

PROBABLY YES, WHETHER BUSH INTENDS IT that way or not. There is always a chance that a surge might reduce the violence, if only for a while. But given that nothing in Iraq has gone according to plan, it seems more likely that it won't. That's why many in the military assume privately that a muscular-sounding surge now is chiefly designed to give Bush the political cover to execute a partial withdrawal on his terms later. We think that by bringing the level of violence down and bringing the level of Iraqi support up, we will be able to begin to hand over the country, Kagan told TIME.

Asked what happens if the surge fails, he added, If the situation collapses for some other reason--loss of will in the U.S., say, or an unexpected Iraqi political meltdown, then the reduced violence will permit a more orderly withdrawal, if that becomes necessary, mitigating the effect of defeat on the U.S. military and potentially on the region. A retired colonel who served in Baghdad put it more bluntly: We don't know whether this is a plan for victory or just to signal to Americans that we did our damnedest before pulling out.

There is one other scenario to consider: it may be that Bush won't pull out of Iraq as long as he is President. Whether it works or not, a surge of 18 to 24 months would carry Bush to the virtual end of his term. After that, Iraq becomes someone else's problem. Bush's real exit strategy in Iraq may just be to exit the presidency first....

Quote of the Day:

Us and Them
And after all we're only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side

-- Us and Them Waters, Mason, Wright, Gilmore

Insanity Is the Goal

by Devilstower

If you were seeking one sterling example of the overwhelming pettiness, the sheer cruelty, the staggering ignorance, and the absolute dedication to erasing everything good that America ever stood for found in the black heart of the current administration, you need look no further than the case of Jose Padilla.

Padilla, you will recall, is the 31-year-old American citizen arrested by the Bush administration for meeting with top officials of Al Qaeda, I mean for plotting to explode a radioactive 'dirty' bomb, make that scheming to blow up some apartment houses, hold on it's threatening Russian troops in Chechyna, yeah that's the ticket.  The farcical legal charges alone -- constantly changed as the administration has shuffled Padilla along, inventing one new loophole after another in their effort to defeat any court supervision -- has caused more than one judge to explode in anger.

Then we learned that Padilla had been held in such  extreme isolation that it had led to mental problems.  Padilla's conditions included being held with no contact but his interrogators for two years.  No windows in his cell, not even into the hallway.  No reference to day or night, with lights left on for many days, followed by equal times of absolute darkness.  Sleep deprivation.  And let's not forget stress positions -- which anyone with the least bit of functional morality recognizes as simply torture.

So you may have thought that the height of Neocon reasoning was expressed by the administration's argument that Padilla, having been driven insane by their treatment, couldn't testify about that treatment because he was... insane.

Padilla's lawyers contend that as a result of his isolation and interrogation, their client is so mentally damaged that he is unable to assist in his own defense. He is so passive and fearful now, they maintain, that he is "like a piece of furniture." ... There is no indication that Padilla is faking it, Hegarty says. To the contrary, Padilla denies that he has any problems and tends to identify with the government's interests more than his own.

After being subjected to the absolute control of government agents night and day for years  (though by now, night and day have no meaning to Padilla), he's developed a form of "Stockholm Syndrome" in which he attempts to save what little remains of himself by identifying with those who have held and abused him for so long.

And still, that's not the worst of it.  This is the worst of it.

Indeed, there are even some within the government who think it might be best if Padilla were declared incompetent and sent to a psychiatric prison facility. As one high-ranking official put it, "the objective of the government always has been to incapacitate this person."

Not only has an American citizen been tortured into insanity, the right is happy about this.  In driving this man mad, they feel that they've reached their goal.

And if that doesn't make all of us at least a little insane, then what they've done to the country is worse than what they've done to Padilla.

Quote of the Day:

"My dear Sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum."

--James L. Petigru

Bungling Into Iraq

by BooMan

Sudarsan Raghavan has an excellent article in the Washington Post that looks into the Sunni/Shi'a divide in Iraq and how the Americans are perceived. It is written mostly from a Shi'a perspective, although not entirely. And it shows how deep the mistrust level goes.

Here's a particularly revealing excerpt:

"We know the U.S. is under great pressure from Arabic and Islamic countries, who are Sunni," said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a member of parliament with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party with strong ties to Tehran. "They fear the growing power of the Shia inside Iraq."
"The Americans have a wrong reading of Iraq," said Hasan Suneid, a member of the Shiite Dawa party and a close aide to Maliki. "And who is responsible for this reading? It is the diplomatic channel, that is, Khalilzad."

Suneid, an owlish civil engineer and poet who favors dark, crumpled Western suits, is among the many Shiite former exiles who owe their current positions to the U.S. toppling of Hussein. He now sees Khalilzad trying to engage Sunni insurgents and former Baathists. "I don't mind if the Americans are talking with our enemies," Suneid said. "But they should not change their strategy."

"Who are the secularists?" demanded Adeeb, the Shiite lawmaker, his eyes tightening. "The secularists are the Baath Party."

"It means the base of their thinking is not stable," he continued, referring to the Americans. "They are going to lose the Shiites. And they won't win the Sunnis back, because they attacked them at the beginning. So now both sides will lose confidence in the United States."

Iraq is a tremendously complex country that is located in a very complex region. In this brief excerpt we can see many of the problems that we are facing. When we went into Iraq we upset over five hundred years of history by wiping away the Sunni supremacy of Mesopotamia. We did this without the President even being aware of the significance. I cannot express how depressing I find that fact. I consider it an impeachable offense.

Saddam was many things, many terrible things, but he was also an Arab, a Sunni, a secularist, an Iraqi nationalist, a pan-Arabist, and a Ba'athist. When we toppled his regime we inadvertantly empowered Kurds and Persians, Shi'ites, religious extremists of both sects, and supporters of the partition of Iraq. Without the President even considering the possibility, we found ourselves relying on the Kurds and the Shi'a and we found ourselves at war with the Sunni. And this meant that we were working to empower the friends of Iran and the enemies of our allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Again, we found ourselves in this situation without the President even having considered the possibility.

The Shi'a were ecstatic to be rescued from centuries of domination, but their enthusiasm for foreign occupation has been understandably limited. Now they are beginning to wonder whether we are preparing to double-cross them.

Ali Adeeb, a silver-haired, gray-suited Shiite lawmaker, has seen the shift in his community's attitude toward the United States. He pointed to the February 2006 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. "Before Samarra, when the Shiites used to be slaughtered they kept silent," Adeeb said. "Afterward, they exploded."
Shiite militias attacked Sunni mosques. Sunni leaders have accused Shiite death squads of hundreds of killings. "The Sunnis started to ask for rescue from the Americans, especially now that they have joined the political process and have become close to the Americans," Adeeb said. "This is when the doubts about the Americans began."

I have long suspected that the Samarra bombing might have been carried out with American complicity for the very specific reason that it would enrage the Shi'a community so much that it would force the Sunnis to stop targeting our forces and protect themselves from the Shi'a. ["The Sunnis started to ask for rescue from the Americans."] I have no proof of that, and it ultimately did not work because our casualty rates are now back up to pre-Samarra levels.

Regardless, the country has been plunged into sectarian war. And now that it is plunged into sectarian war all the internal contradictions of our invasion are starting to bear fruit. The Sunnis are outnumbered 60%-20%, and they are going to lose this sectarian war. They will lose their homes, their property, and their lives. They will be forced to flee Iraq. Our allies in the region are livid because they are all co-religionists.

Our allies fear everything from Iraq. They fear the Shi'a, they fear Iran, they fear religious extremists, they fear refugee problems. And they expect us to prevent the worst of all these things from happening. Therefore, they expect us to make common cause with the Sunnis against the government that we have set up and supported for over three years.

I remind you that the President invaded Iraq without knowing the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites. I kid you not. I just want to make that clear. If you are a Republican, I want you to know that your President did this to our country without even knowing what was likely to happen, or who would benefit. That is because he is not a serious person. He is a very bad man.

He has destroyed our country's alliances and he has empowered our enemies. And he spent a lot of money to do it. He needs to be impeached. His quail-hunting sidekick needs to be impeached. And we need to get our troops out of Iraq. They cannot fix what they broke. And because of the terrible leadership of the Bush administration, they don't even deserve the chance to try.

We didn't have to do this. Our President wanted to do this. He wanted to attack Iraq. He had no idea what that meant. He didn't read a briefing paper. He didn't read a travel book. He didn't read a history book. He just ordered our troops into battle. He deserves extremely harsh punishment.

Quote of the Day:

"If you could only see me,
and know exactly where I am.
You wouldn't want to be me.
Oh, I can assure you of that.

I'm not the guy to run with
'cos I'll throw you off the line.
I'll break you and destroy you
given time.

He's King Midas with a curse
He's King Midas in reverse.
He's King Midas with a curse
He's King Midas in reverse.

It's plain to see it's hopeless
going on the way we are.
So even though I'd lose you,
you'd be better off by far.

He's not the man to hold your trust.
Everything he touches turns to dust.
in his hands.
Nothing he can do is right.
He'd even like to sleep at night,
but he can't.

All he touches turns to dust.

I wish someone would find me
and help me gain control,
before I lose my reason
and my soul."

--"King Midas in Reverse" -- The Hollies

Borrowing from good ol' Mother Russia

From Wayne Madsen:

December 30-31, 2006 -- Neo-cons adopt the ways of their Stalinist forbearers.

The neo-cons who still call the shots in Iraq have heavily borrowed from the Stalinist and Trotskyite ways of their actual and ideological parents and grandparents. From news censorship to forged documents and government-supplied propaganda to fifth column operations, the Iraq war has been marked by strategies that were practiced by the Soviets in Eastern Europe. And the execution of Saddam Hussein is no exception.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel said of the execution of Saddam: "That is a matter for the Iraqi people; we are observers to that process. They are a sovereign government and they will make their own decisions regarding carrying out justice." Saddam was transferred to the Sh'ia-dominated Iraqi puppet government by U.S. military forces. Incredibly and laughably, the U.S. government said it had no one present during Saddam's execution.

On June 16, 1958, the Soviet and their Hungarian puppet government of Janos Kadar jointly announced that deposed Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy and three of his government's officials -- Pal Maleter, Miklos Gimes, and Jozsef Szilagyi -- were executed by the Hungarian puppet regime. They were executed in a secret location after they were seized outside the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest, transferred to safe custody in Romania, and subjected to a show trial overseen by the KGB.

It was announced by the Iraqi puppet government of Nouri al-Maliki that Saddam is to be buried in a secret grave. The U.S. occupation forces were reported looking for someone to take custody of Saddam's personal belongings. Later, Saddam's family announced that the former president was to be buried next to his sons in a family grave in Awja, Saddam's hometown, near Tikrit. Maliki and his Sh'ia zealots were likely overruled by the U.S. occupation authorities on the secret grave gambit. This means the insurgency now has a shrine.

Imre Nagy was buried in a secret grave. He was reburied with full honors in a public grave in 1989. His widow received Nagy's personal belongings a few days after his execution.



Postscript: Saddam's executioners wore ski masks. Where have we seen ski masks in Iraq before?

Quote of the Day (click to listen):

"Listen children to a story
That was written long ago
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folk below

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore they'd
Have it for their very own

{Refrain}
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they'd kill

Came an answer from the kingdom
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of the mountain
All the riches buried there

{Refrain}
Now the valley cried in anger
Mount your horses draw your sword
And they killed the mountain people
So they got their just reward

Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountsin dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
'Peace on Earth' was all it said."

--"One Tin Soldier", Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, sung by Jinx Dawson