Saddam, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye...

He's gone. (See it on video below.) Not a moment to soon, and a good many too late.

Although I'm somewhere in the middle on the death penalty in most cases, and I can't deny feeling the whole build up in the media was a bit macabre, this one was a pretty clear-cut. There will probably be an upswing in violence, but my guess is it will be temporary.

Of course the multi-sourced insurgents won't simply go away now that Hussein is gone, but it's hard not to think that fewer of ours might have perished had they shot him in the spider hole and been done with it.

A bone to pick: Hey, Drudge, do you really think your headline, "Hussein Video Grips Iraq; Attacks Go On..." matches the following story's content? (quoted in full from the NY Times only to show how misleading Drudge's headline is):

December 31, 2006

On the Gallows, Curses for U.S. and ‘Traitors’
By MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 — Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped. His last words were equally defiant.

“Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians.”

The final hour of Iraq’s former ruler began about 5 a.m., when American troops escorted him from Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, to Camp Justice, another American base at the heart of the city.

There, he was handed over to a newly trained unit of the Iraqi National Police, with whom he would later exchange curses. Iraq took full custody of Mr. Hussein at 5:30 a.m.

Two American helicopters flew 14 witnesses from the Green Zone to the execution site — a former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government’s much feared military intelligence outfit, now inside the American base.

Mr. Hussein was escorted into the room where the gallows, with its red railing, stood, greeted at the door by three masked executioners known as ashmawi. Several of the witnesses present — including Munkith al-Faroun, the deputy prosecutor for the court; Munir Haddad, the deputy chief judge for the Iraqi High Tribunal; and Sami al-Askari, a member of Parliament — described in detail how the execution unfolded and independently recounted what was said.

To protect himself from the bitter cold before dawn during the short trip, Mr. Hussein wore a 1940s-style wool cap, a scarf and a long black coat over a white collared shirt.

His executioners wore black ski masks, but Mr. Hussein could still see their deep brown skin and hear their dialects, distinct to the Shiite southern part of the country, where he had so brutally repressed two separate uprisings.

The small room had a foul odor. It was cold, had bad lighting and a sad, melancholic atmosphere. With the witnesses and 11 other people — including guards and the video crew — it was cramped.

Mr. Hussein’s eyes darted about, trying to take in just who was going to put an end to him. The executioners took his hat and his scarf.

Mr. Hussein, whose hands were bound in front of him, was taken to the judge’s room next door. He followed each order he was given.

He sat down and the verdict, finding him guilty of crimes against humanity, was read aloud. “Long live the nation!” Mr. Hussein shouted. “Long live the people! Long live the Palestinians!”

He continued shouting until the verdict was read in full, and then he composed himself again.

When he rose to be led back to the execution room at 6 a.m., he looked strong, confident and calm. Whatever apprehension he may have had only minutes earlier had faded.

The general prosecutor asked Mr. Hussein to whom he wanted to give his Koran. He said Bandar, the son of Awad al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court who was also to be executed soon.

The room was quiet as everyone began to pray, including Mr. Hussein. “Peace be upon Mohammed and his holy family.”

Two guards added, “Supporting his son Moktada, Moktada, Moktada.”

Mr. Hussein seemed a bit stunned, swinging his head in their direction.

They were talking about Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose militia is now committing some of the worst violence in the sectarian fighting; he is the son of a revered Shiite cleric, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, whom many believe Mr. Hussein ordered murdered.

“Moktada?” he spat out, mixing sarcasm and disbelief.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, asked Mr. Hussein if
he had any remorse or fear.

“No,” he said bluntly. “I am a militant and I have no fear for myself. I have spent my life in jihad and fighting aggression. Anyone who takes this route should not be afraid.”

Mr. Rubaie, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Hussein, asked him about
the killing of the elder Mr. Sadr.

They were standing so close to each other that others could not hear the exchange.

One of the guards, though, became angry. “You have destroyed us,” the masked man yelled. “You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.”

Mr. Hussein was scornful: “I have saved you from destitution and misery anddestroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans.”

The guard cursed him. “God damn you.”

Mr. Hussein replied, “God damn you.”

Two witnesses, apparently uninvolved in selecting the guards, exchanged a quiet joke, saying they gathered that the goal of disbanding the militias had yet to be accomplished.

The deputy prosecutor, Mr. Faroun, berated the guards, saying, “I will not accept any offense directed at him.”

Mr. Hussein was led up to the gallows without a struggle. His hands were unbound, put behind his back, then fastened again. He showed no remorse. He held his head high.

The executioners offered him a hood. He refused. They explained that the thick rope could cut through his neck and offered to use the scarf he had worn earlier to keep that from happening. Mr. Hussein accepted.

He stood on the high platform, with a deep hole beneath it.

He said a last prayer. Then, with his eyes wide open, no stutter or choke in his throat, he said his final words cursing the Americans and the Persians.

At 6:10 a.m., the trapdoor swung open. He seemed to fall a good distance, but he died swiftly. After just a minute, his body was still. His eyes still were open but he was dead. Despite the scarf, the rope cut a gash into his neck.

His body stayed hanging for another nine minutes as those in attendance broke out in prayer, praising the Prophet, at the death of a dictator.

Ali Adeeb and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from
Baghdad.

Video of Saddam Hussein being executed

Why are these idiots taunting him? They don't know the world is watching?

Bill Maher's Idiocy

Just ran across this Maher rant, barely contained by Joe Scarborough, on impeaching President Bush:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXbv6OuOl88&NR

Here's one of the comments:

Scarborough can be a dope, but he's right on this one. What a stupid argument Maher makes for impeaching President Bush -- or ANY president. When Scarborough mentions that the president was waiting for instructions, a point well beyond the pretentious Maher, he meant Bush as waiting for instructions regarding his own security, as he should have.

I understand the desire to see the president rise to his feet and know, somehow, just what to do. But what happened that day was disorienting for everyone.

Here's how I think of it: You know what the flight attendants say on airplanes? To secure your own air mask first before assisting others? I think the prez had a responsibility to keep his head screwed on straight so he could keep functioning as the president.

Keith Ellison: Muslim Representative

The Detroit Free Press writes the following on newly elected Congressman Keith Ellison's recent speech:

Speaking in Dearborn late Sunday night, the first Muslim elected to Congress told a cheering crowd of Muslims they should remain steadfast in their faith and push for justice. (read the rest)

If this article is accurate, Ellison is flat out delusional.

According to the story, Ellison addressed a Muslim conference in Detroit by saying, "Muslims, you're up to bat right now [...] How do you know that you were not brought right here to this place to learn how to make this world better?"

Aside from Ellison's ironic and ridiculously in-apt use of a baseball metaphor in this speech, this comment seems halfway reasonable.

But according to the reporter, paraphrasing Ellison, the Congressman-elect also said that "Muslims can help teach America about justice and equal protection."

That's preposterous. If the reporter's paraphrase is even close to being on target, then Ellison's perception of reality and/or veracity is way, WAY off. As the Middle East has shown for years and years now, Muslims with a persecution complex have nothing to teach anyone, anywhere, about justice or equal protection.

He's trying to manufacture Muslim's supposed "plight" into the Next Great Civil Rights Cause. That's mendacity with a capital M.

Global Warming Claims First Inhabited Island (Again)

Just in time for Christmas, the Indian island of Lohachara has been baptized into the climate change religion.

According to the environmental editor at the Independent (UK), which published the fast-breaking news today (12/24/06), Lohachara has disappeared beneath the waves--thanks to global warming, he presumes:

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island

For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports

Published: 24 December 2006

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. (read the rest here)

How Mr. Lean knows beyond the faintest doubt that the rising waters are "caused by global warming" he never explains. Nonetheless, the island is now submerged, and that's a real-life disaster.

Yet so is the journalism. The problem is, Calcutta's Telegraph published a story on Lohachara's submersion on October 30 of this year. Mr. Lean is at least some two-months late, which wouldn't be so bad if he came out with it up front and didn't represent it as breaking news. It also wouldn't be so bad if, as Kolkata Newsline reported (also on October 30), the deluge of Lohachara occurred 22 years ago.

But Lean's agenda is to build the hype for climate change, not report the news.

And unlike Mr. Lean's piece, neither the Telegraph's nor the Newsline's articles claim special knowledge about the cause of the island's submersion. Climate change comes up, as well it should, but so do other ideas. They don't take global warming as dogma. A good illustration is the concluding section of the Telegraph artilce, entitled "Underlying truth":

From the very beginning, the islands have been a subsiding delta. A 1962 record with the West Bengal government — the first working plan of the department of forests — says fragments of ‘ceriops’, a mangrove variety, were found below the sea level during excavation around George’s Dock in Calcutta. “But the recent changes in sea level seem more severe,” Hazra warns.

The more literate islanders are worried that no national policy safeguards the envirogees. “What do the new National Disaster Management Policy and the West Bengal government’s disaster management department have for people facing environmental disasters like these,” asks Jateswar Panda, among the few residents of the Sundarbans who went to college.

The country’s natural disaster management revolves around instant calamities like earthquakes, landslides, flash floods and, more recently, drought. “What about slow onset disasters like arsenic or vanishing islands,” he exclaims.

According to some estimates, at least one lakh people will have to be evacuated from the 12 threatened inner estuary islands of the Sundarbans in the next decade if the present rate of submergence continues. The scientists feel it would be wise to plan a gradual shift to safer places like the adjoining North and South 24-Parganas districts rather than wait for a demographic disaster to happen.

The West Bengal government says the JU study is insufficient to prove climate change. Says Atanu Raha, director of the Sunderban Biosphere Reserve, “Accretion and erosion are natural phenomena.

Things like a rise in temperature or an increase in sea level have to be studied over hundreds of years. A 30-year study is not enough to come to a conclusion that the climate is changing.”

Raha, who has studied satellite images of the last 20 years, says just as some islands have gone down in the sea, vast land areas like Thakuran char and New Island have emerged out of the sea because of silt deposits.

Read the whole Telegraph article here.

See Tim Blair's blog on this subject here.

Liberal Mendacity

I've been thinking about the mendacity of Democratic politicians for a long time -- their mendacious behavior flat drove me away from the party.

Finally, someone else mentions it in connection with the liberal press. See Alicia Colon's excellent article in the NY Sun:

The Mendacity Of the Liberal Press

The first time I heard the word "mendacity" was in the film "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." I loved the way Burl Ives's character spits out the word as something vile and unacceptable.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where untruthfulness is routinely accepted and even mandated by politicians, union leaders, and members of the press. New York is the headquarters of the biggest producer of mendacity, the New York Times. Fortunately, it's also the home of the antidote, Lucianne.com.

I pity the Americans who do not have the computer expertise to access the exposés of lies of corrupt politicians and gullible television anchors, biased newspaper headlines, and anything from the Associated Press. If it were not for the Internet and Lucianne Goldberg's Web news forum, I would never learn the truth behind the Times headlines as pitched by the Drudge Report.

Read the rest...

"For Warophobes" II (a clarification)

I got this sizzling response to my original "Warophobes" post.

Hey Bismarck [I guess he thinks I love war],

Learn to frame a syllogism. You’re begging the question. It's obvious that you've never served in the military, and are just another repressed gay chicken-hawk. I know the big mean terrorist have scared you, but try and act like a man anyway – ok? - anonymous

I know that's you, Senator Kennedy! You got me! Your non sequitur certainly proves that I am a "gay chicken-hawk."

But seriously, my hunch is that Mr. Anonymous missed a day or two in his logic class.

In addition to the "repressed gay chicken-hawk" non sequitur is the equally fallacious and cliched claim that those who have not served in the military have no basis for arguing in favor of military action. That claim is an example of the disingenuous, inconsistent "ethics" that views military service in purely emotional terms. So, one who has never been a firefighter has no ethical authority to call the fire department, is that it?

Regardless, I am not trying to prove the existence of warophobes. Their existence is self-evident. But for the record, I'll give the syllogism Mr. Anonymous thought he detected missing:

A) Congress members who work against U.S. efforts to achieve victory can be called "warophobes."
B) Some Congress members are working against efforts to achieve victory in Iraq.
C) Some Congress members can be called warophobes.

See? No questions begged.

My hunch is that the "warophobes" term is what offended Mr. A. I guess I can see why. It's true I adapted it from terms like "homophobes" and "xenophobes," and I did, I confess, intend it pejoratively.

But I've miscommunicated to Mr. A. For the sake of clarity, let's refine the point.

First, in calling certain Congress members warophobes, I don't mean they or anyone ought to love war. No one should love war. I sure don't.

Second, I don't even think they hate or fear war itself, necessarily. It's that they hate the war in Iraq because they fear President Bush's success. As a result, these Congress members have put themselves in the reprehensible, disgraceful position of fearing and/or hating the idea of U.S. victory. Their actions and rhetoric suggest that they prefer losing the war to winning it, whatever the cost may end up being.

Maybe a better term would be victoryophobes. How about defeatophiles?

Mr. A, go ahead and hate war. But hate defeat even more.

And thanks for being helpful, even if it was unintentional.

CDC Getting (Climate Change) Religion

The National Environmental Health Conference just ended in Atlanta. I had the chance to attend a few sessions and heard Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) address the conference of some 1500. I heard an awful lot of predictable Democratic Party gloating (re: the last elections) and much worse, given that it's coming from the CDC, a troubling lack of critical thinking when it comes to global climate change.

It was amazing and worrisome to see such an educated, smart group of people sit there passively absorbing projections of looming catastrophe with little more than a nod of the head. There's a terrible pressure to conform to the current thinking and a serious intolerance of any sort of dissent.

In my case, my "dissent" is not an argument against the conclusions. I'm arguing against the means by which they are being reached.

I have seen first-hand the evidence used to demonstrate climate change drastically misrepresented, while contrary evidence is either dismissed out of hand or scoffed at as "biased"--by many of the same public health professionals who, truth be told, have an unacknowledged stake in fomenting an anti-global-climate-change "industry" of grants and government programs. They also have their professional reputations at stake. Not to sound like a conspiracy nut, but let's be critical-minded here: if they don't have a vested interest in creating (and perpetuating) concern about global climate change, who does?

While a case can be made that CDC and the rest of the US government must be prepared for the worst-case regarding global warming, we have to be careful. Millions and millions of tax dollars are going to be spent in preparing for the worst-possible scenario. I'm not an expert on the science, and most scientists, according to what I've seen, agree that warming is happening. But evidence exists that the worst-possible scenario is less than likely.

Preparedness is certainly wise; misdirecting millions of dollars in pursuit of what MAY be hobby-horse hysterics, however, is not. Let's make sure we get it right. To do that, these scientists must honestly consider evidence that doesn't suit their pre-drawn conclusions. To do otherwise is to ignore scientific method.

When I bring this up, I'm told either that "well, the Director believes it and that's good enough for me," or they demand the counter evidence, as if I'm arguing that climate change isn't happening. This is a transparent bit of changing the argument, and it's intellectually dishonest.

Is it too much to ask scientists to stick to scientific method?

Dear Max: Good decision.

I don't where I've been (stuck at a conference for two days), but I heard this news tonight on Politics1.com:

Politics

FRIDAY NEWS UPDATE.
Former US Senator and disabled
Vietnam War hero Max Cleland (D-GA) said Thursday he will not seek a rematch in 2008 against US Senator Saxby Chambliss (R), who defeated him in 2002. Many leading Dems had urged Cleland to run ... COMMENTS (398)

Cleland has made a fool of himself since his loss, sorry to say. This is a good decision.

(http://politics1.com/blog-1206.htm#1201)