Saddam Dead

Welp, Saddam is dead, and I’m not sorry to see him go. I am sorry, however, that his death came at the expense of 3,000 Americans (and counting) and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (and counting). But whatev, it’s party party party time, and the warbloggers have giant boners. Let the circle-jerk commence.

UPDATE: Teh Josh:

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us. […]

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

Can I get a “heh-heh?” Can I get an “in-DOO-DOO?”

UPDATE THE SECOND: I see our pal Atrios is asking for a special New Year’s beating. You may remember what happened the last time he challenged our powers. This time shall be no different. An attack is in the works, mark my words.

UPDATE THE THIRD: Roy Edroso is in Rob Dreher’s base killing his d00dz. Plus, S.Z. is Marie Jon”s new BFF. Lucky. Her.

 

Comments: 28

 
 
 

Don’t kill the whale by Yes. Atrios is having a larf. Even Little Jimmy Osmond could trash that!

 
 

Oh, I know. He’s setting hisself up fr a beatin’ iz all I’m sayin’. Dig?

 
 

I truly hope the hanging of Saddam sends a stab of Terror into the Hearts of EVIL DICTATORS worldwide who once shook Rummy’s hand.

 
 

[wingnuts everywhere] ding-dong the witch is dead/ which old witch/ the Hussein witch [/wingnuts]

and now everything is going to be flowers and puppies forever, and all the children will be above average.

plus, hillbilly heroin will be FREE!

 
 

Is anyone declaring this a turning point in the war, like the capture of Saddam was supposed to be? Or have they finally wised up on the whole making victory predictions front?

 
 

I will have to armor up with good stuff before the war is launched, and keep a spare missile handy. Just for protection, you understand.

 
 

Are there any more Iraqi Husseins left to kill when the war needs a PR boost?

 
 

Hey, look at the bright side — Laura probably got some for the first time in months last night!

 
Karatist Preacher
 

I’ll end the You Tube wars now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiY1XjWYbWw

I actually love this song.

 
 

His Grace,

Wised up on the whole making victory predictions front? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Iraq is one of those, whatchacall, a success that hasn’t happened yet. Yep. Another one already marked down in the WIN column.

 
 

I was going to write my opinion here, but I instead posted a blog entry:

http://trichord.blogspot.com/2006/12/killing-of-saddam.html

 
 

Being opposed to capital punishment just proves that you’re in favor of mass murder.

 
 

Being opposed to capital punishment just proves that you’re in favor of mass murder

Oh, look! Another one for the ‘nonfiring synapse’ pile!

 
 

To view a cynical and satirical visual of George Bush playing a round of “Hangman”…link here:

http://www.thoughttheater.com

 
 

whose times aren’t grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

Josh Marshall has a lot of good points in that post, but that sentence seems strange to me. The times aren’t grand enough for them? But the entire human world society is facing some major challenges right now.

1. Global Warming, which, if it goes down like Gore was saying it might, might kill more people and destroy more land and any war ever fought including WWII. Organizing to stop it will be a global, heruclean task.

2. Peak Oil. If, in fact, the oil supply of Planet Earth is about to be permanently lessened, just as China is joining the US as a major oil consumer, then this is going to cause major problems. We need a major initiative to cut our Oil consumption drastically and that sure as hell will not be easy.

3. AIDS. Nobody seems to be thinking about it much anymore, but it hasn’t gone away, and doesn’t even really seem to have lessened. It’s still slowly chewing Africa up. There is evidence that it is about to get a lot worse in Russia, China, and India. It may have even gotten more prevalent in the USA- who has really been keeping track of it nowadays, with ‘terror’ on everyone’s mind? (And, maybe that was part of the point.) I sure don’t trust statistics given out by this regime.

So, I guess I disagree that these times are lacking in ‘Grandeur’. Isn’t the prospect of the entire weather system of the Earth changing, killing millions of people and displacing millions more, altering the very shape of the continents, a rather Grand disaster? What the times are lacking in, is the kind of simple, hyper-emotional issues that Authoritarian-minded people love to crow about.

They apparently got one with the 9-11 attacks, but if you look at the attacks clearly, coldly, and honestly, they raise just the kind of complicated, global, murky, self-incriminating issues that Authoritarians hate. And so we got the Second Gulf War and the American occupation of Iraq, an apparent gold mine of jingoistic, hyper-emotional sentiment.

But to me, this is not evidence that the Right-Wing Authoritarians have ‘a lot of imagination’, rather that they actually lack imagination, and have way too much power at the top. And as far as I am concerned, that is one of the problems with the Neo-conservative view of society- even if you didn’t care about civil liberties at all, it still is almost impossible for the Neo-con society to actively confront a complicated threat that has nothing whatever to do with millitary action. And we have a lot of those threats, real threats.

OK that’s my 10 cent lecture for today.

 
 

Yay! You killed a bad guy. Pop the champagne in celebration of a job well done. Don’t look at the cost. Thousands of dead and injured american kids, tens of thousands more who will spend their lives trying to figure out how to live here (I know this one chapter and verse). Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, injured, homeless, displaced. A country in flames. A region slowly sliding into hate and violence. A region, I’d remind americans, of some strategic and economic importance. America’s standing in the world trashed. The bully pulpit? The shining city on the hill? Real american values? Gone, sold to the highest bidder or just thrown out, no longer in keeping with who we are as a nation. And who are we? Just count how many times you hear the word “troops” in a given day. We are a fully militarized rogue nation now, threatening, posing, destroying any hope of peaceful compromise with our dedication to solving problems at the point of a gun. Or the end of a rope.

I’ll tell you the milestone I see. One of the last ones before the road runs out. After the end of the cold war, the world was ready for peaceful cooperation, economic rather than military competition, compromise and diplomacy. And a few radical american thugs were all it took to inflame the world. Now the hatreds are out in the open, the guns are the marketplace, and education is how to lead teenagers in battle. This is not the 21st century world we were promised, nor is it the 21st century world we could have had. The missing term is “sustainability”. Look around, children, see where the path leads. Can it be stopped? I don’t know, but it’s going to take more strength and courage than you can imagine.

I wish you all the best 2007. May you at least survive to ’08…

mikey

 
 

Hey, look at the bright side — Laura probably got some for the first time in months last night!

Oh god. The newsies reported that Dubya was in bed by 9 PM; his aides didn’t disturb him to bring him the news at 10 PM; thanks to Gabriel, it all makes perfect, gruesome sense now. It’s like autoerotic asphyxiation, only by proxy and on someone else. Urk.

 
 

Don’t believe Dumbya was asleep in his jammies. That’s more of the faux cowboy nonchalance mythology.

 
 

Bush is used to sleeping peacefully while people (some of them perhaps innocent) are executed. Look at his record as Texas guv.

This is just ridiculous. The only result of executing this man will be to make him a martyr, and more violence will come on in a big way.

 
 

They didn’t say “asleep.” They said “in bed.” *shudder*

 
 

It seems like a slap in the face to the Kurds, that they don’t get to hear from the man himself about his actions and his reasoning, and others will be able to claim that he was innocent and wasn’t given a proper trial, another excuse for violence against the government that hurried the execution.

Add to that that this apperently this occurs at the start of some such holy week or another (forgive my ignorance on the matter) adding insult to injury for some. I don’t see what was the problem with having a trial that addresses the breadth of his crimes, and punishing him when you can be sure it won’t trigger terrible violence. I can see this sort of event causing a huge backlash and it certainly won’t be inspiring confidence in the judiciary attached to this new government.

 
 

Goodness, yes, I forgot….

Isn’t Jan 30th the start of ‘Eid’ or ‘Al Adha’ or something?

They could point out he was hanged on Jan 29th but that is still pretty close.

 
 

Look, I’m sure you’re going to get at least one representative of the Backwash Nation linking to this thread saying “see, teh libruls feel sorry for Saddam Hussein, but they don’t care about The Victims of 9/11”, so let me say this:

He’s dead — Cool! Good riddance. I’d say he was a pig and will not be missed but that would only do a disservice to that noble and oft-maligned beast. I hope Augusto Pinochet and Saparmurat Niyazov have saved him an extra-toasty spot in the Lake of Burning Sulphur and that all of them are even now busily planning welcome parties for Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe, and Rupert Murdoch.

But to return to reality, one doesn’t have to like the guy, or even feel the slightest twinge of sympathy for him, to be disgusted at seeing the equivalent of a mob hit (whose target might be equally deserving of extermination) being paraded before the world as some sort of triumph for Justice and the Human Spirit. Or indeed, as though in the long run it will make any difference at all, especially to the many thousands who died in order to make it happen.

 
 

If ya look at the picture, Hussein seems to have met his death in a composed and relatively dignified manner. His executioners, on the other hand, are dressed in clothes that make them look a lot like Nick Berg’s killers. They look like thugs, in other words.

Is this the image that Americans wanted to see?

 
 

That’s what got me also. What kind of “democracy” uses masked executioners?

 
 

Well, I’m satisfied. For a while, I’ve been thinking, “You know what there’s not enough of in the Middle East? Death. What we really, really need is more death.” So this just takes care of that for me.

 
 

Further coverage on Saddam Hussein execution along with unedited footage of hanging and the Letter from Saddam Hussein to the People of Iraq

http://www.crusade-media.com/news40.html

 
 

(comments are closed)