Saddam's execution

Any reader who wants to watch the full video (2 minutes & 36 seconds) of Saddam Hussein's execution can go to the web site that I'll list at the bottom of this blog entry. But please be forewarned that this is not the video the general media is showing, where the camera stops after they place the noose around Saddam's neck. This video, despite its poor resolution and jerky cell phone camera motion, is graphic, period. Right after that URL, I'll list one for an Aljazeera article that gives the English translation of the audio and some detailed commentary.

In my view, this execution was a travesty. It flies in the face of the growing movement around the world to end the use of the death penalty. And now there will be no further trials to record for history the full range of Saddam's crimes against humanity. (However the execution cannot hamper history's reporting of Washington's help - by Ronald Reagan through Donald Rumsfeld - to Saddam as he carried out war crimes in the early 1980s.)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1734042717556560160

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0515065C-787D-47ED-90DE-3C82C9DF6A64.htm

The Unimaginable Divide

The Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, in what it calls the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. has just reported the following:

* The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world's wealth,

* The richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and the richest 10 percent of adults
accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.

* The assets of half of the world's adult population account for barely 1 percent of global wealth.

In the meantime, 400,000 children around the world go hungry every day. And a billion U.S. dollars go down the drain every four days in Iraq.

That is a mortally cockeyed world.

Imperial adjectives

Who on Earth could deny that George W. Bush is imperiously stubborn? Stir ignorant and arrogant into that pot and you've got unimaginable disaster. That is, you've got Iraq.

But Bush continues to stay his "on-to-victory" course. To hell with the American people. (This past weekend the Opinion Research Corporation found that support for Bush's handling of the Iraq conflict has decreased to 28 percent from 34 percent in a poll taken October 13-15.) To hell with the generals who disagree with him. To hell with the historians who point out that Iraq is in outright civil war. And now it looks like Il Duce wants to send thousands more troops into the colossal maelstrom. (As of last night, the number of US troops killed in Iraq was 2,950.)

Even Bush's own people say the war/occupation will cost more than $2 billion a week well into next year without taking into account the cost of 20,000 more troops (some estimates say 30,000 more.)

Stubborn and ignorant and arrogant.

The missing adjective is mad.

The Unitary Procrastinator

It was "stay the course" set in cement. Until a popular awakening across the whole country cracked the cement. So the self-declared Decider backed down ever so slightly. Word went out that Bush would give a speech before Christmas telling the world which way the U.S. would now go in a quickly disintegrating Iraq.

Now that speech has been moved to January. In the meantime -- as of 4:10 p.m. Tucson time today -- 2,977 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. As many as 100 bodies of tortured and murdered Iraqis are found in the streets and alleys of Baghdad each day. 1.6 million Iraqis have been displaced. 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the country.

Nancy Pelosi is wrong to say that George W. Bush should not be impeached.

Two heads in the sand

Anyone who saw the Bush-Blair press conference today knows what the above title means. I'll bet Bush would like to permanently deport those UK journalists who questioned him. He seems incapable of admitting he's made a colossal mistake in Iraq; in fact, I think the man is incapable of admitting to any mistake at all (at least since he kicked the bottle 20 years ago.) So today he talked in circles. His grim and sometimes angry face fit well with the weary but just as stubborn face of Tony Blair. And then came Fox-trained Tony Snow to finish the picture. All in all, one big sad and deadly circus.

The bi-partisan Iraq study group -- with nary a flaming liberal in the group (good grief, even Ed Meese is in there) -- has arrived at a consensus that kicks the unitary president right in the pants. And they told him their recommendations should not be cherry-picked. Not exactly what a unitary president wants to be told. It's gonna be a very stormy January.