puppet 1

The stack of dead American soldiers in Iraq continues to mount up to 3,000 and beyond, allowing the Bush administration to tie and then break the post-Vietnam record for murdered Americans, which has been held by Osama bin Laden since 2001.  Bin Laden held on the title for five strong years, but in the end, he was no match for President Drunk Uncle and the Culture of Life, whose latest victim, it turns out, may have been a hurriedly offered human sacrifice to sectarian concerns in Iraq.  Lindsay at Majikthise is on the case:

The cell phone video of Saddam's execution raises troubling questions. Was Saddam hanged by Shiite militamen? If so, was his s(p)eedy death a sop to Muqtada al-Sadr? Paul Hoosen of Progressive Values writes:

This new evidence strongly suggests that the Saddam execution was rushed through to satisfy this militia group and the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and that the normal path of justice in the "new" Iraq was deliberately avoided. Saddam had more trials pending on far more serious charges and also was facing civil charges in at least one lawsuit filed in the U.S. None of these important cases are likely to be heard except for the civil suit in the U.S. now.

It did seem odd that so many people in the death chamber were shouting "Muqtada!"

If this is the case, it would certainly explain a few of my own lingering questions about the rule of law in Iraq and exactly how it pertained (or not) to the Saddam verdict, sentencing, and execution.

In a separate post, "Saddam Spectacle: The Gallows is the New Aircraft Carrier", Lindsay quotes Josh Marshall, who manages to somehow spit out the entire truth about the Iraq War in one exquisitely wrought paragraph:

As Josh Marshall says, "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."

This entire war has been a long, obscene puppet show, a parade of empty, arrogant gestures.  It frankly amazes me that anyone is waiting anxiously to see what BushCo's New Improved Iraq Strategery will turn out to be.  Whatever it is, it will just be another fart in the windstorm, another fatuous attempt at perception management when what we need is factual assessment and troop management.

And yet, on the Right, we have morons like this dickhead at "Wake Up America" calling Christy "stupid" for asking that the administration be brought to account for its myriad failures in protecting the lives of our troops.  Says Sir Dickhead:

In reading the news and blogs for the day I kept coming back to one comment that was running through my mind. Stupidity. So, that is the theme of the post.

This starts with someone named Christy Hardin Smith over at Firedoglake, with a post called "Not just a number".

I would ask her to "acknowledge" the outstanding work of the troops, instead of using our soldiers and the deaths she "uses" to make her politcial points. Ater all, as I pointed out here, they have done an excellent job, especially when compared with other wars.

He then goes on to list the percentages of military personnel killed in combat in every war since the Civil War and concludes:

How about instead of USING our dead for political purposes, you try thanking our troops for a job well done to date, and furthermore how about you try LISTENING to what they have to say.

He then cites a fawning pro-administration interview from a college paper (which he declines to name or provide a link to) with a returning soldier who says:

Q: What has been your most memorable moment here?

A: I escorted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for four days, including Christmas. I watched this remarkable man let himself be pawed over and hugged, stand for thousands of photos, sign hundreds of autographs, shake every hand offered, for four days, with a smile on his face and joy in his heart. This man loves the American serviceman and woman and truly appreciates what we are doing here. He never left a place until every soldier was satisfied. Incredible devotion to duty.

Oooooh, stand back!  Don Rumsfeld underwent a heroic four days of non-stop hugs, compliments, and ass-licking and never stinted from his duty to be out front waving for the cameras, "satisfying" the soldiers (nice work if you can get it-ed.), and lapping up media attention when he could have actually been in his office trying to do something about this "six week" war where he sent a nation's young men and women into combat unprepared, under-equipped, and supplied with fleets of soft-sided, gas-drinking, unarmored SUV's for transport.  Mmmmm, that's war-planning at his finest!  Pin a Congressional Medal of Honor on that cocksucker!  He's a goddamn motherfucking national hero!

Back to Lindsay:

Saddam wasn't hanged for genocide against the Kurds, in fact, he wasn't even tried for those crimes against humanity. Instead, Saddam was executed for his role in a government-led purge following an assassination attempt in 1982. No doubt, the Americans wanted to make sure Saddam was executed on lesser charges before he could be tried for his larger crimes against humanity in which the United States and its allies were complicit.

Ah, yes, there's the rub.  If Saddam hadn't been hanged, he might have had a chance to talk about his business deals with Rummy and the Reagan administration, and we all know not even Pox News can spin that one satisfactorally.  "Saddam used chemical weapons against his own people!!" they screech, but does anyone ever think to ask who he bought those chemical weapons from?

From the National Security Archive: 

The U.S. was officially neutral regarding the Iran-Iraq war, and claimed that it armed neither side. Iran depended on U.S.-origin weapons, however, and sought them from Israel, Europe, Asia, and South America. Iraq started the war with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on.

Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism.

(snip)

Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S....The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan. These were prepared pursuant to his March 1982 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 4-82) asking for a review of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

devil meets devil

There he is.  Mr. "Incredible Devotion to Duty", shaking hands back in 1983 with the puppet he would engineer a war to defeat and kill.  But hey, that's what happens when you do business with the Americans, I guess.  Today's business partner is tomorrow's coup d'etat and execution.  Why not?  It worked out so well with the Cherokees...