May the coming year be kind to you and yours.  

Summary here.

Jabara said the delegation had needed to secure American permission, from as high up as President George W. Bush, for a US aircraft to fly Saddam home on a 180 kilometre (110-mile) journey which would be too dangerous by road.

“We went to contact the Americans to secure a plane and that took more time than expected because it needed the approval of the US State Department and even Bush personally, we were told,” he said. Article

Sadly ignoble, yes.

…Meanwhile the hanging has been merely the enactment of a scene written in American stage directives almost two years ago, to fulfill another one of those sensational benchmarks the Bush administration invented as substitutes for real strategy, for policies that could make a workable difference for Iraq.

[snip]

Iraq is in a state of Hobbesian civil war and all the American president can do is point to the latest episode of Iraqi “Law & Order”—Saddam’s assassination—and call it “justice.” The hanging, of course, is an irrelevance. A moot point. An entertainment. It won’t make a difference to anyone in Iraq no matter how fattish the headlines in the United States. The trial was a sham, the hanging an act of revenge, the barbarism of a hanging alone, of capital punishment in any form, one more symbol of the immorality of this whole production under American aegis. (It would have been nice to see Saddam, like any criminal, any terrorist, any “evildoer” from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden rot in a dank prison the rest of his days, days elongated as much as possible to enable him to mull over his defeat and diminishment, and to enable the rest of us to know that justice needn’t be retributive to be effective and, most of all—what it has never been in Iraq and never could be given the American compulsion for revenge—just.)

Saddam became irrelevant in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, in the same way that Casto would have been irrelevant for decades had it not been one president after another’s fixation on granting him a legitimacy he doesn’t deserve, by granting him an enmity he could only welcome. Saddam became that fixation after 1991, marginal and idiotic though his shows of shelled-out power had become. The invasion gave him a brief grasp at the old relevance, but it couldn’t last. Article

Editorial du jour:

For all the talk about the violence in Iraq, Americans are focusing little attention on the human costs to the Iraqis.…

[snip]

It’s understandable that Americans do not want to acknowledge the terrible consequences in Iraq of the U.S. operation there. But if we want to understand the reasons for the daily violence, its astonishing durability and its decentralized nature, we need to ask hard questions about the role of the U.S. military in starting a war and then failing to find a formula for quelling the consequent violence.

Denying that large-scale civilian death and suffering has occurred leads us to false assumptions that the violence is wholly internecine and prevents us from learning the most useful lesson of this debacle - that counterinsurgencies relying on force actually produce more insurgents. Article

Two wars in one theatre – the real one on the ground, and the ersatz one in the fever dreams of the woebgone G. Walker administration.

The Iraq attack, unwittingly, made Iran, the American administration’s nemesis, the most influential player in the Iraqi political arena. As the violence and chaos in Iraq are unlikely to come under control despite considerable American military presence, many in America are trying to persuade Bush that he should open a dialogue with Iran and its allies. To come out of the quagmire that is Iraq, the US administration is mulling over the idea of giving Iraqis greater responsibilities in governance. But such calibrated doses of policy will not pacify Iraq. Only a complete withdrawal of occupation forces will hold out any hope. Besides, the moot point is not whether Saddam was guilty or not, but how fair the trial had been under a US-propped Shia regime. Four of Saddam’s lawyers had been killed and two judges removed for being “too soft” on Saddam as the ‘kangaroo trial’ got under way. From the start, observers had been noting that throughout the case Iraqi court officials had consulted closely with, or been guided by, US embassy lawyers. This has turned the Saddam trial into a farce. Saddam’s end also closes a chapter on other charges against him which might have brought out the full scale of his crimes, possibly including the unpleasant facts about his collaboration with US administration in those heady days of the Cold War. Article

Summary here.

Because how does one know where one is, or where one is headed, without local signposts.

“It’s not pure war-fighting any more,” says Lt.-Cmdr. Wynn Polnicky, part of the 2,500-strong Canadian military contingent currently waging war in southern Afghanistan against a shadowy force of fundamentalist Islamic rebels known as the Taliban.

“It’s pretty clear we have an insurgency here, but what really matters is what people think. So, just ask them. It’s not an earth-shaking idea.”

Or maybe, in a way, it is.

Traditionally, armies have tended to train most of their attention – not to mention almost all of their gun sights – on the firearm-toting fighters located on the opposite side of the front line, otherwise known as the enemy.

In Polnicky’s view, however, it is not just the enemy that you need to be concerned about.

It’s everybody else.

[snip]

An articulate if somewhat prickly individual, with a trim wedge of grey-flecked hair, regular features and wire-rimmed eyeglasses, Polnicky specializes in what the military refers to as operational research and analysis, a high-falutin’ phrase that can be reduced to a single word: effects.

“We try to determine what effects we are having,” he says. “It’s really, what effects are we having on the civilian population in Kandahar province?”

It’s a good question, but so far it’s a question that is largely unanswered.

As part of their efforts to win the support and co-operation of the local people, Canadian soldiers in Kandahar province regularly conduct meetings with village elders and also promote small-scale economic development projects, but such contacts are usually marred by oppressive security, and the outcome can seem ambiguous at best.

Especially amid the tensions of war, people caught in the middle are not always inclined to trust outsiders or to tell the truth. It is difficult to know what they are really thinking.

Polnicky’s solution is simple – merely ask. But he means to ask in a way likely to produce a useful response.

[snip]

True, you might not always like the answers. But knowledge is almost always preferable to ignorance – perhaps especially for soldiers, whose lives depend on understanding as much about their surroundings as possible.

[snip]

“When you’re fighting an insurgency, you’re not fighting the insurgents,” says Polnicky.

“You’re fighting the conditions that led to the insurgency. We just want to know what the people think.” Article

Breeding dogs badly.

Should you be curious about Syrian blogs, well, speculate no more.

Summaries here and here and here and here.

There were, of course, three publicly held executions. Good background on the other two:

The two men hanged alongside Saddam on Wednesday were Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, one of Saddam’s three half-brothers and a former director of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar al-Sadun, former chief judge of the revolutionary court and deputy head of Saddam’s office. Article

This particular weekend is one that leaves but scant time to expound (much less even lay out a wrtten draft), thus comment regarding pr engendred by any individual piece is minimal once more.

A raft of reaction, aftermath and review pieces follow:

Almost four years after United States troops entered Iraq with a broader foreign policy goal of ushering in a “new” Middle East, one built on democracy and rule of law, the execution of Mr. Hussein on one of the holiest days in Islam marked the unceremonious demise of that strategy, many Arab analysts said.

“If you compare the results to the objectives the U.S. claimed to realize, whether it was democracy or control of the region, their policies have evidently failed,” said Nawaf Kabbara, professor of political science at Balamand University in Beirut. “They were not able to spread democracy, control anything or make any serious breakthrough. It is a failure on all levels.”

For those Arabs who celebrated America’s embrace of the rule of law, the quick execution, coming before the conclusion of other trials against Mr. Hussein for crimes against humanity, left a bitter taste of stolen justice. Even Mr. Hussein’s staunchest enemies expressed a sense of bitterness at the end.

“It is evident that they were not after justice,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut. “It was a political decision, because as soon as they got a sentence on him they executed him. What mattered was his death rather than finding justice.”

[snip]

“Saddam Hussein was guilty a thousand times over, but still the Americans and the Iraqi government managed to run a shabby trial,” said Jihad al-Khazen, a columnist and former editor of the pan-Arab newspapers Al Hayat and Asharq al Awsat. “If they organized a fair trial with international observers that could have served as a model for other countries. Instead they messed it up, and I think Saddam in the eyes of many people will now be seen as another martyr.”

Many in the region seemed to view the execution as a harbinger of further sectarian conflict. This was the first time in modern history that a Sunni dictator had been executed by a Shiite, some analysts noted, a symbolic step that was widely expected to incur Sunni retribution throughout the region. American embassies throughout the region warned citizens on Saturday to avoid protests and be prepared for unrest. Article

An ‘obitunalysis’ of a life.

In Saddam’s day it was done behind closed doors. The court hearing usually lasted barely a day. Then followed the secret bureaucracy of execution. First was the ‘Red Card’, the final formal order from a judge approving the death sentence. A number would then be recorded on a list against a name assigned to the victim. The number was often all that would appear on what would pass for a gravestone. Sometimes it would take years for the families to know the fate of their missing relatives.

Saddam died under his own name in the full knowledge of the world, led to a gallows constructed for his execution, and killed in front of witnesses and an Iraqi government cameraman whose footage attested to his last moments.

[snip]

And at the end what can we say about Saddam? That he was a monster? A madman? A malignant narcissist? All of these labels - and more - have been applied. In the run-up to the second Gulf War, the author and columnist Thomas Friedman framed the paradox of Saddam in a different and more subtle way, asking whether Iraq was the way it was because of Saddam? Or was Saddam the way he was because of Iraq?… Article

Chaos abides, chaos ahead.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker. Article

Related:

Saddam is not particularly relevant to the insurgency, and his removal will have more effect on the psyche of the exile-dominated Iraqi government and on some Americans than on anything else. It will probably lead to a short-term surge of violence, but let’s face it: things are terrible and getting worse, and it may be hard even to seperate out more violence from what’s been happening. The execution is clearly seen as sectarian - Shia and Kurds celebrate, Sunnis rage - and as American in provenance…. but that will also tend to reinforce existing dynamics rather than create new ones. The most important impact would be driving the Sunni political class out of the political process, but I can see the calculation here (whether right or wrong): either their self-interest will bring them back to the process… or else that process has already failed so it doesn’t much matter.

All that said, the incredibly rapid pace and odd timing of the deed demands explanation. Today’s Times confirms what al-Jazeera reported yesterday, that the timing was determined with American participation - so the Shia line that they wanted Saddam’s execution to be a national holiday rings hollow.… Article

What is the search sequence used by the vast, vast majority of those who visited here today? Some variation of fil (or video) of the haging.

Ye olfd scribe is one who will never — can never — rejoice at death and extermination.

Those who are seeking out and wish to watch in uninterrupted detail, who seek vicarious participation devoid of context, are, plainly and simply, ghoulish.

The ordering and condoning of deaths by Saddam Hussein and his regime was wrong, brutal, immoral and despicable. Cannot even conceive how the ordering and condoning of further death is otherwise or how it represents anything other than naked vengeance.

Death is final but is not necessarily an answer.

The European Union condemned Saddam Hussein’s execution on Saturday, with one top official calling it a barbaric act that could create an undeserved martyr of the former Iraqi president.

Highlighting a key difference with the United States, EU president Finland and several senior European Commission officials said the 25-member bloc opposes the death penalty as a matter of principle and that Saddam should not have been hanged in Baghdad at dawn despite his crimes.

“The EU has a very consistent view against using the death penalty and it should not have been used in this instance either, although there is no doubt over Saddam’s guilt of very serious crimes against humanity,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja told YLE television.

[snip]

Louis Michel, a member of the EU’s executive Commission, said he believed capital punishment was at odds with the democracy Iraqi leaders were trying to build.

“You don’t fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric. The death penalty is not compatible with democracy,” Michel, a former Belgian foreign minister, told Reuters. Article

One can almost picture the fingertips unconsciously massaging at a tingling at the throat today.

Leading Sunni Arab power Saudi Arabia on Saturday criticised Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders for executing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during the Eid al-Adha religious feast, saying his trial had been politicised.

[snip]

“It had been expected that the trial of a former president, who ruled for a considerable length of time, would last longer…demonstrate more precision, and not be politicised.”

The most important date in the Islamic calendar, the Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, marks biblical patriarch Abraham’s willingness to kill his son for God.

The religious feast is viewed by devout Muslims as a time of forgiveness and compassion and Muslim countries often pardon criminals to mark the occasion, and prisoners are rarely executed at that time.

[snip]

Although the U.S.-allied royals backed Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Gulf war against Shi’ite power Iran, the secular Baathist dictator was not popular in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, whose official Wahhabi brand of Islam regards Shi’ites as virtual heretics, fears for the fate of minority Sunnis in Iraq if U.S. forces pull out. Article

In enforced silence no more, but so much, much more will never enter the public record now.

During the decade-long war with Iran in the 1980s, Iraq’s Iron-fist leader Saddam Hussein granted thousands of “bravery Medals” to soldiers fighting his “Persian enemy.”

A Unique medal, however, was granted to a “distinguished hero” who did not take part in fighting what Iraqi military communiqués termed “waves of insects attacking the Arab Nation’s northern gate.”

That “Hero,” according to the official announcement distributed to reporters had “executed his son for deserting from the army.”

The crippled, grey-haired “Hero,” wearing a traditional white “deshdasheh” robe appeared in a wheel chair at Saddam’s presidential palace, where the tall dictator made an exceptional bow to pin the medal to the saddened father’s dress.

The “honored Hero” uttered no word as one of Saddam’s guards turned his wheelchair to face reporters and photographers. However, his eyes, brimming with tears of sadness, not joy, spoke of his untold ordeal.

The chief of a southern marshland clan was faced with the bitter fact that his son was a deserter.

[snip]

…the intelligence apparatus of the ruling Baath party in charge of the area was ordered to arrest the deserter.

Intelligence operatives applied their most favored method: first they rounded up all the clan’s men and asked the chief to arrest his son and turn him in.

When the clan chief failed to meet the order, the Baath Party intelligence operatives rounded up all the clan’s male children and made a new threat: Women would be rounded up in the next raid if the deserter was not arrested.

For a traditional clan in a remote marshland environment, arresting women and holding them outside their homes was a major disgrace because it would cast future doubts about the tribe’s lineage.

The poor tribal chief’s main priority was to safeguard the clan’s lineage and he was left with one option: to turn his son in to Saddam’s intelligence agents.

But the son was doomed. He’ll be executed by a firing squad like many deserters who received the death penalty during the war with Iran that claimed about one million lives and wrecked the economies of both oil-rich nations.

The son-deserter, according to insiders, asked his father-chief to shoot-kill him. That would be less humiliating to the clan and, most importantly, would save the son from the process of interrogation-torture before facing a firing squad, a common practice in Iraq under Saddam.

The father did what his son had begged him to do, and got a “bravery Medal for executing a traitor.”

Nearly two decades later Saddam was hanged to death, but no one has received a bravery medal for his execution … so far. Article

Decoupling the ‘mother of all boogeyman’ as created by the woebegone G. Walker administration from their rhetoric: Strident and agenda-driven, but far from inaccurate.

Think about it. It was the Bush administration and not Saddam that turned out to be lying about WMDs. As we all know now, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Amazingly enough, it was Saddam who was telling the truth from the very beginning. Bush was the one who lied to the whole world.

[snip]

You may remember that in 2002, the UN Security Council ordered Iraq to put together a report detailing the entirety of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. In response, Iraqi officials compiled an 11,800-page report on the past and present status of Iraq’s weapons programs.

From that report we learned (from the Iraqis) that Iraq once had both chemical and biological weapons, as well as a program to develop nuclear weapons. We also learned that Iraq acquired biological and chemical weapons from the US, and Iraqi nuclear scientists were trained at US government nuclear facilities. Most importantly [sic], though, the Iraqis told us that some of the weapons and nuclear facilities were destroyed in the first Gulf War, and the rest were destroyed under the supervision of UN weapons inspectors.

All of this turned out to be true.

[snip]

The reality of the situation is that the US Government - from Bush Sr., to Bill Clinton, to G.W - decided on its own that Saddam should no longer be the president of Iraq. This is the very thing that the Constitution and International Law were designed to prevent.

America was never threatened by Saddam Hussein. Iraq had absolutely no capability to attack the United States, and never was there indicated a desire to do so.

[snip]

The result of all this was that the “Butcher of Baghdad” was right and that the “President of the United States” was wrong. Saddam Hussein was given the death penalty for “war crimes,” while George Bush and his accomplices in our two-party Congress continue to rule over us.

We’re living in sad times, indeed, times when you can trust what Saddam Hussein says more than your own government. Article

Saddam the political entity as an agent of blowback to a blowback to blowback, first published online in 2003:

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as “a horrible orgy of bloodshed.”

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim’s bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that “freaked everybody out” according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of “real power,” according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was “the most dangerous spot in the world.”

[snip]

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim’s office in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim’s movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of “Unholy Babylon,” said the move was done “with full knowledge of the CIA,” and that Saddam’s CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish’s account.

Darwish said that Saddam’s paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim’s driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

“It bordered on farce,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam’s apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam “was known as having no class. He was a thug — a cutthroat.”

[snip]

…during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

[snip]

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq’s armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. “When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind,” the former official told UPI. Article

Some reaction:

Iranians have hailed the hanging of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as deserved punishment for a man they revile for starting a devastating eight-year war against the Islamic republic.

Top foreign ministry officials and ordinary Iranians alike, many of them veterans of the 1980-1988 conflict, applauded the execution even though Saddam was never tried over the Iran-Iraq war.

[snip]

State television throughout the day repeated images of a bellicose Saddam visiting the front line in the war and also replayed the footage broadcast by Iraqi television of his hanging.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Reza Asefi recalled Saddam was executed “for only one of his crimes”, the massacre of 148 Iraqis from the Shiite village of Dujail in 1982, saying other cases were not examined to prevent scrutiny of US support for his regime.

“His case was closed very quickly,” said Asefi.

“If they had gone on to the case of the Iran-Iraq and Kuwait wars, certainly his alliance with America would have surfaced. So the Americans made an effort to close his case with Dujail.” Article

More:

In parts of the capital Tehran, residents handed out sweets to passers-by as a sign of celebration for Saddam’s death.

“Saddam was a brutal dictator who committed numerous crimes against his own people and his neighbours,” said Parvaneh Dousti, a bank clerk, in Tehran. “He brought destruction to Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and the whole Middle East,” she said. She was referring to Saddam’s invasion of Iran and Iraq.

[snip]

Top politician Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Saddam’s trial was too short.

“Saddam’s trial was too limited. Still, his execution is a lesson for criminals,” he said.

“Saddam was quickly put to death perhaps because Western nations were complicit in many of the crimes Saddam committed. Countries like Germany provided Saddam with chemical weapons technology and the US provoked and supported Saddam’s invasion of Iran,” he said. Article

Summary here and here.

In the midst of the other war:

Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai appeared to criticise the timing of the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein today, but said it was “the work of the Iraqi government” and would have “no effect” on Afghanistan. Article

Noted FYI:

Afghanistan on Saturday formally rejected a request by Pakistan to release two of its police officials who have been detained in the country. According to sources, Afghanistan arrested the policemen two months ago for having illegally entered the country, accusing them of being involved in “serious crimes”.… Article

There are a plethora of pros and cons to the process of ‘embedding.’ Nonetheless, impeding legitimate media access is always disturbing and all too often a convenient ploy or excuse to whitewash or bury information, and treads a contentious and a suspicious path.

Canadian military officials removed four journalists accompanying troops on an Afghanistan operation earlier this year after complaints from allies, newly released documents show.

The abrupt end to the so-called embedding of the reporters, who were extracted by helicopter in early April, suggests the vaunted program is creating friction among Canada’s fighting partners.

“Media embedded with Canadian troops conducting operations with coalition forces generate discomfort amongst allies,” Maj. Marc Theriault, a public affairs officer in Kandahar, warned Ottawa hours before the journalists’ removal.

In a later communication, he added: “Despite our explanations, most allied nations consider our media posture as very progressive and risky.” Article

Traditionally there are 13 steps to a gallows (though whether that holds in Iraq may or may not be so). But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that.

Using approximate (and rounded for convenience) numbers, roughly $390 billion has been thrown at sustaining G. Walker’s fiasco in Iraq thus far.

That’s $30 billion

per step. ($390,000,000,000 ÷ 13 = $30,000,000,000)

There are roughly 300 million citizens in the U.S.

So one way to (an impishly dark one, granted) arrange the absolute numbers is that they come out to $100 per each step dunned you, the person next to you, the next one to him or her, and so on.

Very late hour and little free time just now to read accounts and to digest information but in light of what has transpired, a very fast whiparound of the web:

Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday for crimes against humanity, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who brutally ruled Iraq for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2003.

[snip]

As Maliki’s fellow Shi’ite Muslims, oppressed under Saddam, celebrated in the streets, the prime minister called on Saddam’s Sunni Baathist followers to end their insurgency.

“Saddam’s execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship,” said Maliki.

State television showed him signing the order for the hanging which officials said he did not attend.

Police in Kufa, near the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, said 36 people were killed and 58 wounded by the car bomb at a market packed with shoppers ahead of the week-long Eid al-Adha holiday. They said a mob killed a man they accused of planting the bomb. Article

For many Muslim faithful performing the annual hajj pilgrimage, news of Saddam Hussein’s hanging on Saturday came as an unpleasant surprise, though Iraqis were divided about his end.

“He was a very good man and all the Pakistani people love him,” said Mohammad Nadim, a 45-year-old Pakistani who is among more than two million Muslims from all over the world taking part in the hajj in Saudi Arabia.

Nadim’s government, although a key US ally, described the execution of the ousted Iraqi president as a “sad event” and expressed the hope that it would not further exacerbate the violence in Iraq. Article

An anxious nation awoke to the news of Saddam’s execution, wondering whether his death would galvanize insurgents to launch still more suicide assaults against their fellow countrymen or whether it would close an ugly chapter in Iraqi history and allow the government to stave off a full-scale civil war.

U.S. and Iraqi forces braced for a possible surge in violence by supporters of Saddam and those frustrated that an Arab leader was killed by what they consider to be an American-controlled government. Iraqi officials canceled leave for their police and army. The Pentagon announced that troops in Iraq were at a high state of readiness.

The execution of a former head of state in his own country after a trial by an internationally monitored tribunal is almost without precedent.…

[snip]

More than an hour after Saddam’s death, members of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s office were still celebrating, gathering in their offices and singing popular Shiite chants. Article

“The killing of the guilty party is not the way to reconstruct justice and reconcile society,” said the Vatican’s spokesman, Federico Lombardi. “On the contrary, there is a risk that it will feed a spirit of vendetta and sow new violence.” Article

Saddam Hussein’s execution may result in deterioration of the military and political situation in Iraq and heighten the ethnic and religious tension, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said on Saturday.

Russia as many other countries is against the death penalty, irrespective of motives for such court decisions, Kamynin was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. Article

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created. Article

Popular reactions were fairly muted as Iraqis woke on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar to begin a week of religious holidays for Eid al-Adha. Unlike at previous times of tension, no curfew was imposed on Baghdad after the execution.

The date and time were set only hours before, in the early hours of Saturday after late night government meetings.

While foreign media watched every twist and turn of Saddam’s final hours, many Iraqis have no electricity to watch television and anyway are preoccupied with violence that kills an average of 100 people a day, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Norzan Yaseen, a 32-year-old teacher in Kirkuk, said Saddam’s hanging would make no difference and she urged the government to concentrate on security and basic services.

“The Iraqi government has brought nothing but calamities to the Iraqi people in the last three years,” she said on Friday evening as she awaited news of when Saddam would hang.

A car bomb killed 36 people in a Shi’ite town on Saturday morning in what looked like a swift response. But given the short notice of the hanging and the frequency of such attacks, it may have been planned independently of the execution. Article

The ousted leader mounted the gallows inside a former torture center in Kadhimiyah in northern Baghdad and was hanged just before 6:00 am (0300 GMT) Saturday, said National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who was among those present.

Iraqi state television showed a brief film of Saddam being placed in a noose by masked hangmen, cutting away just before his execution.

[snip]

…The guards wore black balaclava-style hoods.

[snip]

Once on the gallows, Saddam “refused to allow a guard to place a hood over his head. They stared at each other briefly” before the guard stepped away, granting Saddam’s wish to leave his face uncovered, said Rubaie.

[snip]

Saddam’s American jailers had handed him over to Iraqi officials and there were no US personnel in the building as the trapdoor dropped and Saddam’s life was ended.

“This was a 100 percent Iraqi process,” said Rubaie. “There were only Iraqis present, no foreigners. The Americans were not present at the execution.” Article

As surely as the G. Walker administration and the American military pulled down that statue in Firdous Square in 2003, the G. Walker administration and the American military, though perhaps not physically present this time, pulled that lever on the gallows.

A vile tyrant, stripped of power and without portfolio as the G. Walker administration and multitudes of survivors of his regime said they sought, is dead by decree.

A secular ruler of a predominantly Muslim nation, stripped of power and without portfolio as al-Qaeda wanted, is dead by decree.

Dead after a final order of the ostensible state and resultant of a judicial process set up and financed by the occupation power, by a state which only quasi-independently commands the grounds of one of his former monuments to himself and which controls but little else. A state, such as it is, which cannot rule, but which can kill.

Revenge is not synonymous with justice.

No man is an island. The death of any man diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind, and therefore never sin to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
–– John Donne

Summary here and here.

Execution related summaries here and here and here and here.

Saddam’s pending execution will do little or nothing to bolster Bush’s paltry public approval ratings - currently in the mid-30s - or to improve a devolving security situation in Iraq, several analysts and pollsters say.

“Anytime the White House uses the term ‘milestone’ it’s a stone around the president’s neck,” said Ray Tanter, a national security professor at Georgetown University and a National Security Council member under President Reagan. “You do not change the situation in Iraq by capturing Saddam, convicting Saddam and executing Saddam. Nothing changes the insurgency except a political deal. The president may get a little bump from this, but it will quickly go down because the situation on the ground hasn’t changed.” Article

Hmm.

The government has reversed a previous order banning former army officers from joining the new army.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has instructed the Ministry of Defense to accept applications from former army officers.

[snip]

But Maliki’s instructions only cover officers up to the rank of major. Officers with higher ranks are not covered. Article

As opposed to earlier in the week, all reports now suddenly refer to them specifically as “diplomats.”

“Two of the Iranian diplomats who were detained by the American forces were released this morning in the presence of the Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubai and the Iranian ambassador to Iraq,” Hasan Kazemi Qomi, the report said.

[snip]

The US military press office in Baghdad referred questions about the Iranians to the office of the secretary of defence in Washington, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry. Article

More:

“The American forces admitted, despite their initial denial, they had detained Iranian diplomats and pressure from the Iraqi government for their release fortunately bore results,” said Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi. Article

Nebulous missions, decrepitude of morale. The piece can certainly be interpreted as hinting at a detached, if not an outright weak, command and command structure.

Braithwaite’s unit, the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, has been in the capital of western Iraq’s Anbar province since June. Most of the guys here can remember the moment when their frustration killed their empathy. When they no longer felt guilty about knocking down doors. No longer cared to hand out candy.

“Hearts and minds,” the soldiers shrug. They joke like this often. The few Iraqis still living in Ramadi have had their homes raided and streets patrolled for three years now. Every time a window is broken, a bedroom is trashed or husbands are questioned, the glares become harsher. Compliance with U.S. troops turns to hatred.

The soldiers are only trying to get the people who lay roadside bombs and find the material used to produce them. No other goal is ever mentioned.

Roadside bombs have become too powerful for the troops to feel safe in Bradleys or tanks. Patrols are almost all on foot. This day, they walk through the garbage dump, once a farmer’s field. A plank takes them across sewage, and they head toward the first house.

Bracing the weight of their gear, they run with bent knees. They hop the walls that separate the houses to avoid the streets. Roadside bombs - a soldier lost both legs to one while crossing the intersection here a few days earlier. The ladder they carry is worthless. So they tear many of the walls down. Home to home. It takes time. They are slow.

In their first few months in Iraq, mind-numbing boredom created an itch for action. They went out to dare fire. But now they feel done, as one medic puts it. They heft on full combat gear just to step outside to relieve themselves. Article

Summary here.

NATO forces were travelling toward Kandahar City in a convoy when a vehicle was driving nearby. According to a statement released by NATO, the car “failed to heed warnings to stop.”

A soldier then fired a shot that hit and killed a child inside the vehicle.

Coalition forces would not talk about the incident, but said they have no way of knowing when a vehicle is driving near a convoy whether it’s a civilian behind the wheel or a suicide bomber.

But they did admit they must do a better job at warning Afghan civilians who drive to keep their distance from convoys.

The nationality of the soldier and the age of the child are not known. Article

The toll ticks upward.

Two Belgian peacekeepers, part of an international force monitoring a ceasefire in south Lebanon, were wounded on Friday when they stepped on a cluster bomb, a UNIFIL spokesman said.

The spokesman told Reuters the two were wounded while taking part in a demining operation near Majdal Silm village. Their wounds were serious but not life threatening. Article

Not a big fan of year-end top ten lists (too many are too contrived or just downright silly), but this one includes items worth a second (or a first) look.

You saw the stories that dominated the headlines in 2006: the war in Iraq, North Korea’s nuclear tests, and the U.S. midterm elections. But what about the news that remained under the radar? …[T]he Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006. Article

HAIR, HAIR

Wishing your and yours a Boffo Bearduary.

---

MODEL MANIA

An aircraft carrier began with a single snap.

---

HOT PRDOUCE

Psst. Hey, buddy. Wanna cop some good green stuff?

---

BOYS WILL BE…

…boys gross.

Summary here and here.

Chaos. Bedlam. Maelstrom.

The terms simply aren’t sufficient to describe the totality of trauma, the universe of uncertainty, the stunting and withering of life, of livelihood, of spirit that is all-pervasive.

A certain color of stone worn a certain way is just one of the dozens of superficial clues - like dialect, style of beard, how you pin a veil - that indicate whether you’re Sunni or Shiite. These little signs increasingly mean the difference between life and death at the terrifying illegal checkpoints that surround the districts of Baghdad. In a surprise reversal, Shiite militiamen have usurped Sunni insurgents as the most feared force on the streets.

When I was last here in 2005, it took guts and guards, but you could still travel to most anywhere in the capital. Now, there are few true neighborhoods left. They’re mostly just cordoned-off enclaves in various stages of deadly sectarian cleansing. Moving trucks piled high with furniture weave through traffic, evidence of an unfolding humanitarian crisis involving hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Iraqis.

The Sunni-Shiite segregation is the starkest change of all, but nowadays it seems like everything in Baghdad hinges on separation. There’s the Green Zone to guard the unpopular government from its suffering people, U.S. military bases where Iraqis aren’t allowed to work, armored sedans to shield VIPs from the explosions that kill workaday civilians, different TV channels and newspapers for each political party, an unwritten citywide dress code to keep women from the eyes of men.

Attempts to bring people together have failed miserably. I attended a symposium called “How to Solve Iraq’s Militia Problem,” but the main militia representatives never showed up and those of us who did were stuck inside for hours while a robot disabled a car bomb in the parking lot.

Then there was the Iraqi government’s two-day national reconciliation conference, which offered little more than the grandstanding of politicians whose interests are best served by the fragmenting of their country. The message was: The south is for the Shiites, the north is for the Kurds, the west is for the Sunnis, and the east is open for Iran. Baghdad, the besieged anchor in the center, is a free-for-all.

[snip]

Even on the relatively “safe” side of the river, a dizzying assortment of armed men roamed freely. In the space of an hour, we encountered the Badr Organization militia, the Mahdi Army militia, the Kurdish peshmerga militia, the Iraqi police, interior ministry commandos, the Iraqi military, American troops, the Oil Protection Force, the motorcade of a Communist Party official and Central Bank guards escorting an armored van.

[snip]

I asked my colleagues to arrange meetings with old Iraqi sources - politicians, professors, activists and clerics - only to be told they’d been assassinated, abducted or exiled.

[snip]

So many blindfolded, tortured corpses turn up that an Iraqi co-worker recently told me it was “a slow day” when 17 bodies were found. Typically, the figure is 40 or more. When the overflowing morgue at Yarmouk Hospital was bombed last month, one of our drivers wearily muttered, “How many times can they kill us?”

Even the toughest of my Iraqi colleagues hit their breaking points after experiencing the indignity of being forced from their homes, the trauma of a bomb outside a doorstep, the grief for a cousin killed by a mortar, the shame of staying silent while a neighbor’s house was torched.

My colleagues were fearful of the future when I left, but at least they went home every night to home-cooked meals and the bustle of domestic life. A few had even purchased land in the optimistic belief that 2006 would bring a measure of calm. Now, half the staff has sent their families to safer countries, and others plan to do the same. For them, there is no ivory-tower debate over whether they’re living in a civil war.

[snip]

Survival is [the] chief concern, and it’s reflected even in greetings. Local custom calls for a string of flowery salutations, but these days the response to “Shlonak?” - How are you? - is shortened to one word: “Alive.” Article

Rundown of sentence-related items.

Two days after the appeals court upheld his conviction for crimes against humanity and referred to the rule setting the apparent 30-day deadline, the cabinet and president have repeatedly declined formal comment on when Saddam may hang, fueling speculation that rival parties are divided on the issue.

A deputy justice minister told Reuters his department would not carry out the sentence for at least a month. The chief court spokesman said there was a “misunderstanding” on the statute and said Saddam might not hang until February or later.

Only if Iraq’s three-man Presidency Council issues a decree ordering the execution sooner would the Justice Ministry execute the ousted leader before Jan. 26, the court’s Raed Jouhi told Reuters. If there were no decree, he would be hanged any time after that, at a date to be set by the Justice Ministry.

“The Justice Ministry will not implement it before one full month is up,” Deputy Justice Minister Bosho Ibrahim, from the Kurdish minority, said when asked about a tribunal statute which states that the punishment must be carried out within 30 days of the date when the judgment becomes “final and non-appealable”.

[snip]

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has refused personally to sign death warrants in other cases but has delegated his powers to his Shi’ite and Sunni vice presidents. In any event, both the constitution and High Tribunal statutes deny the presidency the power to block executions ordered for such serious crimes.

Tribunal spokesman Jouhi said: “There are two options.

“In death sentences issued by our court, if there is a presidential decree within 30 days, then they can carry it out at any time. But if there is no decree, then after these 30 days it becomes obligatory in any case and it will be up to the Justice Ministry to decide when it wants to carry it out.”

Asked if that could be after 30 days, on Jan. 26, or later than that, for example in February, he said: “Yes, any time.”

[snip]

Ibrahim said on Thursday: “The Justice Ministry is going to carry out the execution. It does not need the signature of the president. After one full month the Justice Ministry can decide when it will carry out the execution.” Article

The appeals ruling was published today.That the court in the first trial of Saddam Hussein passed sentence without an accompanying opinion (it was not released or published until more than two weeks afterwards) was unusual, to say the least. For those so inclined, did finally locate the English translation of that document, which is available here.

Related:

The trial judgment was not finished when the verdict and sentence were announced on November 5. The record only became available to defence lawyers on November 22. According to the tribunal’s statute, the defence attorneys had to file their appeals on December 5, which gave them less than two weeks to respond to the 300-page trial decision. The appeals chamber never held a hearing to consider the legal arguments presented as allowed by Iraqi law. It defies belief that the appeals chamber could fairly review a 300-page decision together with written submissions by the defence and consider all the relevant issues in less than three weeks. Article

And some other reaction.

Mission: Muddled.

The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

[snip]

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

A two-day reporting trip accompanying Major Voorhies’s unit and combat troops seemed to back his statement, as did other commanding officers expressing similar frustration.

“I have personally witnessed about a half-dozen of these incidents of what I would call political pressure, where a minister or someone from a minister’s office contacts one of these Iraqi commanders,” said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad.

“These politicians are connected with either the militias or Sunni insurgents.”

[snip]

Looking at a map he had his intelligence officers create, which highlights current battle zones and details the changing religious makeup of neighborhoods, Colonel Miska noted just how many different forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

“Who would design this mess?” he said. “It is like an orchestra where everyone is playing a different song.”

His main focus, he said, is trying to establish some kind of unity of command.

As it stands, the police and military answer to different ministries, and within the police force the bureaucracy is divided even further between the regular police and the national police. On top of that are about 145,000 armed men who work as protection detail for the Facilities Protection Services, with minimal oversight, according to United States military officials.

[snip]

Major Voorhies briefed his men before dawn last Thursday morning about the day’s mission, code-named Operation Thunderball. They were to join with Lt. Col. Sabah Kadam Fadily and his command unit and direct a joint search of houses in Ghazaliya. There were 300 American troops and 200 Iraqis involved in the operation. [Just a single example, granted, but is this indicative of common proportions? — voxd] Article

All that’s missing is the Red Queen overseeing the warped Wonderland of the woebegone G. Walker cadre of vitiation.

Bush had been expected to outline his plan next week but has put it off until mid-January, two State Department officials said Thursday. They requested anonymity because no announcements have been made.

Bush met with his top advisers Thursday at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, among them Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said afterward that he was making “good progress” on a new plan. Article

Noted FYI:

U.S. and Mexican immigration agencies are investigating the arrival of small groups of Iraqis at the border in the past week and their possible connection to smuggling organizations.

Baja California agents and Mexican federal immigration officers found a group of four Friday night at a Tijuana hotel. In addition, two groups of about two or three Iraqis turned themselves in earlier this week to U.S. inspectors at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry, asking for political asylum.

“We’ve continued to see a steady trickle of Iraqis coming into the United States through Mexico, requesting asylum once they’re in the United States,” said Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

[snip]

U.S. immigration policies adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have made it harder for Iraqis and others from “countries of special interest” who file asylum claims at the U.S. border. As they await their hearings, they are often in federal custody for months; in the past, they often went free on bond. Article

Summaries here and here and here.

Hmm. $8 billion. 70,000 troops proposed. That’s just shy of $115,000 each, on top of what’s already been expended and previously committed to.

The world community would contribute 8 billion U.S. dollars to Afghanistan to build and equip its undertraining national army, spokesman of the Afghan Defense Ministry said Thursday.

[snip]

However, Azimi did not identify the countries which will contribute to this assistance.

Months ago, the Untied States pledged to provide 2 billion U.S.dollars for the Afghan government to equip its national army, and in this regard, contributed M-16 assault rifles and Humvee armored personnel carrier to Afghan troops. Article

So how’s that training going?

There is an upside to Canadian troops here not yet having an opportunity to engage the Taliban in battle as part of Operation Baaz Tsuka. It’s giving them more time to work with Afghan forces who are being put in place to provide security to the area.

And from the look of things, the Afghans need it.

Canadian troops were puzzled Thursday as they approached an Afghan checkpoint as part of a regular patrol.

“It appears to be deserted, sir,” said the voice on the radio inside the light armoured vehicle.

After dismounting on foot, the patrol found it wasn’t exactly deserted - but there was just one Afghan National Police official watching the steady stream of traffic on Highway 1. And he didn’t have a weapon. Article

Noted FYI:

Belgian Defence Minister Andre Flahaut has said his country will not send more troops to Afghanistan.

[snip]

The visiting dignitary said 300 Belgian soldiers were performing duty at the Kabul International Airport, 18 soldiers in Kunduz and 10 more were stationed in the northern provinces of Balkh and Badakhshan. Article

Pressure mounting.

Amid growing US concern that Pakistan has allowed safe havens for al-Qaeda and the Taliban on its territory, a controversial tribal peace deal favouring the militants is coming under fire.

At the end of a year that saw a fierce resurgence of Taliban attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher named the presence of the militants in the tribal belt by the border as ‘one of the key items’ on Washington’s agenda.

[snip]

However, direct US military action may only boost support for the Taliban in the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt, as well as fuel broader resentment towards Musharraf, who is a key ally in the US-led war on terror. [May? Nay, shall. — voxd]

On October 30, a US drone rocketed a madrassa religious school in the NWFP town of Bajaur, killing more than 80 people. Fearing a backlash, Pakistani authorities took the blame for the attack and refuted reports that many civilians died, saying the school was a militant training centre.

Notably, the attack coincided with the planned signing of another peace treaty in South Waziristan. Amid outrage at the Bajaur strike, the agreement was abandoned. Article

With its own threadbare funding, minimal infrastructure and execrable record of support for public education, it is a glaring instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

The Muslim world must take immediate action to counter sectarian strife that threatens to tear it apart, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf warned in a speech reported Thursday.

[snip]

There is currently no consensus about interpretations of Islam among Muslims, and illiteracy has further exacerbated the situation, with the teachings of Islam generally being left in the hands of semi-literate religious people, he said.

Extremist elements are trying to impose their rigid views on the vast majority, while fringe ultra-modern elements were propagating secularism, creating an unhealthy schism, Musharraf said. Article

This. Is. Not. America.

This is sealing Lady Liberty in carbonite.

This. Must. Cease.

In three current high-profile criminal cases, federal prosecutors have asked that the identities of Israeli government witnesses be withheld from defendants and their attorneys – a move some legal scholars see as a highly unusual end run around the 6th Amendment.

[snip]

Though courts have allowed witnesses to testify in secured courtrooms or found other ways to protect their identities when they might be in danger, experts say it is extraordinary to keep the identities secret even from defense attorneys.

“It absolutely gives me pause,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford University law professor and 6th Amendment expert. “The essence of cross-examination is often being able to do a background investigation on the witness and use that as a lever for questioning their testimony. And if you take that away from a defendant, he is not left with very much.”

Fisher added, “I can safely say the Supreme Court has never had a case about testifying under a pseudonym.”

[snip]

Justice Department officials declined to comment about the Texas case or others in which prosecutors had sought anonymity for Israeli witnesses. Defense attorneys in the Dallas case also declined to comment.

But defense attorneys in the Chicago and Miami cases, where the issue has been settled, objected to hiding the identity of prosecution witnesses.

In the ongoing Chicago trial, defense lawyers were able to cross-examine the Israeli agents but were restricted in asking about their training, methods of interrogation or other matters. And the lawyers could not investigate their credibility as witnesses because their identities were unknown.v

“It is a scary development,” said attorney Michael Deutsch, who represents one of the two Chicago defendants. “It really gets us close to secret trials and secret evidence in this country.”

[snip]

In a unanimous opinion written by the one of the court’s most consistently conservative voices, Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court ruled that defendants have a right to know their accusers and challenge the reliability of their statements, no matter their credentials.

“Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty,” Scalia wrote. “This is not what the 6th Amendment prescribes.”

Court testimony by spies or other undercover agents has always been problematic. When necessary, such personnel in the CIA and other U.S. agencies have testified with measures to protect their identities. But experts could not recall any cases – apart from a military trial two decades ago – in which testifying agents were allowed to hide their identities even from defense attorneys. Article

Blowback intensifies. (emphasis added)

The US is telling its overseas allies that it has stopped “extraordinary renditions” and needs their help to empty Guantánamo’s prison cells. But human rights groups dispute this assertion and a question mark hangs over 200 “war on terror” detainees who could be held indefinitely without trial.

European diplomats say Washington is reacting to pressure from parliamentary investigations, lawsuits from former prisoners, and calls by friendly governments, including the UK, to close Guantánamo, the prison camp at a US naval base in Cuba.

However, the administration’s response is seen as confused and inadequate. Analysts attribute this to internal divisions over how far to roll back controversial counter-terrorism practices - including torture, secret prisons, detention without trial, and renditions - as the price for rekindling transatlantic relations.

[snip]

Delegations from Europe visiting Washington…have been assured that “extraordinary renditions” ended, or mostly ended, in 2003. US officials note that the lawsuits brought against the US by former detainees relate to events in 2003 or earlier, when even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, has admitted that “mistakes” happened.

The European committee defined “extraordinary rendition” as an “extra-judicial practice whereby an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases, involves incommunicado detention and torture”.

Visiting Europeans have been told that the US reserves the right to carry out renditions, but - as Ms Rice declared in a major statement a year ago - it would respect the sovereignty of other countries and would not send detainees to countries where the US believed they might be tortured. [The history of prevarication and turning a blind eye is evident, and there is no reason to assign a scintilla of credibility to Rice’s remarks. - voxd]

John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, strongly disputes the assertion that extraordinary renditions stopped in 2003. He said there had been people arrested in 2006 who were still unaccounted for, and others transported by the US from Pakistan, outside all judicial process, to the Middle East.

Human rights groups believe there are large numbers of prisoners in US custody who are unaccounted for and were not included in the 14 transferred to Guantánamo when President George W. Bush acknowledged for the first time in September the existence of secret CIA detention facilities, which he then ordered to be closed.

The US had also crafted a concept of “constructive custody” or “proxy detention”, Mr Sifton said. This involved allies, such as Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco, holding detainees at the request of the US and allowing the US free access to them. Article

Not to put too cynical a point on it, but when it incoveniences Big Business, involves Big Money and impacts the holy of holies – the bottom line – the panic-driven policies of the woebegone G. Walker administration and the countenancing of same by The ‘Fraidest Generation could at last (albeit incrementally) be forced into retreat.

For growing numbers of international business travelers, visa and customs regulations are making trips to the U.S. a thing of the past.

Companies say U.S. rules have become so onerous in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that it’s often simpler to meet customers, business partners and employees elsewhere. Exxon Mobil Corp. has resorted to customer meetings in a London branch office; Ingersoll-Rand Co. says it took one of its Indian engineers three 18-hour trips to get his U.S. visa.

Problems created by the entry requirements have become so evident that the man who initially helped enforce them — Tom Ridge, the first U.S. secretary of Homeland Security — is now working with a business group to change them.

[snip]

The number of business travelers to the U.S. fell 10 percent in 2005 from the previous year, according to World Travel Market, a London-based trade-show group. The Discover America Partnership — the group Ridge is working with, an organization of business executives working to improve America’s image abroad — says its survey of foreign travelers found that the U.S. entry process was rated the “worst” by a margin of more than two to one.

[snip]

Roger Dow, president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based Travel Industry Association, says the situation “is going to have disastrous implications” for the U.S. economy unless changes are made. The National Foreign Trade Council says the entry rules cost U.S. businesses $31 billion in lost sales and higher expenses between 2002 and 2004.

[snip]

“We do have a perception out there that it’s a difficult country to enter, this whole ‘fortress America’ idea,” says Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, a group of frequent foreign and U.S. business travelers based in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Article

The last check is in the mail. And already spent.

Britain will today make the final payment on a multi-billion-dollar loan it took out in 1945 to refinance the country in the wake of the Second World War.

In a transaction that will draw the curtain on the devastating economic consequences of the bloodiest conflict in modern history, the Treasury will transfer £43m to the US and £12m to Canada.

The original loan of $4.34bn - equivalent to £27bn today - was made to avert Britain from bankruptcy at the end of the war rather than to finance the combat itself.

[snip]

The loan was to be paid off in 50 annual repayments starting in 1950, but today’s payment comes six years late. Article

Feel safer? On the alert for — — dessert.

“It doesn’t matter if you send one Stollen or an entire container full, you have to fill out 13 pages on the Internet and register the Stollen — where it comes from, whom it is going to, what’s inside it, how it’s packed,” Kreuzkamm-Aumüller said, continuing to list other details. Article

All online polls are specious and should always be looked at askance, even including this one, which is why it is mentioned in the Lighter Fare section.

    President George W. Bush far outdistanced terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and former
    Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein when Americans were asked to choose their bad guy of 2006
    in an AP-AOL News poll.

    However, in a sign of the polarized times, Bush also topped the list when people were asked
    to name their hero of the year, but by a much smaller margin. Article