And a note of thanks to Jonathan, Greg and Bob for the wit and insight they contribute here. I tend to go through periods where there’s just not really much time for blogging, and without their help, this site would certainly be a far less interesting place to visit.

And of course thanks to all of you for stopping by. See you in 2007.

… is that Saddam Hussein’s fate — or at least, its timing — was ultimately sealed by some White House speechwriter.

Bush is due to give a big speech on Iraq in a few weeks, and he needed a sound-bite symbol of progress made and corners turned. Look for the execution of Saddam to figure prominently when and if he finally gets around to giving that speech.

I wouldn’t dream of going up against the Big Guys. But I’ve been waiting for the right moment to post this, uh, unique interpretation of the Cake song “Nugget” for awhile, and what the hell, it’s almost New Year’s Eve. Party on, Garth.

1. David Limbaugh: “It’s easy to dismiss [Democrats’] appeasement mindset now since we haven’t confirmed Saddam had new stockpiles of WMD … ”

Sadly No response: “‘Haven’t confirmed’ is one way to put it. I also haven’t confirmed leprechauns flying out of my pants, although I’m open to any new reports.”

2. White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances Frago Townsend: (The capture of bin Laden is) ” a success that hasn’t occurred yet.”

Washington Monthly commenter: “My sleeping with Halle Berry is also a success that hasn’t occured yet.”

3. Blogger Jeff Goldstein: “Let them, for one brief moment, bracket their partisan aggressions and reflect on what the US and its allies have done in removing this butcher from power—which, contrary to received wisdom, has made Iraq a far better place, if only for the moment potentially.”

LGM response: And as the year ends, I will reflect on and celebrate the fact that I made a trillion dollars this year, if only for the moment potentially.

The world sure looks different when you wear your Red State Spex!

Josh Marshall nails it here :

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.

Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ’secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.
. . .
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it – for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one — claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

What strikes me about all this is that Saddam’s guilty sentence (and to a lesser extent his punishment) were probably foregone conclusions, so the challenge to the Iraqi Government (read: the Americans pulling their strings) was to find the best method to try Saddam Hussein. They could have handed Saddam over to the International Criminal Court or postpone the trial until the American occupation is over, but that would have robbed them of the well-choreographed marketing campaign that the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein has become. It was a sham trial that didn’t have to be, and the decision to micromanage Saddam’s fate has probably been made at the expense of America’s image throughout the world. Again.

Is Saddam headed off to hell tonight?

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. Also to be hanged at that time were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

I realize I shouldn’t be shocked by anything anymore…but I am shocked and frightened by the way this has happened. I honestly never believed the Bush administration could get away with preventing Saddam from speaking about his longtime collaboration with the U.S., which started in the late fifties. (Of course, Saddam may have had his own reasons for not, uh, emphasizing this.) And I really didn’t think they could off him with no trial for the large-scale crimes we assisted with. But apparently they can. It’s just a few steps short of an intra-mob hit.

This is a scary, scary world.

UPDATE: “Foodrule” writes in to make this important point:

From: Foodrule@…
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006
Subject: Re: Saddam getting what he deserves: Please choke on your own tongue
To: tinyrevolution@…

Sorry to be so blunt! But on the bright side, you can add this e-mail to your self-congratulatory list of people who are responding to your self-evident moral bankruptcy. Stop breathing at your earliest convenience, dipshit.

What’s particularly wonderful here is that Foodrule’s responding to something one inch above this. The only thing that could have made it better is if he’d used “inhuman barbarism” rather than “moral bankruptcy.”

His impending execution now has its own music and graphics package on CNN.

Like any member of the left in good standing, I despise religious people with a passion. At least, that’s what conservatives would have you believe about liberals any time one dares to suggest that government and religion shouldn’t mix. With that in mind, I’ve been confused this week to see two strongholds of “sensible liberalism” run hit pieces on Mitt Romney for the crime of being outspoken about his faith, but not being a mainstream or evangelical Protestant. From Slate :

Objecting to someone because of his religious beliefs is not the same thing as prejudice based on religious heritage, race, or gender. Not applying a religious test for public office, means that people of all faiths are allowed to run—not that views about God, creation, and the moral order are inadmissible for political debate. In George W. Bush’s case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush’s religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

Nor is it chauvinistic to say that certain religious views should be deal breakers in and of themselves. There are millions of religious Americans who would never vote for an atheist for president, because they believe that faith is necessary to lead the country. Others, myself included, would not, under most imaginable circumstances, vote for a fanatic or fundamentalist—a Hassidic Jew who regards Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah, a Christian literalist who thinks that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old, or a Scientologist who thinks it is haunted by the souls of space aliens sent by the evil lord Xenu. Such views are disqualifying because they’re dogmatic, irrational, and absurd. By holding them, someone indicates a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.

By the same token, I wouldn’t vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism. The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in “reformed” Egyptian hieroglyphics—a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. If you don’t know the story, it’s worth spending some time with Fawn Brodie’s wonderful biography No Man Knows My History. Smith was able to dictate his “translation” of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.

While I largely agree with the sentiments in the Slate and New Republic articles, I can’t help but remember all the times these same publications have bashed the left for making the exact same points about evangelical politicians. Needless to say, I think we’re going to see a lot more of this over the next couple of years as more and more pundits find new ways to make the argument that “Yeah, religious appeals by politicians are okay, but Mormons are weird.”

Hypocrites.

Another report from TMW’s correspondent in Iraq. I’m skipping ahead chronologically to post this one while Christmas is still fresh in memory; I’ll be doubling back to finish posting the older stuff soon.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I apologize for the lateness of my yuletide greetings, but recently things over here have gotten, shall we say, “exciting” making the power supply on base even less reliable than usual. Nevertheless, Christmas perseveres even out here in Iraq under rather extreme circumstances. Yes, we have been nailing our camouflage stockings to the sandbag retaining walls and lighting up the inside of our tents with low-grade Pakistani Christmas lights that I am certain must meet or exceed fire safety codes. By the by, canvas isn’t flammable, is it?

Indeed, it has been quite the surreal Christmas experience out here in the desert. One would need look no further than the inside of our much-visited and much-reviled dining facility run by our good friends at KBR (sub-contractor to the stars!). Friends, you can rest easy knowing that your tax dollars are being well-spent on holiday decorations designed to bring a smile to every soldier and airmen who walks through the door. During Thanksgiving week, for example, the whole place was chock full of turkeys of every variety—tissue paper turkeys, cardboard cutout turkeys, and, of course, the processed frozen “turkeys” that we were served to eat. They even went the extra mile and saddled all of the local Iraqi servers with those shiny cardboard Puritan hats, and friends I have never felt sorrier for those guys. They had this look of bitter resignation in their eyes that reminded me of the look my dog used to give us when my mom would make him wear a sweater. It was a look that said “yes, we will wear your silly cardboard hats for now, but there will come a time when our people will rise up and throw of this yoke of oppression. Then it will be YOU who wear the silly hats…AND serve us chili mac…it’s quite tasty!”

With the onset of the Christmas holidays, our cafeteria managers went all out with so much arts and crafty decorations you had to wonder if the enemy hadn’t hit us with a couple of kindergarten classroom bombs. It was all good though because if there’s ever a time for excess, that time is Christmas. However, something about it just didn’t feel right. As I sat down to eat I found my stomach innately craving a margarita (more so than usual), and I kept expecting to detect a faint whiff of salsa in the air. Then, as I looked above my head, I realized what they had done. Absolutely everything, from the ribbons, streamers, and bunting to the tissue paper balls hanging from the ceiling, was colored red, green…and white. Apparently, Santa has gone south of the border because it’s a Cinco de Mayo Christmas here in Iraq. Of course, this minor faux pas pales in comparison to what one of our own did all in the service of Christmas cheer.

Our comm squadron here maintains a tall communications tower that they decided they would employ as part of the Christmas decorations for the base. Somehow, they managed to put an angel on the top of it and strung Christmas lights from the top of the tower all the way down to the base giving it the appearance of a rather large Christmas tree when lit up at night. Perhaps this doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to some of you as you have no doubt seen this type of thing done back home. If you’re like me though, you question the wisdom of erecting a 500 feet tall glow-in-the-dark blinking Christian symbol in the middle of Muslim country whose people uh…let’s not mince words here, don’t much care for us. Do they really need a reason to launch another round of rockets at us? Do they really need a brightly blinking target mocking their faith that’s less than a hundred yards from my building?!? I honestly don’t know how this kind of stuff gets past the command staff. Although I imagine it probably went something like this. “Sirs, we’ve got something we’d like to run by you all for approval, but before we do that, would anyone care for some weed?”

So a couple of nights ago, I was kicking back in my office displayin’ some mad sudoku skills when I heard the loudest explosion I’ve ever heard. It was the kind of impact that you feel deep in your chest. The noise was so loud my head started buzzing, and I immediately felt high. Simultaneously, a spray of dirt and dust shot through every crack in the building I never knew was there, and I quickly scrambled for my body armor. We took about five more mortar rounds, but nothing as close as the first one. As it turns out, they didn’t hit the Jesus tower, but they did blow up the portable shitter right next to it. Divine intervention perhaps? Nevertheless, the base commander orders the comm squadron to unplug their “tree” and retrieve the angel from her lofty perch while I am left to marvel at the hubris of some of the men in charge here.

Oh the things I do for you people. In my never ending quest for good material, I put aside my high standards for musical talent and attended the Carrie Underwood concert here on base. I’m not really familiar with her or her work, but I understand she won a contest of some sort and is trying to parlay that thin success into something bigger. Anyway, the moment she steps out on stage you can literally hear the breath leaving hundreds of soldiers and airmen simultaneously as she is easily the prettiest girl any of us have seen since we arrived in Iraq. Clearly, many have come for reasons other than her charming brand of heartland pop music. So after opening with “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which I thought juuuuust a bit trite, she launches into any number of songs about small towns with one stoplight, vandalizing her cheatin’ boyfriend’s pickup truck, and how much she misses her momma now that she’s all growed up. Were I anywhere else, I could say it sucked, but the lack of live music in my life had me enjoying her show despite my natural predisposition to pass on such prefabricated pap. She even managed to pull off a cover version of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. No, really.

To commemorate the passing of Gerald Ford, here’s a repost of my favorite political ad of all time :

And while we’re talking about Ford’s legacy, let me echo what Atrios said :

As we all know, because everybody on the teevee will keep repeating it, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was perhaps the wisest and awesomest thing anyone has ever done in the history of presidenting. Never mind that it wasn’t popular at the time. Never mind that it set an awful precedent which led to the pardoning of the Iran Contra figures and transformed corrupt Nixonites into distinguished elder statesmen and Bush administration officials.

We are told again and again that what they nation needed was “to heal.” That “the turmoil” needed to be over. That it was necessary to move on.

Ford’s presidency began by pardoning a criminal scumbag. It wasn’t “closure”, it was driving the getaway car. And while it may be impolite to point out Ford’s complicity in this shameful nadir in our nation’s history, it could be worse. When Bill Clinton dies, every obituary will contain the name “Lewinsky”.