Fox, CNN and all the other big boys have video of the events leading up to Saddam’s execution, but they all wimp out and stop there. Only one minor network in the U.S. has carried the sensational image of what happened after the trap door was pulled. Rather than strain their server by linking to them, I’ve reproduced the image below the fold.

(more…)

Via Allah and the Captain, it’s beginning to look like Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s days may be numbered. I knew the guy was in trouble when President Bush publicly praised him for doing “a heckuva job” in being “the right guy for Iraq,” but I did not know that a U.S. President had the power to fire an Iraqi PM. I mean, it’s not as though we can control anything else that goes on in Iraq.

Yeesh. Either there’s a lot more/less to this story than meets the eye, or Donald Rumsfeld should be fired yesterday.

I agree with Patterico and Professor Bainbridge the 500 WMD found in Iraq are no big deal, except maybe for arguing with moonbats who implausibly claim Saddam had no WMD rather than nowhere near as much WMD as we thought. Then again, if those guys don’t believe the Duelfur Report, does anyone expect them to believe Rick Santorum? Alternatively, the 500 WMD may be semi-useful as a counterargument to those who argue that UN inspections were the answer, but even argument is strained. It’s not exactly fair to expect Team Blix, playing cat and mouse games with Saddam, to locate WMD in a matter of months that it would take the U.S. military a full year to find after Saddam was out of the picture. In degraded, pre-1991 bombnutshell, this story is either the tip of some as yet unannounced iceberg, or it’s much ado about nothing little.

That said, the story is news, and should rightfully be reported. More should be, as well, if it can be done without endangering national security. The Administration’s ho-hum response, and their apparent reluctance to re-visit the WMD issue, are not good reasons to keep information classified. Maybe other, more valid reasons exist. If so, keep the information classfied. If not, release it, and leave it to us, the people, to decide whether it’s a big deal or not, or whether it will or will not help or hurt any particular politician’s campaign in the fall. Professor Bainbridge plays the tired “I question the timing of this story” card:

Finally, why is a politico in the middle of the election fight of his life making this announcement instead of the Administration? It looks like more GOP politicization of intelligence.

Puh-leeze. This information has been known since early to mid-2004, so if the GOP were intent on politicizing it, they’d have dropped their bombshell then, while the Presidency was at stake rather than just the career of one junior Senator. Even if Santorum’s seat were that important to the G.O.P. - or, if, as a Bainbridge commenter argues, it was just the Santorum camp politicizing the issue for his own personal ends - it still would not make sense to politicize the issue now, a full 4 1/2 months prior to Election Day. Unless Santorum thinks the still-classified information he wants declassified has a bit more there there, demagoguing the issue now is utterly useless, any short-term political capital he gains from yesterday’s report will fizzle long before November 7. As “convenient” timing goes, this ranks down their with Jim McDermott questioning the timing of Saddam Hussein’s December 13, 2003 capture (which, presumably, was supposed to influence the outcome of the November 2, 2004).

We don’t have whatsisface anymore, but Michael Fumento is there.

In the comments thread on another post, Kevin Murphy kindly gave this heads-up:

Meanwhile Germany has released Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing a US serviceman in a 1985 Beruit hijacking. They traded him for a German hostage in Iraq, who thinks her captors are really nice people and wants to go back. Her only complaint is that they had to kidnap a German because capturing Americans is too hard.

This loon, this “happy hostage”, one Susanne Osthoff, was quoted by al Jazeera as saying she “cannot blame them for kidnapping her, as they cannot enter [Baghdad's heavily fortified] Green Zone to kidnap Americans.”

Because she doesn’t mind being kidnapped, this Osthoff, a Muslim convert and fluent Arabic speaker, wants to go back to Iraq to continue her “humanitarian” work. The German government is opposed to the idea:

“It is regretful that Ms. Osthoff is not following the appeal of the German government not to return to Irak,” said Ruprecht Polenz, president of the German parliamentary committee on foreign affairs.

“She is precisely the one who should clearly see the risk of such a decision,” said Polenz.
…
“After the intensive efforts of all parties involved over a period of three weeks in the end led to her being released, I would have little understanding if Ms. Osthoff found herself again in a dangerous situation,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

I have little understanding as to what she was doing there in the first place. But, be that as it may, my German gentlemen, you fail to recognize a salient point in all of this; Ms. Osthoff is clearly insane.

Rumsfeld has announced that two US brigades, around 7,500 [-edit] men, are being pulled out of Iraq, or technically simply not rotated in.

I stole the preceding link from McQ at QandO who also notes this:

The United States has not discussed basing American troops in Iraq, and would do so only following negotiations with the new Iraqi government, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today.

No doubt we will have long-term, if not permanent, bases in Iraq. One of the strongest arguments for me in favor of the invasion of Iraq was that that country is literally in the heart of our enemies’ territory. When we have to go to war against Iran or Syria it will be much easier to do so from the country right next door.

John Hawkins catches Mother Sheehan The Peace Mom aka The Next Rosa Parks Cindy Sheehan praising terrorists as freedom fighters, and wonders why the MSM hasn’t covered it. Meanwhile, the other Rosa Parks is making the rounds. Apparently, not all women with kids in the military oppose the war in Iraq after all. Whoda thunk it?

Patterico has an op-ed piece on Cindy Sheehan in the L.A. Times. If you read blogs, Patterico’s piece won’t tell you anything you don’t already know about St. Cynthia, but it will tell L.A. Times readers what they need to know, which the Times has conveniently left out.

A few days from now, watch for the Dog Trainer to a series of unhinged letters in response from Mother Sheehan’s bastard children. That’s where you come in. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a letter from a moonbat perspective, making the silliest arguments you can think of as to why Patterico is a big bad poopyhead for writing this piece, and why President Bush should start fulfilling his constitutional duty to spend the rest of his term doing nothing but meeting (and meeting again, and again, and again) with every screwball who has lost anyone as a result of any government policy. Send your letter to the Times and see what happens. Be sure to send me a copy, too, which will all but guarantee it will end up getting published somewhere.

UPDATE: This (h/t: HH) explains a lot.

UPDATE: But frankly, that (h/t: John Cole) is just rich.

John Hinderaker rightly notes that Cindy Sheehan isn’t polling well, but wrongly accuses her of threatening her son Casey to keep him from joining the service. Writes the Hindrocket:

By a 38% to 35% plurality, Americans disapprove of Cindy Sheehan. And that’s what they’re willing to say to pollsters! Plus, those figures are based mostly on the initial, totally positive media coverage of Sheehan. As time goes by, and people learn more about Sheehan–e.g., her anti-Americanism, and the fact that she was so fervently anti-war BEFORE her son enlisted that she vowed to run him down with her car if he joined up–her ratings will no doubt slide further.
[Link in original.]

Sound pretty damning, doesn’t it? The trouble is, the story Hindrocket linked to doesn’t exactly bear that out. In that interview, the circumstances surrounding Casey Sheehan’s enlisting or re-enlisting do not come up at all. The only reference to her “vowing” to run him down with a car was to a desperate offer by Sheehan to help him stay out of Iraq, not a threat to attack him if he chose to go voluntarily. Here it is, in full context:

CINDY SHEEHAN: Right. Our family was against it from the beginning. Casey was against it, but he felt it was his duty to go because he was in the Army. And he felt that he had to go to protect his buddies, to be there for his buddies, to be support, and they are brainwashed into thinking that even if they don’t agree with the mission, they’re brainwashed into just blindly following it. I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. And he said, “Mom, I wish I didn’t have to, but I have to go.”

Bad Powerline. Bad!

Link via Patterico.

UPDATE: Hinderaker sort-of corrects his misrepresentation, writing:

UPDATE: It’s a small point, but I should have said “reenlisted” instead of “enlisted.” Casey Sheehan reenlisted in August 2003, and it was then, as I understand Mrs. Sheehan’s account, that she talked about running him down with her car to keep him from participating in that “immoral war.”

Actually, no, he shouldn’t have said either “enlisted” or “reenlisted,” as the conversation concerned his deployment to Iraq in 2004, not his decision to re-enlist in 2003. More importantly, it’s not a small but a huge one. It’s the difference between telling a gung-ho son “don’t you dare join that evil military or I’ll f’ing kill you” and offering desperate solutions to a reluctant son who doesn’t want to go off to war but thinks he has to. This has got to be the lamest correction I’ve seen anywhere except maybe the L.A. Times or Radley Balko’s blog.