On Saddam

Some thoughts on Saddam Hussein's execution and comments from various bloggers.

When I saw the news last night, I wondered who would show the video first, Al Jazeera or YouTube. Also, would YouTube show the clip or would it pass in order not to leave a bad taste in people's mouths. You can see people die in various war clips so why not the execution of a dictator? I saw one clip of a group of people huddled around a man lying on the ground. I thought he had had a heart attack until he exploded and sent body parts flying.

The reliable if wonky Josh Marshall asked this question:

What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road? A signal of American power or weakness?

Well, it all depends, Josh. If, lets say if, Iraq is a functioning democracy, then these last three bloody years will be forgotten in 50 years. If there is a truly Mulsim country with a functioning democracy and economy, then the current view of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld will be completely different than it it is now. Time will tell.

Marshall's compatriot David Kurtz noted that the executioners look like the terrorist goons from the Nick Berg beheading video. That was truly weird. Why not make it a more military affair with uniforms? Of course, anyone identified with Saddam's final moments will be a target but it does give a snuff film feel to the whole proceedings.

If you're in the mood for some disconnect frisson, go to the New York Times obituary of the dictator. For a newspaper that called the pending execution wrong, the obit is sober and clear-eyed and--yes--almost saber-rattling. If it had appeared in the National Review, no one would have blinked. Good for the Times to remember the brutality of this man.

Here are the first two graffs:

The hanging of Saddam Hussein ended the life of one of the most brutal tyrants in recent history and negated the fiction that he himself maintained even as the gallows loomed — that he remained president of Iraq despite being toppled by the United States military and that his power and his palaces would be restored to him in time.

The despot, known as Saddam, had oppressed Iraq for more than 30 years, unleashing devastating regional wars and reducing his once promising, oil-rich nation to a claustrophobic police state.

The Times should require Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich to read this obit everyday when their Bush-bashing columns are due.

Let's play politics. Does this help Bush's numbers, as some must be wondering? No. If there is small spike it will be short-lived. Saddam is gone, a chapter is closed but Iraq roils and rages due to sectarian violence. Will a surge of troops work? No one knows, but the despots around the region are certain that one of their own has died with no small part of US involvement. If this gives them pause, then much has been accomplished.

Aboard the yellow bus

One sign you've seen a good movie is how long it lingers in your mind after the DVD player is turned off. Regina and I saw Little Miss Sunshine and loved it. The performances were all terrific and the whole cast made it seem like they were a real family. Steve Carrell is wonderful as the Proust scholar who is recovering from a suicide attempt and Alan Arkin is a hoot as a grandfather who is thrown out of his nursing home for snorting heroin. I especially liked Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear as the parents of the little girl who wants to be in a beauty pageant in California.

Kinnear and Collette are desperately trying to keep their shit together and I can definitely relate. In fact, this was one reason I loved Edie Falco in the most recent episodes of The Sopranos. Her husband has been shot by his uncle and she doesn't know how she can cope. If she doesn't get an Emmy, there should be hearings.

Back to Little Miss Sunshine. I loved the small moments. Steve Carrell running like a true Proust scholar -- his strides are truly academic. The little girl Olive preparing her reaction when she wins her pageant. Alan Arkin's salty advice on love to his grandson, who has taken a vow of silence until he joins the Air Force Academy. The music is terrific and I've ordered the soundtrack from Amazon. Our neighbor has our Netflix copy and she told Regina she loved it and cannot wait to see it with her mother. No greater praise

A thousand watt smile

Turn it down a notch, Nora!

This is your eight-year old on acid

Or playing with the photobooth camera on the new MacBook. She is one happy snowflake. Watch out, Dakota Fanning!

The Gadget Guy

Merry Christmas! The family had a wonderful morning and a nice slow day although Tim's newest word to his vocabulary -- MINE!!! -- was overused everytime his brother Matthew grabbed a toy or new keychain. The little one is learning to stand his ground, which is nice. That's him up there with me.

Santa brought Nora a new iPod Nano. Everyone thinks we're insane for giving an eight-year old an MP3 player but this is a test of her responsibility. If she can tke care of this, then she has cross a threshold. If she leaves it around for the boys or the dog to destroy, then we'll take it from her for a week. This is why we are loading some Beatles, Eric Clapton, and Green Day along with her Disney girl singer CDs. Besides, we added the iPod car kit -- a Frankenstein tape adapter that lets the iPod play inside your car's audio system. We'll be rocking down to LI tomorrow for Grandma and Grandpa Fest 06 in style.

I am truly loving the whole Apple MacBook and iPod toys this holiday. Everything works simply and simply works. It's a joy. My nephews gave me a Sony digital video camera and I cannot wait to shoot some fotage and edit it on my Mac. Add some music, some fades and special effects ... maybe I can get my job to give me a four month sabbatical so I can play with my new toy. What say?

Matthew took off his clothes in the kitchen just now. Not a new occurence but he clearly had something in mind. He was holding the box of the new snow tubes that we received from Aunt Maureen and The Boys. On one side was a pic of a person tubing down a snowy hill. The other side had a pic of a boy lounging in the tube in a swimming pool in the summer sun.

Hang tight, Matthew. Summer will be here soon enough. In fact the shortest day of the year was just last Friday or Saturday.

Duke debacle

The DA leading the investigation of the Duke Lacrosse Team rape case has dropped the rape charges against the accused players. Some charges remain but they look as weak as the more serious charge of sexual assault.

Clearly, DA Nifong has to be investigated and charged with malfeasance. While they are at it, the lawyers for the university had best prepare a settlement package for the accused players. I am no fan of over-priveleged jocks but they were clearly railroaded over a number of issues: race, privelege, jock vs brains, etc. The attorneys for the innocent players are going to be mighty busy counting their money, arranging interviews on The Today Show and clearing their names.

When good appliances die

It's inevitable, like the tides. Appliances in the home and other big ticket items all go belly up within weeks of one another. Last month, our gas stove died. It's six years old and yet the cost to repair the thing would be around $300. So, the new stove was installed this week.

What else? Well, the Sienna stopped producing any power and the service engine light came on. Needs a new tune-up and some cylinders. Six hundred bucks.

The washing machine has stopped agitating. It's at least 15 years old and probably not worth repairing. Do we hear five hundred?

There's a sustained leak in the main floor tub. I can only hope this is going to cost less than a new TV.

Thank goodness that an old Home Office Computing colleague has sent some extra work my way. I evaluated a pair of web sites for a firm who might hire his company to update their online content. Woo hoo, dead appliances will rise again.

Superman Returns

A day off from work before the holidays begin, a dog at my feet, a quiet house and wifi on my MacBook even if I don't know where the signal is exactly coming from. Could it be my new modem that the cable company installed a few months ago? The new MacBook seems to have a don't ask, don't tell policy with the source of its Internet connection.

I'm watching Superman Returns and am loving it. The director blessedly quotes from Superman and Superman II and the score by John Williams. They didn't finish the "Truth, justice and the American way" line and I wonder why they didn;t have Clark Kent finish the little mission statement. Too patriotic in an anti-American world? The producers probably figured audiences outside the US might not cotton to the idea. Right now, Lois is telling Superman that the world doesn't need a savior. Oh, really?

They're doing the Lois and Superman fly over Metropolis scene. The special effects are so smooth that even the obvious blue screen effects are seamless. His flying has a lighter touch and the CGI on his flowing cape is a wonder. Can't wait to see the rest.

The Guilty Neocon

I must now come clean and confess that the war in Iraq, in clear-eyed retrospect, was an utter disaster and we should not have gone in and deposed Saddam Hussein.

Of course, I am glad that this brutal dictator will soon swing by the hangman's noose, but the situtation on the ground is far from perfect or even acceptable. We have failed the Iraqi people for the second time. We did not support the Kurds in the days and weeks after the first Gulf War and we have yet to establish order more than three years after the liberation of Iraq in the new millenium.

Three years ago, I fully believed the Neocon line that people want to live in freedom, that the Middle East needed a full-bodied democracy (Israel and Turkey excepted for obvious reasons) and that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was duped.

Do I blame Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld? No, not particularly. They clearly had their world view and stuck to it. They either created the intelligence from whole cloth or ordered it to be delivered in such a format to adhere to their world view. I do blame Colin Powell, however. Powell knew when he addressed the United Nations, a corrupt and anti-US body --but still the standard-bearer for liberals and do-gooders everywhere.

Imagine if Powell had threateaned to resign if this report were published. Imagine if he told the President that he would not sell this shabby bill of goods to the general assembly of the UN? Imagine if he resigned and gave interviews to the fawning media for a month straight.

I doubt he would have stopped the war but he might have added a spine to the Democrats and the anti-war side of the Senate and House of Reps. Powell blew his shot.

Why? Was it the old soldier's loyalty? Was it the sweep of events and the accelerated news cycle? Did his old boss -- W's father -- get to him and say 'Proptect my boy?" Sadly, we won't know. Instead, we are stuck in a quagmire with no solution in sight. Would I want my son or daughter in Iraq, standing at a machine gun turrett on an unprotected Humvee in Baghdad? No, I would not. Put me up there.

Afterall I supported the damned farce and I should be the one to go. And hey, now that the Army has raised the enlistment age to 42, what is my excuse?

None whatsoever.

One Small Step for Mac

Okay, I have this glorious MacBook for less than a week, and I have been hiding it from the kids. Call me anal, but I do not want them to play with it. Sue me. So, I bring it out of the sock drawer where I keep it and I place it onto the bed. I turn away and Matthew steps onto the bed and walks across the mattress. He walked towards the laptop and places a foot on the white beauty and steps -- STEPS -- on the laptop and over it.

He walked on my new laptop, people!

I walk over -- okay, I do a fast walk/slow run -- to check my laptop. I open the lid, hit the Power button and notice in one second that there isn't a lightening strike line crack down the middle of the screen.

The MacBook is fine. Works well and just needs an owner who doesn't allow his son to use a new laptop as a doormat. Sorry, Matthew. This one is my fault, buddy.

The Lay of My Land

Quick Book Report: I am a third of the way through The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe trilogy. It's a fine series of books and it deserves a place on the same shelf as John Updike's Rabbit novels. The sentences are longer in this installment ans yet the voice is friendly and so calm. Frank's second wife has left him for her first husband whom all thought was dead; he has two adult children; an ex-wife who is checking in with him and his health is at odds with his optimism. Or it might be the source of it. He has prostate cancer and he realizes that in his mid-fifties, he is in what he calls his premanent period.

I should continue on this book but I also bought A Conspiracy of Paper, a historical novel about intrigue at the London Stock Exchange in the 1800s. I read most of the author;'s other stock exchange and funy clothes novel, The Coffee Trader. It was good but it was due back at the library. I'll be returning to it.

Quick Gadget Report: I am typing this on my new Apple MacBook. I am in love but I think Nora may love it more. She wants to make movies, burn DVDs and load music on a pink iPod. She has asked Santa for it and I know for a fact that he will deliver. I have yet to plug in my Dell Jukebox, but my new Mac might die of laughter. I think there might be an iPod Nano in my future too.

Quick Blog Report: Kevin Drum had a good line about James Baker's Iraq Situation Group report. Has any document disappeared into irrelevancy so quickly? The retired SecDef Donald Rumsfeld says he hasn't read it but for the summary and the President clearly won't read it. Frankly, I doubt if even his father, a man who he adores, could talk him out of his position on Iraq.

Andrew Sullivan had a smart and frightening throwaway line, an aside on his blog. Perhaps we should leave and let the Middle East have the war that it so desperately wants. Could it comes to that? Clearly, oil plays a factor in our presence there though one must admit that we could have occupied the country without building a dictatorship and call it Shell Oil-stan. Who could stop us? Would we care about this irrational region if there were no oil is the question. The West would throw up its hands and allow the players to kill themselves much like what happens in Africa.