American Passports Found on Bodies of Al Qaeda Fighters in Somalia

Leahy Introduces Bills To Combat War Profiteering, Public Corruption: "War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007"

White House Postponing Loss of Iraq, Biden Says - washingtonpost.com: "White House Postponing Loss of Iraq, Biden Says

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 5, 2007; A06

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will 'be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,' in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.
'I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost,' Biden said. 'They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively.'"

7 indicted New Orleans cops to surrender

Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium - CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues: "I think this is how the deal went down, more or less. Maliki – the leader of a faction of violent sectarians – wanted Saddam hanged right away, as an Eid holiday gift to his base, as stated in the story. In response to this, Bush Faction leaders said, Well, OK, why not? Bush too wanted Saddam killed as a blood sacrifice to his base. U.S. officials on the ground – the ones who will have to deal with the backlash – tried to make the best of a bad situation and at least delay the execution. But they were overruled – not by Maliki, as the story ludicrously suggests – but by the White House.

For the overriding fact remains: the execution on Saturday could not have been carried out at that time, and in that manner, without approval from Washington. Now, we don't want to fall into the fallacy here that ascribes omnipotent power to the Bush Faction, as if they exercised absolute control over events in Iraq. Clearly, events there have outrun the Bushists control almost from the very beginning. (They are, however, responsible for all the events that have grown out of the war, which they launched, very deliberately, in the full knowledge that it was not necessary.)

But in this particular case, they did have control of events – because they had literal, physical control of Saddam's body. (A control they continued to exercise after the execution, by the way, transporting the corpse to its resting place by an American helicopter. It seems the 'sovereignty' of the Iraqi government in this case lasted only for the brief time it took for the hanging.) Saddam could not have been hanged by the Mali"

Allen L Roland's Radio Weblog: "Are we now going to compound our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we now have condoned the hanging of this sovereign country's leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial ?

All of this so that George W Bush, in an act of institutionalized revenge, can claim a pyrrhic victory while Baghdad roils in a brutal civil war ~ which he instigated.

Have we gone mad ?

Have we, as a nation, completely lost our moral bearings ? "