2007 Begins and ends with death.

I decided to spend some time this morning looking at some of my blog posts over the year and was struck that the year began and ended with deaths in the news. There is of course the death of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto which is very much in the news. But, I also thought it interesting that one of my early blog post in January also concerned the deaths of some prominent people. There was Gerald Ford and some guy named Saddam Hussein who hanged remember him?

Rape rooms, death rooms and Newsrooms

In the run up to the war much was made by the Washington war machine flacks about the Saddam Hussein's sons raping Iraqi woman that they saw on the street. Yesterday, a second U.S. soldier pleaded guilty in raping a young Iraqi woman and then murdering her and members of her family. So much for the United States having the moral high ground in this war.
What struck me in the coverage of this story was how two different media outlets covered the story of the rape and murder. Here is how the Washington Post/AP described the soldiers testimony about the rape and murders:

"I lifted up her skirt and took off her stockings while Barker held her hands with his knees," he said before admitting that he raped the teenager as she screamed. "After I was done, myself and Barker switched spots."

Now here is the Reuters report on the testimony:

"While we were playing cards Barker and Green started talking about having sex with an Iraqi female. Barker and Green had already known..." Cortez said before breaking down. He bowed his head and remained silent, sniffling occasionally, for a full minute before continuing.
"Barker and Green had already known what, um, house they wanted to go to ... knew only one male was in the house, and knew it would be an easy target," Cortez said.
Once at the house, Green, the suspected ringleader, took the girl's mother, father and little sister into a bedroom, Cortez said, while he and Barker took the teenager, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, to the living room.
"She kept squirming and trying to keep her legs closed and saying stuff in Arabic," Cortez said.
During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom. After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead," Cortez said.
"Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her," Cortez said, sniffing audibly. When Green was finished, he "stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times." The entire crime took about five minutes to carry out, he added.
Cortez said the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped. He said she screamed and cried throughout the assault."

If the American public only reads stories from the Associated Press and other mainstream U.S. news organizations who reported this story they may never fully understand why there is such hostility to the United States. The Reuters report shows the brutality and horror of the actions of these U.S. soldiers. A brutality and indifference that matches that of Saddam Hussein and his sons. This hypocrisy of horror is not lost in the Arab world. In the American news media the horror of what happened to this young Iraqi girl and her family is buried under news stories about Anna Nicole Smith. When will the American public wake up that we are not always looked upon as a shining light anymore in many parts of the world.

SADDAM HANGED AND GOES TO HELL...

and takes the prestige of the United States with him.

“This is the man who tried to kill my dad.” -George W, Bush Sept. 26,2002

Gee, and it only took the deaths of 3,000 U.S. troops to kill him.

"Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial — the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime." -George W. Bush 12/29/06

OOPS! Wrong victim.

"We are reminded today of how far the Iraqi people have come since the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule — and that the progress they have made would not have been possible without the continued service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. " George W. Bush 12/29/06

"Dec. Deadliest Month in Iraq for U.S." -Washington Post

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead."-George W. Bush 12/29/06

Except for his children.

Truth and Justice?

As Saddam Hussein counts down to his last hours or weeks depending on which news story you believe I came across two blogs that I found very interesting to read this day.
There is this one by Paul Craig Roberts on truth or the lack there of today:

"Recently, Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, said that freedom of speech is inconsistent with "the war on terror."

If it takes a police state to fight terror, the country is lost even if Muslim terrorists are defeated. Americans have far more to fear from a homeland police state than from terrorists."

"The challenges that America faces are not terrorism and oil supply. The challenges that we face are the police state that Bush has created and the disrespect for truth that is endemic in government, the universities, and the media. The US has entered a dark age of dogmas and
unaccountable power."

Then there is this commentary by Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo on the justice of Saddam Husseins trial and how Bush's and America's legacy will be judged down the road by the pre ordained nature of the judgment that would have been one of the hallmarks of someone like Hussein himself:

"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. "

"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"

Indeed, Truth and Justice have new meanings in Bushworld and it won't be long before freedom is no longer mentioned in the United States if things keep going they way they have in the past few years.