Whenever I discuss Saddam here in New Zealand, people always want to know to what extent the U.S. supported his regime. Fortunately, I can now refer them to Juan Cole's recent post "For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein." Summarizing, the ten ways are as follows: The CIA was...
Juan Cole has an excellent article on Saddam's execution at Salon.com. Particularly interesting is what he has to say about the decision to execute Saddam today, which appears to be designed to further alienate Iraq's Sunnis:The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to...
Let us hope that his death doesn't breathe even more life into the insurgency. I fear that it will. ...
According to reports, Saddam will be executed before the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, which begins this Sunday. Saddam will hanged, although he has expressed a preference for a firing squad. The Iraqi government's decision echoes the Nuremberg trial, where the IMT deliberately denied the condemned defendants a firing squad, the preferred method of execution for soldiers. Indeed,...
If you are interested in the history of the Middle East, I highly recommend this flash video, which compresses 5,000 years of imperial ambitions in the area into a mere 90 seconds. Who knew the Mongols had such a gigantic empire? UPDATE: The Maps of War site, which created the Empires video, is a treasure-trove of interesting information. Check...
Bloomberg has an interesting article today on how the US's increasingly onerous visa restrictions are causing significant harm to American businesses.Companies say U.S. rules have become so onerous in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that it's often simpler to meet customers, business partners and employees elsewhere. Exxon Mobil Corp. has resorted to customer meetings in a London...
A number of years ago, I visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The museum was strangely deserted; the only other visitors my friend and I saw were a young African-American family. Social animals that humans are, the four of us wandered the museum near to each other, although we never spoke. After about an hour,...
For those of you who don't read Balkinization -- and you should! -- Brian Tamanaha has a wonderful post on the Wizard of Oz, which, it turns out, is actually a political allegory about the debate over gold and silver. Who knew? ...
Last week, Julian criticized Hamdan for its failure "to defer to the executive's reasonable interpretations of the relevant statutes, treaties, and customary international law of war." Julian's use of the term "reasonable" implies that, at least in principle, the executive could offer an unreasonable interpretation of a statute, treaty, or customary rule — one that, accordingly, would not require...
Ordinary citizens greet the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, as "Helen." ...
Although evidence that Bush and Blair lied about Saddam's WMD capabilities has been accumulating for the past couple of years, this latest revelation is still shocking:In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He...
The Iraqi government's assault on the independence and objectivity of the IHT continues. The trial court was its first target: not only did Iraqi President Jalal Talabani tell reporters on the eve of the Dujail trial that Saddam had signed a written confession and "deserve[d] to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," high-ranking officials...
