12/31/06: Morning Political Dispatch

On the last day of the year, here are the miscellaneous political stories that are not worthy oftheir own posts.

• If you have the stomach for it, here is the actual video of Saddam's execution, uncut.  It was blurry at times, and was very poor camera work.  But you see the whole thing.  The crowd that was in the building chanted "Moktada, Moktada, Moktada," obviously referring to the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr.  Just seconds before he dropped, Saddam sarcastically spat out, "Moktada," in what seemed like an attempt to mock them.  Moktada al-Sadr is the leader of the Mahdi Militia, and is responsible for much of the violence in Iraq.  In a sense, it was like they were passing the torch from one violent regime to another.  Yeah, we sure accomplished a lot by going in there, didn't we?  I didn't post the video on this web site because I don't want to glorify it.  But if you want to view it, then fine, do so under your own discretion.  The link is there.
• During Dick Cheney's speech yesterday at the D.C. funeral service for Gerald Ford, the Vice President praised Ford for pardoning Nixon.  No surprise there!  "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon," Cheney said.
• There were a number of no-shows at Ford's funeral.
• Bill O'Reilly opposed the death penalty, but supported it for Saddam.  Flip-flop.
• Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com takes a look back at the 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.

On a personal note, I would like to apologize for jumping to conclusions regarding the recent photo of John Kerry in Iraq, which at first appeared to show him off on his own, not worthy of the time of the troops.  It turns out there was much more too it.  It was lazy of me not to dig further, and I am sorry for that.  TPMmuckraker explained why there was only one person at the table with John Kerry.  He was conducting an interview with the New York Times!

Oh, and one more thing, there are no daily political clips today.  Yesterday and today, as you might guess, are very slow news days.

Comments

[Tony]

More importantly it is believed that Kerry was actually in England at the which would explains the Union Jack Flag on the wall. It's worth reading about. TPM MUCKRAKER

TR

[Tony]

The link for Saddam's hanging was missing. The Link is Here . I am not a proponent of the death penalty (in general), however I have been known to flip flop too.

TR