Howling Latina

Defiant until the end, Saddam Hussein last words were curses directed at Persians, spies, traitors and Americans, the New York Times reports.

Not exactly the sweet words earlier reported by mainstream media.

Howling Latina wept as she saw a picture of Saddam Hussein next to the rope that would soon end his life, as posted earlier this evening on the Web site of a national newspaper and thankfully taken down.

If the United States is going to go around making sure that every tyrant is brought to justice by the noose, why not start with Castro and have the Miami Cubans try him and execute him?

And what about all those kinds words from media pundits, including the Washington Post on the subject of Pinochet, another bloody tyrant? Why no justice for U.S. client-state tyrants?!?

Hell, there is not one single national leader today that does not have the stench of the death of thousands on their blood soaked hands.

Hat tip to Firedoglake for being one of the few progressive bloggers to condemn Iraq's kangaroo trial of Saddam with its ignoble preordained verdict and ending.

Update: Mosquito Blog has also brilliantly posted on the subject.

As a follow up to Howling Latina's post where she called the authenticity of Saddam Hussein's recent letter into question, here's a former letter by Hussein of April 20, 2003 as published by the Guardian Unlimited.

Unlike the US media with the latest alleged Hussein missive who report it as gospel, the Brits prefaced their news story back in 2003 with reasonable doubt and wrote: "Full text: the Saddam Hussein 'letter'. And this was also followed up with additional context in the very first paragraph: 'This is a translation, from Arabic, of a letter to the Iraqi people allegedly written by the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein

Now, after reading the earlier letter, side-by-side with the latest published drivel, it hardly seems plausible that both letters were written by the same man; in fact, they appear to have been penned by rhetorical opponents with two very different worldviews.

Here's the transcript of the earlier letter; read it and then make your call. Meanwhile, Howling Latina is in Egypt and sure as hell hopes there is no violence in the streets as a result.

From Saddam Hussein to the great Iraqi people, the sons of the Arab and Islamic nation, and honourable people everywhere.

Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God.

Just as Hulaku entered Baghdad, the criminal Bush entered it, with Alqami, or rather, more than one Alqami.*

They did not conquer you - you who reject the occupation and humiliation, you who have Arabism and Islam in your hearts and minds - except through betrayal.

Indeed, it is not a victory while there is still resistance in your souls.

What we used to say has now become reality, for we do not live in peace and security while the deformed Zionist entity is on our Arab land; therefore there is no rift in the unity of the Arab struggle.

Sons of our great people:

Rise up against the occupier and do not trust anyone who talks of Sunni and Shia, because the only issue that the homeland - your great Iraq - faces now is the occupation.

There are no priorities other than driving out the infidel, criminal, cowardly occupier. No honourable hand is held out to shake his, but, rather, the hand of traitors and collaborators.

I say to you that all the countries surrounding you are against your resistance, but God is with you because you are fighting unbelief and defending your rights.
The traitors have allowed themselves to declare their treachery, even though it is shameful, so declare your rejection of the occupier for the sake of great Iraq, for the
nation, for Islam and for humanity.

Iraq - together with the sons of the nation and the people of honour - and we shall restore the stolen relics and rebuild Iraq which they (may God bring shame upon them) wish to split into pieces.

Saddam has no property in his own name and I defy anyone to prove that there were palaces except in the name of the Iraqi state. I left them a long time ago to live in a small house.

Forget everything and resist the occupation, because error begins when there are priorities other than the occupier and his expulsion. Remember that they are aiming to bring in those who will fight one another so that your Iraq will remain weak and they can plunder it as they have been doing.

Your party, the Arab Ba'ath Socialist party, is proud that it did not extend its hand to the Zionist enemy and did not give in to the cowardly American or British aggressor.
Whoever stands against Iraq and plots against it will not prosper in peace at the hands of America.

Greetings to everyone who resists, to every honourable Iraqi citizen, and to every woman, child and sheikh in our great Iraq. United, and the enemy and the traitors who came in with him will flee. Know that the one with whom the invading forces came, whose planes flew to kill you, will send you nothing but poison.

God willing, the day of liberation and victory will come, for us, for the nation, and above all for Islam. This time, as always when right triumphs, the days to come will be more beautiful.

Take care of your possessions, your departments, and your schools. Boycott the occupier. Boycott him, for this is a duty towards Islam, religion and the homeland.

Long live great Iraq and its people.

Long live Palestine, free and Arab from the river to the sea.**

God is greatest.

May the despicable ones be despised.

In a look back at the life of former Pres. Gerald Ford, Russert will interview Tom Brokaw of NBC News and best-selling author Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Both men extensively covered Ford throughout his chronicled career.

Later, in roundtable interviews, Russert will ask questions of Michael Beschloss, presidential historian of NBC News, E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnists, Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor of National Review and William Safire, New York Times columnist about the 2006 election results and what they portend in 2007 and 2008 for would-be presidential hopefuls.

In other words, blah, blah, blah, blah, Hillary, blah, blah, blah, blah, Obama, blah, blah, blah, blah, Edwards, blah, blah, blah, blah, McCain, blah, blah, blah, blah, Giuliani and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Romney.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Associated Press reports that former Pres. Gerald Ford, the 38th president after Nixon resigned and the only unelected leader in US history, died on Tuesday according to his wife.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Ford was the last Republican candidate for president that Howling Latina supported; and he was a decent man from the old Republican guard of centrists who did not cultivate a racist Dixie strategy.

In fact, Ford lost TEXAS!

With James Brown dying on Christmas Day and now Ford, more and more of American icons from the 70s are dying off. Apropos to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, a time for everything.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for PEACE!

A renowned Spanish physician...examine[d] ailing leader Fidel Castro [and] said Tuesday on his return to Madrid that Castro is not suffering from cancer and another operation would not be necessary. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrida, chief surgeon at the Gregorio Maranon Hospital in Madrid, told a press conference that Castro was not suffering from any "malignant disease."

Describing Castro's health condition as stable and that the Cuban leader was "mentally fit," Sabrida said. "He says every day that he wants to return to work. But his doctors have urged caution."

In an earlier post, Howling Latina linked an article in the Roanoke Times about Common Cause asking Congress to investigate Republican Rep. Virgil Goode and attributed the date to Dec. 24.

Well, contrary to the date listed at the heading, it seems the article is an old news story going back to June 20, 2006; an alert reader pointed it out.

It's hard to fathom why a newspaper would use a current date at the top of a headline of an old news article; but that's exactly what happened; live and learn.

Be that as it may, the latest brouhaha presents an excellent opportunity for House Dems to investigate the Goode matter as opposed to Republicans who just allowed every shape and form of shenanigans to go on without batting an eye or even an eye lash, from Duke Cunningham to Virgil Goode.

Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press reported yesterday that Muslims overwhelmingly voted for Sen.-elect Jim Webb in Virginia on Nov. 7. According to Imam Mahdy Bray, a Muslim activist, "50,000 Muslims went to the polls -- 47,000 of them vot[ed] for Webb."

Keep pissing off folks, dear Republicans: Blacks, Latinos, Jews, Indian Americans, American-Indians; just keep those hits-a-coming!

Common Cause made the request following an announcement this week that the ethics committee was launching a probe into a bribery scandal that put former California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in prison.

[...]

That prompted Common Cause to ask the panel to "immediately add to itsto-do list" other members of Congress that it linked to a Capitol Hill ethics scandal, including Goode and Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla. "Certainly there appears to be a cloud over his [Goode's] head and that's why we need an ethics committee investigation," Common Cause spokeswoman Mary Boyle said. "If he was an innocent bystander as he says, then he would be cleared."

In huge news for people who oppose the death penalty, Maryland's highest court halted executions by lethal injection; and with the recent election of Martin O'Malley as governor, the political weather in the Old Line State is calling for clear skies for opponents.

Howling Latina previously wrote about O'Malley's opposition to the death penalty; and after the recent Court of Appeals ruling that "requir[es] the state to submit its execution procedures for public review," as reported by the Baltimore Sun, O'Malley could simply refuse to "submit the execution protocol for legislative review."

Now, contrary to gnashing of teeth by the Sun, HL thinks that's a lovely idea. After all, before Ehrlich was sworn into office, Maryland had a death penalty moratorium. And let's not forget, a plurarity of Marylanders support life in prison rather than the needle.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that O'Malley has asked "Ehrlich to leave the issue for the incoming administration."

"I'm sure all of this will spark a renewed debate as to whether all of the money we spend prosecuting death penalty cases might be better spent fighting violent crime and saving lives," O'Malley said.

Forget the Sun's insane idea of "push[ing] for reform of the current method of lethal injection." Get rid of the death penalty, once and for all. If O'Malley pushes for anything, it should be a moratorium that halts state executions in that state FOREVER.

The Maryland Court of Appeals in 4-3 decision, ruled that "lethal injection protocols are subject to Maryland's Administrative Procedures Act, meaning that they must be developed under the oversight of the attorney general's office and a legislative committee, and that the public must be given a chance for review and comment."

Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley who is Catholic and a death penalty opponent told reporters recently that he wanted to wait for the state's highest court to rule and offer "guidance" on how to proceed before offering any comments on the subject.

At one time, Maryland had a death penalty moratorium.

Back in 2000, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the late Howard "Pete" Rawlings placed a full-page ad in The Baltimore Sun and urged then-Gov. Parris Glendening to immediately implement a moratorium; a few months later, Glendening ordered a study to examine racial bias; and after a University of Maryland report showed that death row inmates were predominantly black and/or poor, Glendening issued the long-awaited moratorium in 2002.

On the one hand...on the other hand scenario, a few months after the moratorium, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich won the governor's race; and when he took office in January, he immediately lifted the ban. Favorably for abolitionists on the other hand, Ehrlich was recently booted out of office.

At the time of the ad, O'Malley endorsed the ad and told the Associated Press, "I am not in favor of the death penalty. I don't think as people in a civilized society we can support capital punishment...You don't promote respect for life by making us participate in the death penalty."

Amen, Brother O'Malley; and let's not forget that in Maryland, 63 percent of voters "want to replace the death penalty" with life in prison without parole. Voters in the commonwealth of Virginia hopefully one day will join their sage brethren across the Potomac and come to understand that it costs more to execute than to offer alternatives to the ultimate punishment.

Howling Latina has been busy with scholarly work examining soon-to-be Sen. George Felix Allen's demise with his lame attempt at image restoration. She titled her 23-page discourse, "How George Allen Lost His Mojo."

In the meantime, she notes that From On High stole a phrase from one of her posts and callously added the "sic" epitaph after a line to show the blogosphere how grammatically challenged HL is.

Here's her grammatically offending line:

"The United States has the dubious distinction of being the number one country in prison population as well as prison rate (sic), ... "

Hmmm...a quick LexisNexis search finds gasp, similarly offending sentences:

From the Associated Press in a May 24, 2006 article:

Auditor-General Bob Sendt said the return-to-prison rate in NSW was 44 per cent, the highest recidivism rate in Australia.

And from Agence France Presse's translated wire story:

Russia has the highest prison rate in the world, surpassing the United States, with 685 of every 100,000 Russians currently in prison and where up to 10 people are often incarcerated in a single small cell.

Granted, they are not word-for-for identical but...in all three sentences, "prison rate" either precedes or follows a proper noun.

"I think we have a real mandate," Rodriguez said. "We needed to make sure we worked on raising the minimum wage. We're also going to take care of
prescription-drug costs. And, by God, we're going to do the right thing by our
veterans."

Howling Latina dutifully notes that Democrats are just as stupid as Republicans.

Mason Conservative broke the news that Rep. William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, as he's fondly called by Skeptical Brotha and others, beat Karen Carter in the Louisiana Congressional run-off race.

Shameless oppportunist and a crying shame! Good thing Democrats are a majority in the House; or Jefferson might be tempted to bolt out of the Democratic party after Pelosi tossed him off the Ways and Means Committee.

Update: The Virginia Progressive had an earlier post.

P]laintiffs' attorneys in the redistricting case that forced a Nov. 7 special election in the 23rd District say the trend is clear. One of the reports they wielded, prepared by an American University history professor, showed Bonilla's share of the Hispanic vote dropping from about 30 percent in 1996 to below 10 percent in 2002. In the latter election, he ran against Laredo Democrat Henry Cuellar, a popular former state lawmaker and Texas secretary of state, and eked out a 51.5 percent victory.

If the lunchtime crowd at Don Pedro Mexican Restaurant on S.W. Military Drive is any indication, Bonilla has his work cut out for him in his new turf.

Candy Couch, [a] candle shop owner, had seen other men put to death, but they had been flat on their backs, feet facing her, arms splayed on a gurney, waiting for the needle. She rarely saw their eyes before the life drained out of them. But this man, her fourth, stared her down as he walked to the electric chair.

"He's staring at me," Couch said. "Oh my God, he's looking right at me."

For nearly 100 years, broad public support for capital punishment has helped the Virginia Department of Corrections maintain a rotating list of about 20 to 30 volunteers, although only six are required to witness each execution. Some come only once. Others repeatedly return. One man, a paint store salesman from Emporia, has seen 15 men executed.

Witnesses aren't paid. No special skills are needed. The death house doesn't require much from volunteers beyond state residency, a basic criminal background check and an ability to sum up in three lines or less on a written application why they want to watch convicted killers die. Some say it's their civic duty to watch; that it's no different than sitting on a jury or voting. Others say they're just curious to see whether death equals justice.

Howling Latina thinks that every person who supports the death penalty should be forced to join a pool from which witnesses are randomly selected and made to watch the ultimate act of brutality and outrage by the government. Can there be anything more ghastly that strikes against the very consciousness of the human spirit?

Well, according to Little Miss Candlemaker, not only should the condemned be killed, but hell, they should suffer a little along the way. "She is not religious, but she believes in God and Old Testament eye-for-an-eye justice." The crown to her glory will be when gets to see someone actually fry in the electric chair. Forget the Master's words on the subject of forgiveness; too much of a burden; besides, she ain't really churchly.

State sanctioned murder is an aberration to the vital principles that make each of us human; and for all those phony Republicans who profess to surrender to the teachings of Jesus, liars, Pharisees, every one of you; and yes, this post is especially for Mr. Scott "One-Hundred Percent Pro-life" Lingamfelter.

According to the Virginia Democratic Party bylaws, "No Democratic committee member or officer of any Democratic committee shall publicly support, endorse, or assist any candidate opposed to a Democratic nominee." Those who violate the rule should be removed from office, according to the bylaws, which office holders and committee members pledge to uphold.

"I don't think one can hold such a position of high regard such as the state Senate of Virginia, be a Democrat, endorse a Republican who is bad on issues that affect the African American community, and expect there are not going to be consequences," McEachin said. "Congress turned completely blue because of Jim Webb's election. For him to stand in the way of that was, quite frankly, tragic."

Eleanor Cliff of Newsweek wrote a sizzling, dynamite article about Junior, Senior and Jeb. It is must read for all.

Here is one seminal paragraph from her article:

On the eve of a report that repudiates his son’s leadership, former president George H.W. Bush broke down crying when he recalled how his other son,Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, lost an election a dozen years ago and then came back to serve two successful terms. The elder Bush has always been a softie, but this display of emotion was so over the top that it had to be about something other than Jeb’s long-ago loss.

Howling Latina beseeches you, click, read and find out what was going on.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq!

It's "Meet the Press" Iraq Sunday.

Fresh from his stint as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, James Baker will join his other co-chair, Lee Hamilton and talk with moderator Tim Russert about the group's recommendations for the insoluble quagmire in Iraq.

Joining the fun, Ken Adelman, former member of Secretary Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board will enlist Eliot Cohen, military historian and professor of international studies at John Hopkins University, Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and Thomas Ricks, military correspondent of the Washington Post and author of "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" to talk about how the United States got itself into this unholy mess and how it might be able to extricate itself from it.

If you recall, when Ricks' book first came out last summer, the administration with Rumsfeld leading the GOP charge, labeled the reality-based community "a new type of fascism” and folks who foolishly continued to believe their lying eyes as suffering from "moral or intellectual confusion."

Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, is pregnant. She and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are "ecstatic" about the baby, due in late spring, said a source close to the couple.

This Sunday, Tim Russert's guest will be National Security Adviser Steven Hadley to do a little esplainin' about that nasty Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki memo that was making the media rounds a few days ago.

Russert will also interview Armed Service Committee Chairman for the next month or so, Sen. John Warner of Virginia as well as Ranking Member and soon-to-be Chairman Carl Levin of Ohio.

The Senate Armed Services commitee is to begin hearings on Tuesday on the nomination of Robert Gates to replace outgoing Secretary of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld; the nomination is expected to win wide approval.

Former Pres. Jimmy Carter and author of the latest book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," will also be sharing with 'Timmie' his views on the Middle East and how one might resolve the perpetual on-going conflict.

Howling Latina safely guesses that Carter will not advance the notion of invading any more sovereign Middle East nations to bring chaos, er, freedom to the region.