Josh Marshall's Incredible Rant about Saddam Execution!

[KoKo]

(Whole rant is worth going over there to read)
Josh Marshall on Saddam Hanging

-snip-
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.

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.

The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren't grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'

more at.....

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011729.php

[cali]

1. extraordinary.

Thanks so much for bringing it to my attention. By far the best thing I've read about this disgusting event- maybe the best thing I've read about the whole miserable war.

[tularetom]

2. Maybe the chimp will get bored with the Iraq clusterfuck

now that Hussein has been offed and Babs has been shown that the chimp's weenie is bigger than Poppy's.

[susu369]

3. Josh beautifully articulates what I have been feeling

but was unable to express.

Thank you for posting.

[ourbluenation]

4. its exactly how I feel. k and r

[TahitiNut]

5. Deja vu ...

Notice the "hanging"?? A perverted kabuki - poltical necrophilia.

[KoKo]

7. Continuation of the "Wild West Theme" of the Bush Thug....

"Hang Him"....completes the image....

[stevedeshazer]

10. Even that "event" was phony.

The whole fucking thing was staged by the U.S. and Ahmed Chalabi.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm

[TahitiNut]

12. Yep. I doubt a DUer with a functioninig brain isn't fully aware of that.

It was an iconic moment in the overt and arrogant propaganda staged by the Cheney/Bush regime and Chalabi cronies. The complicity of the corporate media was stunning - a total abdication of any pretense of 'news' - pure global corporatist public relations crap.

[LynnTheDem]

26. And Peter Jennings was attacked by the MFing idiot freepers

when he dared state the truth; there were very few Iraqis there & US troops pulled the statue down.

But then, the truth of course has a liberal bias.

Rightwingnuts; truly the stupidest, most duped MFers ever.

[calimary]

6. Powerful. Says what needs to be said.

I LOVE this part: "These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries."

Figures the single pathetic thing bush can see through to completion (besides wreckage and chaos) is yet another execution. Does what he's good at, I guess. There's your legacy, junior. :eyes:

[Shakespeare]

8. Kick, because it's one of the best pieces on this whole mess.

I read this last night; Josh gets it right again. Very, very well said.

[Peace Patriot]

9. Please see my post "Bush = Death" for a discussion of positive imaging.

We need to crowd out this Hangman image with our own life-giving and loving imagery. Truly. These Dark Lords are playing mind-games. And there are ways to resist. THEY want a year of more Death and Darkness. What do YOU want? What have YOU seen, what do YOU know, of human goodness and hope, and of the rebirth of American democracy? Form it in your mind. Hold that image fast. Push back!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3034424

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. Yes!

"Oh for a friend who knows the sign", as Rumi said. The key to ridding ourselves of this darkness is to concentrate upon light.

[pacalo]

11. He nailed it!

Sham...more play-acting...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....an embarrassment (the best Bush can do; can't get anything else right)...issues with his dad about finishing the job.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. "Tawdry" is a very apt description. Also, the banality of it.

"The concept of the banality of evil came into prominence following the publication of Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which was based on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt's thesis was that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats."

[AzDar]

15. Sums it up perfectly. Thanks for posting! n/t

[Doctor_J]

16. Is Josh ever on Cabal "News"?

Or is he too formidable opponent for the "fair & balanced" WH liars?

[paulk]

17. kick

best thing I've read on this farce so far.

Thanx for posting.

[Guaranteed]

18. "So there!"

Yup.

[smirkymonkey]

19. Bravo!

I couldn't have said it better.

[otohara]

20. Right-On

the money!

K&R

[tavalon]

21. That perfectly sums up my opinion on this one

Yeah, he was a bad man and we are bad too. The two can coexist.

[Ms. Clio]

22. k&r

nailed it.

[6000eliot]

23. Thank you, Josh.

You summed up my feelings about this farce perfectly.

[KoKo]

24. (....)

[Say_What]

25. 'So There!'

Great article!!


..These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one -- claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade "prissy and finicky." Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.

[KoKo]

27. Yes, gotta give one more kick just in case there are some DU'ers who

missed it.

:kick:

[Ms. Clio]

29. another one!

:dem:

[bobthedrummer]

28. The Decider and his gang have ignored and overwritten our Constitution

our Bill of Rights, The Geneva Conventions, The Nuremberg War Trials, many former existing treaties and agreements in areas from arms control to environmental protection, the Decider has eliminated habeas corpus, has established and maintained a "secret" worldwide gulag political prison network, has used military force "preemptively" in a manner that has harmed our military and put Americans everywhere at risk of harm as a reaction to the Decider's arbitrary "policies", the BFEE has employed mercenaries, the BFEE has tortured, raped and assassinated for political purposes...

Oh yes, this thread needs a kick.

[KoKo]

30. Another Kick for the "New Year's Crowd."

:kick:

[KoKo]

31. One 'mo Time!

[Disturbed]

32. Busholini loves his Executions.

I am reading "Frontier Justice" by Scott Ritter. It is an excellent book.

[Pastiche423]

33. "...because there's nothing else this president can get right"

IMHO, he din't even get that right.