Qurban, 12.29.06

Please see post on 12.29.06.

That despicable bastion of left-leaning journalism, the New York Times, leads its online edition of 12.30.06 with the following headlines:

Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity.
Obituary: The Defiant Despot Oppressed Iraq for More Than 30 Years.

Here, I become a pedagogue, a rogue, a crackpot with high-speed internet: where is the investigative journalism that examines the causal links between a fraudulent occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military and the execution of the deposed Iraqi dictator? In U.S. jurisprudence, a suspect is freed if the evidence condemning her or him is illegally obtained; might this same right have been bestowed upon Hussein, given that his incarceration was a result of fraudulent occupation¹?

Thank you, and good night.

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¹Yes, of course he was brutal. Yes, of course he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis^a. Does this make his capture, imprisonment, and execution "right" according to U.S. jurisprudence and morality? As Marcellus Wallace states in Pulp Fiction, "Not by a damn sight."

^aNow, exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died as a direct result of "U.S. military involvement in the region"? As of December 2, 2006, one month ago, the minimum number of reported Iraqi civilian deaths equaled 52,060, with a maximum reported death count of 57,628. If one averages those numbers (oh, for the skeptical among us, let's knock 10,000 off the bottom end!), it kind of makes that time in Dujail, 1982, seem like a misdemeanor....