Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

The vid, taken by a cell phone in the hand of one in the small group of witnesses, can be found a Vinnie Aut Morire.

Zeyad at Healing Iraq has a translation of what was said (scroll down).

Saddam (as the noose is put around his neck): Ya Allah (Oh God).
Someone in the audience: Mercy be on those who pray for Mohammed and the household of Muhammed (Everyone repeats the prayer, including Saddam) -
Executioner and two people in the audience: … And hasten his return (the Mahdi), curse his enemy and grant victory to his son, Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada! (This is a common Sadrist chant.)
Saddam (smirking): Muqtada? Is this your manhood? (unclear)
NSA Muwafaq Al-Rubai’i: To Hell!
Saddam: (laughing) … disgrace to you. (unintelligible)
Prosecutor Munqidh Al-Far’awn: Please, no.
Muwafaq Al-Rubi’i: Longlive Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr!
Someone in the audience: To Hell!
Prosecutor Munqidh Al-Far’awn: No. Please, no. I beg you.
Saddam (solemnly recites the Shahada prayer): I witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Mohammed is the messenger of Allah. I witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Mohammed is the- (trap door is opened).

As the New York Times, they’re referring to Moqtada al Sadr’s daddy, the late Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, snuffed by Saddam.

Okay, Allah found these links, though I don’t care for his analysis. Saddam was executed in the only way Iraqis know how to do it for this particular case. It could not have been a professional, sterile execution in the manner we’ve perfected here in the States. No, Saddam was killed by those he’d most directly wronged. This was done in the Iraqi way, and far be it from me to whine about that. No harm, no foul. If the hanging would have been clinical, the Ba’athists would have been just as venomous as they are now and have been at least since the fall of the now dead tyrant.

This time, it’s John Conyers.

Yep. It’s like this:

There was a vacuous piece in The Scotsman yesterday — Climate change: The crack of doom? — followed by some… well, skeptical comments from readers. The readers have all the science over the journalist, but one comment hinted at my own manmade global warming theory:

We’re all doomed. Can I have a few TV appearances, plus appearance money of course, to explain why I think we’re all doomed?

I can do the woe, woe and thrice woe bit at regular intervals, and make myself a fortune appearing on TV, or writing rubbish articles for the newspapers.

No, it’s not only money. For some people, such as Al Gore, it’s a crusade to make the inconsequential activist feel important. They can motivate people to behave in a certain way, which is power. Money, notoriety, and power. If they’re your gods, box ‘em up and call them “Gaia.”

Unnatural global warming is thus, in my view, a manmade invention problem.

Gore betrayed his boss and lost an election, and now he’s found something that will gain him notoriety and cash. I credit Al for a shrewd business decision, but I do hope it ceases to be profitable before it does any more damage.

From CNN, the tyrant is gone and the people are jubilant!

This daily kos comment was called to my attention:

Who did Satan kill? Recently? A long time ago? Over history?

Not only isn’t Satan personally responsible for any deaths, but the number of people killed in the name of Satan is sorta small compared to the number of people killed in the the name of God.

How supremely dense can one be?

I wrote the following in response to a diarist at RedState:

That “[t]yrants like Saddam will exist as long as the governments of the world carry on business as usual with the despots while trying to block the screams of their victims from conscious thought” is, I think, blaming the civilized for the crimes of the uncivilized. Tyrants like Saddam will exist as long as the tyrannized do not rebel. Yes, the civilized world has obligation to assist in the “sic semper tyrannus”, but the tyrant is his own evil. Saddam bears responsibility for all that he has done, and any sort of introspection regarding this and/or his end is banal and counterproductive.

Saddam Hussein’s life is devalued to the extent he devalued the lives of others. The world loses nothing tonight. Likewise, for me personally to cheer his death would be to applaud that which rendered his life meaningless. His atrocities.

No, I’ll wait for him to die. I’ll sigh, relieved, when it is done. And I hope they dump his corpse in the Euphrates.

In jeans and a blue button down, implying that their were two New Orleanses, John Edward looked the media dream when he announced in the Big Easy yesterday, though John Kerry’s hometown Globe thought their boy merited at least a subhead in this big Edwards deal. It should have been parenthetical, but the Boston daily proclaimed that somehow Edwards’ announcement had put “added pressure on his former running mate, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, to decide whether he will make a second bid for president.” I suppose they still have to pay attention to that guy in Beantown.

Will Edwards win the collective heart of the mainstream media (MSM) this campaign? The first signs are uncertain.

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The Iraqi government wants to off the thug before the new year. Good for them. He’s a terrible distraction at this point, and he has long since forfeited his right to live by taking the lives of countless others.

May God have mercy on his soul. Proceed.

James Risen can be an ass. Senator Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) went off in monotone a few weeks ago about the Iraq war, pontificating that the way it was being conducted “may even be criminal.” The staffer who wrote the speech might get a raise, as the little diatribe earned Smith what might be his best (almost only) press ever.

Risen writes:

His somber cadence resonated in a way that made political Washington take notice, transforming him into one of the most talked-about Republicans heading into the new Congress.

Who is talking about Gordon Smith? Risen and his clueless beat buddies? No, the speech was the product of some simple-minded staffer trying to catch a pop wave. GIGO. It ought to, and probably will, have no impact whatsoever on the debate or the policy.

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward has gleaned a deathbed confession from Gerald Ford:

In a four-hour conversation in July 2004 at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Dick Cheney — Ford’s White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

Expect a book soon. Bob Woodward creates controversy wherever there’s a profit to be made, even on the bodies of dead Presidents.

As some of the smarter set my say: “Oh, yuck.” Indeed.

John Edwards is announcing his candidacy for the Dem Presidential nomination in New Orleans as I speak, wearing jeans and a blue button-down. “America has to lead.” And not after the next election, he says: we have to start now.

Look, I don’t know how serious he is about his populist shtick, but he will be a serious candidate. The Iraq war is not his strong issue, and neither is terror, but he’s not the “Breck Girl” when it comes to hitting the right note with those who feel disenfranchised or like to shriek that everyone is enduring hardship.

John Edwards, provided he haa a decent organization, will be a factor. We underestimate him at our own peril, but for now — this early — the Breck Girl jokes don’t hurt at all.

And he just promised to raise taxes.

Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States, is dead at age 93. Biographies and tributes, such as Erick’s can be found elsewhere, and he helped a nation heal from the media-driven sores caused by Nixon and Watergate, but he was an establishment candidate who secured the 1976 Republican nomination because a dying establishment put him there. He was the last gap of the Rockefeller Republicans, underscored by the Veep the establishment gave him: Nelson Rockefeller.

But it is a sad moment when part of our living history is no more. Goodbye, President Ford.