OpEdNews - Diary: The Guardian TEN DAYS: THE DEADLINE FOR A NEW US PLAN

As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a US president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy.

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DIANE'S NEWS CLIPS begins here :)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~> Happy New Year !!! The Guardian TEN DAYS: THE DEADLINE FOR A NEW US PLAN Focus shifts to devising honorable retreat from Iraq. Deadline looms as US toll reaches 3,000 * All eyes on January 10 date for new course in Iraq * Disillusion with Shia dominated government Ewen MacAskill and Dan Glaister in Los Angeles Monday January 1, 2007 As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a US president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy. The first, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, found Mr Bush asleep, and according to advisers he spent only a short time discussing the execution. The second, the reports of the 3,000th US fatality in Iraq, evinced a only general remark. ..................snip................... .... far from marking the closure of an era in Iraq, Saddam's execution will exacerbate sectarian tensions. The fears of the minority Sunni Muslims will have been increased by the comments of his Shia executioners in support of the Shia militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr. ..................snip................... "We are still in charge. The Iraqi government is a facade," the military source said. "How can our strategy be to accelerate the handover to this government and the Iraq army. This is a rush to failure." http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1980928,00.html More world news >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/0,,362455,00.html _________________________________ .ron corvuswire@verizon.net GOVERNOR JON CORZINE INTENDS TO SELL NJ TOLL ROADS Governor Jon Corzine intends to sell New Jersey's toll roads to private investors for $10 billion. Selling or leasing publicly owned toll roads degrades our public and financial security. Toll road takeovers led by Goldman Sachs, where Governor Corzine was the Chairman and CEO before taking elected office, prove the point. Goldman Sachs took the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway private in 2005. Goldman invested its own money in both deals. Goldman worked every side of these deals, collecting fees as lobbyists, deal makers and investors. >> PRIVATIZING NEW JERSEY'S TOLL ROADS Highway Robbery By Anthony Cowell Governor Jon Corzine intends to sell New Jersey's toll roads to private investors for $10 billion. Selling or leasing publicly owned toll roads degrades our public and financial security. Toll road takeovers led by Goldman Sachs, where Governor Corzine was the Chairman and CEO before taking elected office, prove the point. Goldman Sachs took the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway private in 2005. Goldman invested its own money in both deals. Goldman worked every side of these deals, collecting fees as lobbyists, deal makers and investors. After privatization, tolls on the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway immediately doubled. Drivers unable to afford the tolls now use alternate roads, increasing congestion and pollution. But these severely negative impacts to the public don't concern MIG Cintra, the Australian and Spanish corporations that operate these toll roads. MIG Cintra's motivator is greed. MIG Cintra prohibits any competition with its toll roads. It forbids any expansion of adjacent roads. And when MIG Cintra took over the Indiana Toll Road, the 600 people formerly employed by the Indiana Department of Transportation were told to start looking for new jobs. MIG Cintra holds a locked down monopoly where states must pay protection cash to a toll road mafia led by Goldman Sachs, foreign corporations, and super rich investors. Continued: http://www.counterpunch.org/cowell12282006.html _________________________________ http://jablankfort@earthlink.net Sarah Olson: Why I Object to Testifying Against Lt. Watada The following article by a good friend and colleague, Sarah Olson, in Editor & Publisher, describes what may become one of the most important 1st Amendment cases as the US government takes further steps to shut down the avenues of political dissent, and what remains of our free press. One of the factors that convinced the White House to withdraw from Vietnam was the increasing amount of dissent and resistance among the troops stationed in Vietnam, as well as the US who went public with their views. It is essential that members of the armed services who oppose the war in Iraq, feel free to speak to members of the press about their feelings regarding the war, and at the same time, members of the press must feel they are able to interview those soldiers without ending up in court as witnesses for the prosecution. Those of you with media contacts are encouraged to alert them and make sure this issue does not get buried out of sight. >> SPECIAL: Why I Object to Testifying Against Lt. Watada By Sarah Olson Published: December 30, 2006 1:50 PM ET OAKLAND (Commentary) In May of this year, I conducted an interview with Ehren Watada while working as a freelance journalist. Watada is a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. Continued>> http://snipurl.com/169gm _________________________________ Excerpted from: http://www.truthout.org Baghdad Burning | End of Another Year ... http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106G.shtml From the Riverbend blogspot: "A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted. 2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No - really." --- Richard A. Clarke | While You Were at War ... http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106C.shtml "In every administration, there are usually only about a dozen barons who can really initiate and manage meaningful changes in national security policy. For most of 2006, some of these critical slots in the Bush administration have been vacant. And with the nation involved in a messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the expense of all others: Iraq. National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the '7-year-old's soccer syndrome' - just like little kids playing soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball," says Richard A. Clarke. --- Robert Parry | Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106D.shtml "Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the US military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity," writes Robert Parry. "The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be - as the New York Times observed - the 'triumphal bookend' to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately." ---- William Rivers Pitt | Hussein the Rabbit http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106A.shtml "My cell phone has been buzzing with regularity all day, alerting me to the arrival of text messages from my conservative friends. 'Saddam is dead woohoo' reads the latest one, and that pretty much describes all the others. Somehow, a lot of people are finding meaning or gratification in the fact that Hussein met his fate at the end of a rope Saturday morning. I just can't get there," says William Rivers Pitt. --- FOCUS | History of Bushes and Hussein Is Hard to Ignore http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Y.shtml The history of animosity between the Bushes and Hussein is hard to ignore. The relationship actually began as one of pragmatic friendship in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war with the main US enemy in the region, Iran, and George H.W. Bush was vice president in an administration that offered him help. A 1992 New Yorker article suggested that Bush, through Arab intermediaries, advised Hussein to intensify the bombing of Iran. Hussein soon became too much to handle. --- FOCUS | On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors" http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Z.shtml The final hour of Iraq's former ruler began about 5 a.m., when American troops escorted him from Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, to Camp Justice, another American base at the heart of the city. Two American helicopters flew 14 witnesses from the Green Zone to the execution site - a former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government's much feared military intelligence outfit, now inside the American base. --- DOJ Probes Interior Officials' Ties to Oil Program http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106E.shtml The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts. --- Timing of Saddam Execution Risks Arab Backlash: Analysts http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106F.shtml Images of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows on one of Islam's most important feast days risk further alienating public opinion in an Arab world already bristling at perceived Western insensitivity, analysts have warned. Even the West's leading Middle East allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, publicly spoke out against the choice of the first day of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice to put Saddam to death. _________________________________ Carole JEAN, Editor: http://bigpictureworld@yahoo.com 'The Politico-Religious Israeli-Palestinian ...Conflict: Why It is Never Resolved / (Part I). http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1051 _________________________________ The Daily Jang, Pakistan | Hanging Was 'Greatest Folly Since the Invasion' http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml | Original Article (English) >> EXCERPT: Mr al-Rubaie made another contestable statement: "Saddam's execution was one hundred per cent Iraqi and the American side did not interfere." However, it is an American judge who late Friday rejected a last-minute appeal by the lawyers of Saddam Hussein, who had been in US custody almost to the end. "Petitioner Hussein's application for immediate, temporary stay of execution is denied," the district judge said in Washington, after a hearing conducted over telephone from Baghdad. Television footage of the moments before a composed Saddam Hussein was led to the gallows shows prison staff in masks. The masks would leave room for argument that at least some of them were American. There is also the question of whether it should have been a public hanging. http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=37453 Brutal Ushering in of the New Year http://snipurl.com/16a1l The Saudi Gazette, Saudi Arabia The Offensive Timing of Saddam's Hanging Saddam Hussein was, to many Arabs, a courageous fighter who stood up to the United States government." ----- THE SUNDAY HERALD [Scotland] http://www.sundayherald.com/ 'We'll rise up; we'll become a bomb' Sectarian violence that has wracked Iraq racheted up to another bloody level by Saddam's execution By David Pratt, Foreign Editor http://snipurl.com/16a1t The damning verdict of history By Trevor Royle, Diplomatic Editor http://snipurl.com/16a1u Kurds were denied their day in court By Kirsty Taylor http://snipurl.com/16a1y ----- U.S. opens another battlefront in the Muslim world The U.S. military, unprepared to recognise that it had lost control of the ... http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/12/31/7029.shtml ----- NEW ZELAND http://www.scoop.co.nz/ Scoop News: Saddam Hussein Executed In Iraq Fears Of Unrest Intensify Int. News: SADDAM EXECUTED BY HANGING - BUSH SAYS IT'S JUSTICE Saddam Hussein has been executed amid growing concern that a civil war in Iraq will flare. Amnesty International's call for a fair trial and for the execution order to be cancelled fell on deaf ears. [snip] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0612/S00378.htm ----- MAIL & GUARDIAN [South Africa] http://www.mg.co.za/ Frame by frame: Last moments of a tyrant The opening of a trapdoor and the sudden snap of a hangman's noose at dawn on Saturday brought an extraordinary end to a political era in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's execution, however, brought no early end to the country's spiral of violence. Within hours, a series of car bombs killed dozens of people in Baghdad and south of the capital. More: http://snipurl.com/16a2d ----- [ Australia ] http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ I DESTROYED IRAQ'S ENEMIES: SADDAM DEFIANT TILL THE END TO the very end, Saddam Hussein was defiant - and delusional - boasting to onlookers of his victories against the infidel "enemies" of his war-ravaged and impoverished country. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20996450-601,00.html _________________________________ .ron corvuswire@verizon.net Lieberman and McCain suck: They both want to send more troops to Iraq! >> Joe Lieberman: "Send more troops - the war is winnable." I cannot stand this Zionist ba*tard Joe Lieberman -- somebody please deport him to Israel. .r o n >> Why We Need More Troops in Iraq By Joseph Lieberman Friday, December 29, 2006; Page A27 I've just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001. Continued >> http://snipurl.com/169vh --- The Irrelevance Of Joe Lieberman Nation: Bloggers, Journalists Should Discuss Him Less In '07 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/29/opinion/main2309813.shtml ----- "Every loss is regretted and there is no special significance to the overall number of casualties," said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. http://snipurl.com/169up ----- NOTE from Diane: WARNING: Following is the grainy full version Saddam execution video, which I was not going to post -- until I viewed what followed it > Saddam Hussein Hanging - Full Version video 6:53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxYuxhpcwSg _________________________________ http://wilstar.com/holidays/newyear.htm | http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm _________________________________ .............................HELLO 2007 ! New Year's is here, and for many of us, this is a time to look back over the past year. We think about our accomplishments and make plans to accomplish future goals. But then there are those who like to have a wild time! There's no better place to do this than in New York City. Times Square is the heart of New Year's celebrations in the United States. If you'll be in the city for New Year's, drop by the Times Square Web site. It has information about all the events and parties you can attend. I'm sure it will be a blast. New year's day you can head out to Coney Island for a Polar Bear swim. The Coney Island Polar Bear Club is the oldest polar bear club in the United States. You can join people from around the country and take a dip in the icy water. But I'm assuming most of you won't be heading to New York City. That's okay. You can still catch the Times Square festivities via the Web. Just visit EarthCam. It has cameras set up throughout Times Square. But no matter what you do, you must learn the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne to make your celebrations complete. Most people are familiar with the song, but don't know the words. It was written by Robbie Burns, Scotland's favorite poet. Visit the World Burns Club for the original lyrics and a standard English translation. I hope you have a fantastic and safe time wherever you are, but more than that, I wish you all the best in the coming year! TO VISIT TODAY'S COOL SITES, GO HERE: Times Square Alliance -- http://www.timessquarenyc.org Coney Island Polar Bear Club -- http://www.polarbearclub.org/ EarthCam -- http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare World Burns Club -- http://www.worldburnsclub.com Be sure to listen to me Monday through Friday. Use my map to find me near you http://www.komando.com/listen/index.aspx _________________________________ eHEALTHY NEWS Lasers Can do Wonders to Watermelons and Eggshells, But Not Your Eyes - This fascinating art was created using high-intensity precision laser beams, but your eyes are not watermelons or eggshells. http://snipurl.com/169y3 ----- Vegetables Much Better Than Drugs at Building Bone Density - Eating fruits and vegetables has a positive influence on bone health -- with no side effects. http://snipurl.com/169y6 _________________________________ VIDEO: Heterogenic | Italy | 9:00 | Raimondo Della Calce and Primo Dreossi A scientist struggling to develop a strain of bio-enhanced super-corn accidentally stumbles on the solution. Enjoy this light-hearted animated short about a kernel of corn that defies the odds (and tumbleweeds, and radiation) and winds up a hero. http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/hetrogenic _________________________________ NationalGeographic.com http://lava.nationalgeographic.com/pod/ _________________________________ NASA Astronomy picture of the day http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html _________________________________ I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the year's. ~ Henry Moore