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I’m weary about posting anything regarding the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Yes, I believe it was a good thing and yes, he deserved more than he got, but I long ago decided I’d try to keep this site from being just another snuff site on the Internet. Besides, who knows, maybe some children do access this site not named ‘Chad’ or ‘Debbie.’

Anyways, I have decided to post a video showing Saddam’s lifeless body because I think it’s important to see what should happen to brutal tyrants and because this is a glimpse of a historical event, for the world but more importantly for the new democratic state of Iraq.

As an opener, here’s a bit of comic relief. The ‘Dead Saddam Hussein’ video will be below the fold.

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Taliban leader Mullah Omar submitted a hand-written letter to the press this morning, claiming all “foreign” soldiers will be forced to leave Afghanistan. Like so many other Islamists before him, Omar displays a unique memory when it comes to history.

“They came to Afghanistan readily but will be fleeing against their will… It is the history of Afghanistan that all foreign invaders are eventually defeated with much humiliation,” Mullah Mohammad Omar allegedly said in the message . . .

. . . In his statement, Omar rejected a plan to hold Loya Jirgas – tribal councils proposed as a solution by Washington to end the violence in Afghanistan, which are backed by Pakistan and Afghanistan. He slammed the proposal as an evil attempt to hamper the Taliban-led struggle against foreign troops.

“Those who attacked Afghanistan want to trap us in the game of Loya Jirgas but no Muslim would agree to that…The Jirga has no representative status as all members would be nominated by the aggressors,” Mullah Omar said in the statement.

There was a group of foreign invaders who happened to stick around in Afghanistan for nearly one decade, even being embraced by the Taliban government. They were known as the Mujahideen but later part of that group became known as Al Qaida. And again, that same splinter group of the Mujahideen wishes to invade Afghanistan as well, yet Mullah Omar welcomes it. The Taliban also welcomes other partners in his war.

I realize these Islamists make these types of statements to garner a specific reaction, one of being beseiged by outside forces, but they are hollow. I only hope those who are being recruited into the ranks of jihad understand how erroneous the statements are, for it won’t do much good if those who make these statements only look like an idiot to us but not to them.

The Blotter reports a Taliban fatwa was issued calling to “target and kill all employees of non-government organizations, including workers for the United Nations and human rights organizations.” They just don’t seem to understand the human rights groups are usually on their side and can be called into support the group’s propoganda efforts.

And what does that do for journalists who wish to interview members of the Taliban? That is if they aren’t first roughed up by the Pakistani government as New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall claims she was.

Gall says the agents accused her and Soomro of trying to meet the Taliban. They identified themselves as working for Pakistan’s Special Branch, an undercover police department, but Gall said other local reporters identified them as employees from one of the country’s two powerful spy agencies: Inter-Services Intelligence or Military Intelligence.

I haven’t a clue what Gall was doing in Waziristan, but the question of whether she was trying to meet with the Taliban or not is probably pretty accurate. We’ve seen a number of stories on the Taliban, and it is the New York Times who slithered its way to find and interview a mythical figure in Iraq known as Juba the Sniper.

It is still though CNN who is offering the sniper video given to them by the Islamic Army of Iraq on Demand. Remember they had to use intermediaries as opposed to just downloading it from the IAI snuff site. Why would the Taliban wish to issue a death warrant for those who would cover their side?

MTV Networks has announced it is starting MTV Arabiya in conjunction with Al-Arabiya to air “music and entertainment” throughout the Middle East.

That sounds like a great idea, if you like that sort of thing. I’m guessing the network will start out showing music videos 24 hours a day and gradually phase all music out but leave viewers with hit shows like ‘Real World: Dubai,’ ‘I Want to be an Oil Tycoon’ and if viewers are lucky, ‘Who Wants to be a VJ.’ There’s a rumor floating around viewers of MTV Arabiya will select a drugged-out freak over more reasonable choices in the latter show.* Due to a lack of videos on MTV, MTV Arabiya 2 will start up with videos all the time, until they too are phased out to bring even more hit programming such as ‘Basra Beach’ and ‘Sweet Sixteen.’

If Viacom, the owners of MTV, thought the American evangelicals flipped out over a Super Bowl half-time show, wait till they get a load of how Islamists will react.

* During my sophomore year in college, my roomate at the time decided to watch the marathon-esque ‘Who Wants to be a VJ’ on the only television in the apartment.  Being the day after one of the bigger parties of the year, I was hardly in the mood to get up and do anything else. So there in the living room I stayed, and watched, and lived my own personal type of hell between watching such a stupid show to announce the winner of a contest that won’t do anything since there were no videos on MTV at the time and listening to my roomate dissect the different contestants on how they would do introducing the Beastie Boys, a band whose videos would never be shown on the station anyways.

A German tourist sets out to visit his girlfriend in Sydney, yet types in ‘Sidney’ in the Internet booking and winds up near Sidney, Montana. The typo is understandable, lord knows I make too many of them, but if you’re looking at your flights, wouldn’t you recognize it takes more than two hours to fly from Portland to Sydney, Australia?

“I did wonder but I didn’t want to say anything,” Gutt told the Bild newspaper. “I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States.”

Gutt’s airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney — an oil town of about 5,000 people — did he realize his mistake.

I’ve never heard of anyone trying to go to Paris, France and ending up waiting for a puddle jumper to take them to Paris, Texas. Maybe that’s because they know if they were in the DFW airport, it would take more than 45 minutes to fly to France.

Saddam Hussein has been transfered over to the Iraqis, and will likely have his date with the hangman before the weekend is up.

Thousands of Iraqis, both within the nation and outside, volunteered to be the hangman.  The official hangman will not be disclosed in order to keep him safe as Baathists and Saddam loyalists have threatened revenge.

Iraqi officials plan on video taping the execution, though it’s unlikely any of the footage will ever be shown.

The leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NICR), Maryam Rajavi, claims two of the Iranian captured by the U.S. military in Iraq in the past week are “senior members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.”

In Washington, a Pentagon official said Thursday that U.S. forces had found “indications and evidence that all of the people rounded up, including the two Iranians, are involved in the transfer of IED technologies from Iran to Iraq.” IED stands for improvised explosive devices, or small bombs that are commonly used in attacks in Iraq.

A spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani claims the two men were in Baghdad on his invitation. It doesn’t appear the reporter who filed the story wished to ask if that means Talabani invited two Iranian military officers into Iraq in order to transfer IEDs. A slip of the mind, I suppose.

During the trial of the editor-in-chief of Playboy in Indonesia, the court ordered the doors to be closed. This order inflamed Islamists, seen at right, apparently more than having a magazine with a scantily clad (there was no nudity in Playboy Indonesia) woman on an extra-long magazine page.

But follow along with me, if you will, and if you do I’m hoping you can explain something to me.

Indecency is against the law in Indonesia. That is the charge Erwin Arnada faces and could serve up to 32 months in prison if found guilty. Since Playboy Indonesia did not have nude photographs but rather photos of women in lingerie, we can gather the Indonesian government believes women posing in lingerie is risque.

I certainly don’t buy that, but fine, I’ll concede the point to make the larger argument. While I certainly have never seen an issue of Playboy Indonesia, I have seen a Playboy within the United States. I must assume the articles (yes ladies, there are articles and they are actually fascinating) were not deemed indecent. I mean what is risque about ‘Man Track’ (an article on toys and gadgets for grown men)?

“Under Indonesian law, indecency trials are closed when witness testimony is being heard to avoid obscene material or discussions being made public.”

We must conclude, therefore, Arnada is on the stand and the prosecution is asking him to describe the pictures that appeared within Playboy Indonesia. That, I suppose, is deemed indencent.

But Islamists are protesting, threatening “to break down the courtroom doors if they are not granted access to the proceedings.” In other words, they want inside the courtroom in order to hear Arnada describe the photos, photo shoots or other possibly ‘risque’ behavior . . . and yet they protested over the publication of the magazine. Would not the testimony be just as indecent as the photos, therefore uncomfortable for the Islamist to hear?

The Venezuelan government has decided not to renew the broadcast license of an opposition television station, Radio Caracas Television.  If this had been the only order of the day, it would not be news outside of Venezuela’s gossip columns, but President Hugo Chavez came out firing againstt the television station and accused the station of “backing plots to topple him.”

“The television concession runs out on him in March,” Chavez said. “So he had best start packing his bags and seeing what he’s going to do after March. There will be no new concession for that coup-plotting television channel named Radio Caracas Television.”

“No media outlet will be tolerated here that is at the service of coup-ism, against the people, against the nation, against national independence, against the dignity of the republic,” said Chavez, wearing a red beret and fatigues in his year-end speech to troops.

“I’m announcing it before the date arrives so that they don’t keep on with their little story that ‘no, that it’s for 20 more years,”‘ Chavez said.

The Associated press notes:

During a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez, some TV channels broadcast cartoons and movies instead of the leader’s return to power amid a popular uprising. Many media outlets, including RCTV, also supported a devastating 2003 strike that failed to unseat Chavez.

Three cheers for “coup-ism” within Venezuela.