Antiwar.com Blog

Tim Cavanaugh splashes some context on the “it had to be Syria” narrative of the recent murder of Lebanese MP Gebran Tueni:

[Y]ou can get a sense of what made him a polarizing figure in his responses to my followup question: Nobody knows how many Shi’ites there are in Lebanon (because there hasn’t been a census since 1940; CIA demographic estimates don’t break out the Muslim sects), but it’s reasonable to assume they are the largest single religious group, and Hizbollah is the most important party representing them—more prominent than Amal, the other major Shi’a party. So how can you keep Hizbollah out of the political process? His response was that the Shi’ites could have whatever representatives they chose, but only for the limited number of parliamentary seats that were designated for Shi’ites decades ago, and that that number shouldn’t be increased to reflect population changes. …

Read the whole thing.

Let’s see: a Christian politician wanted to partially disenfranchise the largest single religious group in Lebanon, a group whose leading subsidiary is Hezbollah. Yes, he was obviously assassinated by foreigners.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON – The world has shirked its duty to help prosecute Saddam Hussein, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday. “The international community’s effective boycott of Saddam’s trial is only harming the Iraqi people, who are now working to secure the hope of justice and freedom that Saddam long denied them,” Rice said.

The top U.S. diplomat also predicted that the Iraqi elections this week would yield the most democratic government “in the entire Middle East.” She did not mention the long-standing democracy in Israel. [Heh. -editor]

“I am sad to say that the international community has barely done anything to help Iraq prosecute Saddam Hussein,” she said.

“All who express their devotion to human rights and the rule of law have a special obligation to help the Iraqis bring to justice one of the world’s most murderous tyrants.”

It is roundly agreed that the “trial” of former US employee Saddam Hussein is a complete farce, complete with Hussein taking control of the court to rant against the legitimacy of the courts juristiction, but what is it that “the world” is supposed to do to fix it?

She did not name names, nor say just what other nations could do to help. Although the former president’s trial is being carried out in an Iraqi court, with an Iraqi judge, the United States underwrote and helped organize the criminal investigation and prosecution effort.

How did this ridiculous person ever become the Secretary of State?

Oh, right. She was promoted after doing her part in lying tens of thousands of civilians to death.

If you’ve gotten the same mass-forwarded e-mail as Michael Brendan Dougherty’s friend, your reply-to-all begins here.

According to the Center for American Progress, the war is Iraq is costing $177 million per day, $7.4 million per hour, and $122,820 per minute. The Center has available a Cost of Iraq War Ticker that can be added to websites.

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy died yesterday at the age of 89. Reactions here.

Last June, Patrick Buchanan asked, “Who is the Eugene McCarthy of this generation?” In a June 2004 interview with Salon.com, McCarthy explained his decision to challenge LBJ on an antiwar platform:

I thought someone ought to challenge this ridiculous war, and I also thought a great deal about the domestic agitation and confusion. And I realized the Senate wasn’t going to do it when [it failed] to repeal the 1965 Tonkin Gulf Authorization. The repeal got five votes. That was in ’67; it wasn’t like 1965 when people still believed the Tonkin Resolution was the real thing. And I said, I guess a number of times, that one of the principal responsibilities the Senate had is to be involved in a serious way in foreign policy, and that the ultimate act of foreign policy is war. Therefore the Senate had a special responsibility when war comes to say, “Do we want it? Is it in the interest of the country?” And I thought that we’d reached that point and passed it and, well, it sounds self-serving, but if the Senate wouldn’t do it, that didn’t excuse me for not doing it. Because one senator could take responsibility for the whole body if he wanted to fulfill his constitutional duties.

John Nichols eulogizes the poet-statesman here.

I just now read Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s note at Liberty and Power that Bill Bradford, editor of Liberty Magazine, lost his life to cancer on Thursday, December 8. He was 58.

I am very sad to hear this. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill at the LP National Convention in Atlanta in 2004, and was fortunate to write several book reviews for Liberty over the last couple years.

Bill Bradford, on top of being a dedicated hard-working libertarian editor, was very strongly opposed to the war machine. I had several long conversations with him on the phone and he told me more than once that there wasn’t a war in the U.S. government’s history that he thought was necessary and unavoidable — that there was always a better way than war to achieve the desired results. We have lost, among other things, another force for peace with his death.