BUZZURRO

The Baghdad trial of Saddam Hussein resumed today without the ousted Iraqi dictator after a four- hour break caused by his refusal to attend.
“The court will continue the proceedings and will inform the defendant about procedures during his absence,'’ Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin told the tribunal trying Hussein and seven co-defendants.

Read whole article here.

Who is in charge of this trial ? How come he has the right to ‘refuse’ to be there or not ? Isn’t he a prisoner ?
When I had jury duty several years ago I tried to ‘refuse’ to be on a jury, but the judge wouldn’t accept it. She told me that short of death or serious injury, NOTHING would excuse anybody from the California Court System. Well, Saddam Hussein doesn’t look dead to me, or even seriously injured. Why is he being allowed to decide whether he would attend court or not ?

If the Iraqi government wants to be taken seriously in Iraq it needs to act seriously. And that includes it’s court system. If Saddam wants to ‘refuse’ to go to court because he has been wearing the same clothes for 3 days or whatever other reason, they need to say, “No. Sit your butt in that chair in the court and stop with your stupid reasons why you should be allsowed to be excused !”

Gary Sinise (best known for his role as Lieutenant Dan in the film Forrest Gump) is a cofounder of the organization Operation Iraqi Children.
On a visit to Iraq in 2003, Mr. Sinise was saddened to see that Iraqi children often go to schools that lack in everything from pencils, and books, to working toilets and floors.
Under Saddam Hussein the school system was not updated.

“How are the kids supposed to lear anything in school without basic supplies, such as pencils and books ?”

Sinise continues to stay in touch with the troops in Iraq. From them he hears the good news that he says is overlooked in press coverage from Iraq.

“I get another side of the story that we don’t hear through the media,” he said. “And it’s more positive things happening than you would think based on the perception that we have on a daily basis.”

The news reports, he said, are “always about a bomb or a suicide bomber or somebody getting killed. Of course that’s dramatic and all of that but, on a day-to-day basis, there is a lot of improvement; there’s a lot of hope, a lot of kids that are going to school that never got to do that before.”

What difference might a school book make? For Sinise, all the difference in the world.

“If we can help these little kids,” he said, “and they can see that there is freedom to learn - to just go to school and have a pencil and learn - something might happen in the way they grow up, and take charge of their own country.”

Here is their website: http://operationiraqichildren.org/.

Chutzpah is a yiddish word that is often translated in Engish as ‘gall’.
The common example of chutzpah given is that of a child who murders his mother and father and then asks the court to have mercy on him because he is an orphan.
Here is another example, the UN decision that the US must pay the government of Iraq 208.5 million dollars for improper contracts when they have skimmed billions of dollars from the Iraqis in their Oil for Food program. Whether the US companies profitted wrongly by a few million dollars is besides the point. The United Nations stole more. As the cliche’ goes, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
I first read about this amazingly absurd story here.

I agree with Basil’s blog. Let the United Nations pay back all the money they illegally took from Iraq in their Oil for Food program, and then talk to the US about how they had improper contracts.

The UN Decision can be read about here.

I am so glad that someone shares my views on the protesters in the rally against the war in Iraq who use the anti war in Iraq issue to spout their own ideologies. ‘What does Israel have to do with Iraq?’ to quote one, sadly only one protester out of many in San Diego.

You can read about it here in an article by Christopher Hitchens. Nobody says it better then him.

He also mentions how many of the ‘peace-loving’ protesters support such ‘peace-loving’ Communist regimes such as those in Korea, China and Cuba.