The Guild 12-13-2003 12 Days

[BigWaveBetty]

JL reports his dad is doing better...

Thanks to everyone for your concern and for your prayers.

My father is making slow, but steady, progress with each passing day.

There's lots to get done so I may be absent for a while.

A fire and strawberry daiquiris sounds like a good idea. Happy you're home and good luck with all those emails.

Are the sane citizens of Iowa sick of Howard Dean yet? Doesn't this man have a home? At this Iowa stop he "testily" tells the crowd his campaign is not based on anger.

Dean responds negatively -- in fact, angrily -- to the suggestion that his campaign is driven by anger. "This campaign is not about anger. It's about hope," he said testily this weekend as he hopscotched from the heartland to Dixie to California in pursuit of caucus votes and contributions. And yet the "hope" he is offering, he told the crowds, is that "we can give George Bush a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Texas." [Dean has testes?!]

As the candidate conceded in an interview, the "anger factor" in his campaign may be potent among active Democrats, but it is too narrow for the electorate as a whole. As he starts to look toward the general election, Dean said, "I'm talking not just to Democrats anymore. I'm talking to the whole country." That is the "biggest change," he noted, in his transformation from the bottom to the top of the Democratic polls.

But with a month to go before the first votes of the Democratic primary season, Dean is focusing on his core group, the kind of people who flock to his rallies wearing T-shirts that read "Dump Dumb Dubya" or "He Lied -- People Died" or "Save the Environment -- Plant a Bush Back in Texas." As the candidate is fully aware, that is the constituency that could sew up the Democratic nomination for him in the first month of the primaries. [Nope, no anger with this group.] Link

[Timeout]

"Regards from President Bush"

First words spoken to Saddam by the soldier who found him....:)

[BigWaveBetty]

It would great if they have exchange on video!

Now we know Saddam is looney tunes, negotiate??? Yeah, right.

Good grief, the Today show has a wooden mock up of Saddam's hole in the ground.

[Iowa Granny]

Sorry I missed the mock up of the Rat Hole. Someone will surely have captured the photo and post it here.

[BigWaveBetty]

From Liz (pagesix):BARBARA WALTERS trots out her annual "10 Most Fascinating People of the Year" special Wednesday at 9 p.m. on ABC. Here's the line-up: Nicole Kidman, Beyoncé, Martha Stewart, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Arnold Schwarzenegger, basketball star LeBron James, illusionist Siegfried Fischbacher of Siegfried & Roy, the Fab Five from "Queer Eye" (I guess they count as one tres gay entity) and Sen. Hillary Clinton. The most fascinating person will be announced on the show. (Barbara, please tell me it's not Paris Hilton.)

And here's one sound bite from Sen. Clinton. Barbara asks the senator what her "biggest" choices in life have been? Hillary replies, "Ah . . . staying married to my husband and running for the Senate are two of the very big choices I made. And I'm grateful I made both of them."

"Obviously you don't regret either choice," says Barbara.

"No, I don't. Not at all." [What's to regret, when was the last time those two were in the same room together?]

It amazed me during the height of the Bill Clinton scandal how so many people essentially demanded that Mrs. Clinton leave her husband. Only she knows the depth of that relationship and why it was worth working out. I don't see a great outcry for Whitney Houston to leave Bobby Brown. Link

Liz likes to pretend there isn't a feminazi unspoken rule, when the bum humiliates you with bimbos you dump his butt.

Also from Pagesix, B. Clinton who appears to be MIA these days spent three hours Monday with a person named Sharpton. And... THAT former Bill Clinton hatchet man Sid Blumenthal, back to being a journalist, is joining online magazine Salon and bringing in some investors . . .

[BigWaveBetty]

Yep, here it is! Guess they couldn't decide on what color to paint it.

[BigWaveBetty]

Here's a good idea to help military families, send coupons.

[mountaineer]

Was Perky Katie shedding tears over poor Saddamie's capture? HLL - please report on your commando raid on the lefties' signs.

[mountaineer]

Is Katie Couric endorsing Karenna Gore Schiff as a Today Show reporter?

Our spywitness overheard the pair chatting at the Four Seasons the other night about having former Vice President Al Gore's daughter appear on the show.

"Katie told Karenna she should come on and cover the younger side of politics," says our snitch.

A rep for the Today Show told us there are no concrete plans to make Schiff a fixture on the breakfast blab-fest. Says the spokeswoman: "Katie wanted to interview her dad about his endorsement of Howard Dean, and maybe have Karenna on as a panel guest in the future." Daily News

[BigWaveBetty]

Here's someone not shedding tears. :-)

Jeff Gump, of Jacksonville, Fl. raises his arms into the air in a victory gesture as he watches President Bush (news - web sites) address the nation after the capture of Sadam Hussein outsdie of CNN studios on 6th Avenue, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2003 in New York. New Yorkers woke to a new snowstorm Sunday and news that American forces had captured the Iraqi leader in a dirt cellar under a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

What is making me crazy lately? The way reporters, politicians (dems) declare as fact that there was no connection between Saddam and Osama. I await the day the proof comes and all of them have to eat their words.

Could Wesley Clark be any creepier? It's embarrassing how he tells the world we had no reason to go to war with Iraq as he stands in front of the Hague where's he's about to testify against Milosevic for crimes far less in scope. He doesn't even seem to believe himself as he says it.

[BigWaveBetty]

Ewwwwwwwwww! Grrrrrrrreg Palkot climbed down inside Saddam's hidey hole. Nasty.

[mountaineer]

The French reaction, as evidenced by the cartoonist for Le Monde (a/k/a Al-Jazeerah on the Seine):

[mountaineer]

Good grief, the NY Times (hereinafter referred to as "Al-Jazeerah of Manhattan") demands that the U.N. try Saddam, because "A tribunal picked by Americans would lack legitimacy." (Not to be confused with the legitimacy of everything their rising star, Jayson Blair, wrote, for example). Here's the complete op-ed, if you can stomach it:

The United States achieved its most important military objective in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad when it captured Saddam Hussein. President Bush rightly claimed yesterday that it was a critical milestone toward the reconstruction of Iraq. The image of Mr. Hussein, bedraggled and bearded, being humbled before Iraqi leaders, some of whom had survived his torture chambers, was a tonic of relief. One indisputable fact in the bloody and divisive saga of Iraq is that this man ranked with the world's most vicious dictators. His crimes are monstrous. Hundreds of thousands of his people were murdered or tortured at his order and some may have been brutalized by his own hands. [So far, so good]

We hope that his arrest will reduce organized violence against American troops, although Mr. Bush himself was careful to say yesterday that hostilities are not over. We do not know how involved Mr. Hussein was in these attacks against American and allied occupation forces, or against Iraqis who cooperated with them. But the dictator's capture should offer Iraqis some relief from the lingering fear that somehow he might return to power and exact revenge on those who cooperated with the United States.

Though the Hussein regime ended with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, many frustrating puzzles remain. These include the question of what happened to Iraq's unconventional weapons programs in recent years and what was going on in that shadowed regime in the last weeks before the war, when the Iraqi leader seemed reluctant to take steps that might have stayed the president's hand.

It would be good if some of those questions could now be resolved. And it is critical that the dictator be given a fair and open trial to exact justice for his crimes, to give some solace to the people he terrorized and to give pause to other despots. The trial must be above any suspicion that it is merely an exercise in retribution or propaganda. While every effort should be made to maximize Iraqi involvement, Iraq's judicial institutions are too weak to handle the case. Although last week's creation of an Iraqi war crimes tribunal was a promising step, we would suggest this trial be conducted in Iraq under United Nations auspices by international and Iraqi judges. A tribunal picked by Americans would lack legitimacy.

Mr. Hussein's capture leaves the United States facing the same profound questions about how best to create a stable and democratic government in Iraq. The capture does not diminish the need for Washington to find ways to broaden the international nature of the occupation, and to put the nation-building efforts under the United Nations. [Why? The UN has never succeeded at any so-called nation building, or peacekeeping enterprise] The ultimate measure of success will be an Iraq held together by consent, not force, with its resources dedicated to development, not weapons. [Duh, I think that's what the Bush Administration is trying to do] Iraqis will then finally be free of the malign legacy of Saddam Hussein.

[mountaineer]

Still chuckling over what Joe Lieberman said on "Meet the Press" yesterday: "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would be in power today, not in prison."

[Iowa Granny]

Here's an article by Iowa's leading political columnist regarding the impact of Saddam's capture on the results of the Iowa Caucuses:


By DAVID YEPSEN
Register Political Columnist
12/15/2003

---

It looked like a bad hair day for Saddam Hussein on Sunday. Real bad. It was also a bad day for Democratic presidential candidates, especially Howard Dean. The capture of Saddam Hussein gave President Bush a big boost toward re-election, and the very premise of Dean's candidacy was rattled.

Dean's pro-war opponents, particularly Richard Gephardt, may profit in the Iowa caucuses. For sure, many Iowa Democrats are likely to reassess just which standard-bearer they want leading their party's ticket against Bush - one who opposed the very war that captured Saddam, or one who supported it.

* Americans were jolted awake Sunday morning by the good news from Iraq. For weeks, we've all flicked on radios and televisions in the morning to be hammered by yet another story about quagmires, bad intelligence or the death of yet another American.

Sunday was different.

"We got him," was the word from Ambassador Paul Bremer. Yeah. "We" got him. Specifically, a bunch of young American troops got him. Soldiers - who've been watching their comrades be picked off by terrorist attacks and suicide bombers for weeks - got him. In doing so, they rid the world of one of the most evil people of all time. Saddam's coming trial will illuminate the enormity of that evil.(snip)

* Politically, Saddam's capture fundamentally alters the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign. The front-runner in that campaign, Dean, has hitched his candidacy to opposition to the war in Iraq. He's spent months blasting Bush for fighting the war in Iraq and for failing to capture Saddam.

All that changes now. Suddenly, Democrats must ask if the rationale behind Dean's candidacy remains valid. America has won a huge battle in a war he did not want to fight. Do Democrats remain with his candidacy? Some will. Others won't.

For all the recent buzz about Dean, it's important to remember that even before Sunday's news, about two-thirds of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers were for some other candidate or were undecided. That means they had some doubts about Dean before Sunday, and Saddam's capture could easily reinforce them. As Joe Lieberman pointed out Sunday: "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place."

Not only are Bush's poll ratings likely to skyrocket, but so will support for the war. That means Iowa Democrats - the first Democrats in the country to have a big say about who their party will choose to run against Bush - must now ask if they want to continue fueling the Dean bandwagon or whether they'd be better off supporting a candidacy based on other premises. On the day after Sad-dam's capture, the pro-war votes cast by Gephardt, John Kerry, Lieberman and John Edwards suddenly look a little better. Gephardt, for example, wants the campaign conducted on economic issues.

After Sunday, perhaps that's a greater vulnerability for Bush. But even the economic indicators, stock market, unemployment rates and views of the economy are slowly starting to improve. If that continues, Bush's re-election becomes even more likely.

It's way too early to predict a Bush win, despite the capture of Saddam and the improving economic picture. While history teaches that presidents benefit politically when their armies win, it also teaches they can be defeated if they fail to deliver on the economy and too many Americans remain nervous about it. The war on terrorism could also sour between now and November. All wars ebb and flow. While we'll again celebrate when bin Laden is captured or killed, what happens, for example, if there is another major terrorist attack on the United States? Do Americans rally "round the president as we did after 9/11? Or do we blame Bush for letting it happen again? No one knows.

While Sunday had no good political news for Democrats, they were all giving Bush some sound political advice: Act magnanimously in this victory and use it to bring other nations into the fight against terrorism and into the effort to rebuild Iraq. Some of these nations probably want to go with the winner and are looking for a way to atone for having wimped out on the war in the first place.

If Bush took a little of that advice in the coming weeks, he'd be even tougher to beat come November.

http://desmoinesregister.com/news/stories/c2229999/23016456.html

[Timeout]

Oooo, I love that picture!

It looks like something from a gauzy made-for-TV Christmas movie...appropo for the real-life moment it depicts.

[Timeout]

for later

[mountaineer]

As Joe Lieberman pointed out Sunday: "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place."

Of course, he's right. However, had his running mate, Big Gay Al, been elected president in 2000, Saddam would still be power today and not in prison. Lieberman really compromised himself by running with that nut case.

[Timeout]

On last night's ESPN Sports Center they did their "Top Ten Plays" as usual.

But #1 was the "Capture of Saddam Husseein" complete with clips of Dubya's speech and a child singing the national anthem.

**sniff**

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

The 2am raid went well. It took less than a minute. There are 3 homes on a corner and they all have NO WAR signs. I just ran out, stapled my I LOVE SADDAM signs over theirs, and drove away. It was cold, but worth it.

I will drive by the homes today on my way to the bank. I doubt my signs will still be up, but at least I know that the folks around here who are proud of the troops will have had a good laugh, and the peaceniks will be angry.

My job is done.