Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring. ~ U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849

Only one item this morning — the White House statement on the Execution of Saddam Hussein

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Fox News is reporting that the execution of Saddam Hussein has taken place. They are hearing from Al Arabyiah TV in Iraq that Saddam Hussein is dead.

I am sure that the blogosphere is about to light up with commentary. Here is some of the first:

Captain’s Quarters, Babalu Blog, Dr. Sanity, The Jawa Report

10:28pm EST. The first online print report I’ve seen.

Some Arab media, including Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.-financed Al-Hurrah, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed. There was no confirmation from the Iraqi government.

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Saddam and others were convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982.

Also to be hanged were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

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AP has posted this story (The shortest I’ve ever seen):

An Iraqi judge says Saddam Hussein will be executed by Saturday at the latest.

That’s the entire article. Of course speculation has been intense in the short time since the verdict was upheld. I’m sure there will be more soon. Stay tuned.

Fast UPDATE: This is the big news in very quick follow up story:

Saddam Hussein has been transferred from U.S. custody, his lawyers said, and an Iraqi judge authorized to attend the former dictator’s hanging said he would be executed no later than Saturday.

The physical hand-over of Saddam to Iraqi authorities was believed to be one of the last steps before he was to be hanged, although the lawyers’ statement did not specifically say Saddam was in Iraqi hands.

“A few minutes ago we received correspondence from the Americans saying that President Saddam Hussein is no longer under the control of U.S. forces,” according to the statement faxed to The Associated Press.

More as I find it.

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The drink that comforteth the brain and heart and helpeth digestion. ~ Sir Francis Bacon

Blue Crab Boulevard (Gaius) Saddam To Hang?

It appears as if the Iraqi government is set to hang Saddam Hussein. While it really isn’t something to celebrate, the sentence is justified, I think. There are some people who forfeit their right to live in the world by their own actions. Saddam is one of those.

Leaning Straight Up (Karl) Christmas may come late, But Saddam expected to die this weekend

With all due respect to opponants of capital punishment, if there was a guy who deserved it, it would be him.

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) Three Years Later, A ‘Rush’

A little more than three years after Saddam Hussein meekly came out of his spider hole, the Iraqis have finally removed the last obstacle to his execution. Saddam attempted, with some success, to transform his trial into a political showpiece, using it to rail against the American occupation and to inspire the Ba’athist remnants to terrorist attacks. Despite having several members of the court assasinated or attacked, the tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes consistent with the evidence.

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Remember the category in Jeopardy, Quotable Quotes? See how well you do with these:

1) “On this day of justice for the Iraqi people, President Bush must explain to the American people how he intends to change course, so that our troops will finally have a strategy to complete the mission, Iraqis will finally have a plan to restore order to their country, and the mission can finally be accomplished.”

2) “An Iraqi court has rightly handed down this verdict, and it is just. But this development must not distract Americans from the more pressing issue: the need for a change in the direction of our country’s policy toward Iraq, both the conduct of the war effort and our pathetic, corruption-stained attempt at reconstruction.”

(Source)

I know there are more out there, and I’m looking for them. Post a link in the comments if you find some. Thanks

Answers Below:

1) Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

2) California Rep. Tom Lantos, top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.

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Saddam Hussein has been found guilty by the Iraqi court where he has been on trial for the 1982 killings in Dujail.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town, as the ousted leader, trembling and defiant, shouted “God is great!”

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal, Saddam yelled out, “Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!”

The conviction triggers an automatic appeal to a nine judge panel. They do not have a time limit on reaching their finding, but, “A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted.”

If the conviction is upheld, the hangings will take place within thirty days.

Blogospheric reactions:

Blue Crab Boulevard — “Unlike many of his victims, Saddam Hussein received a trial under the laws of Iraq and has been convicted and sentenced to be hanged.”
Don’t Go Into The Light — “A major milestone in Iraqi history is reached as its most barbaric and murderous leader receives justice – Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to hang by the neck until dead for his crimes against humanity. He deserves worse, IMO.”
Stop The ACLU — “I’m sure the left will question the timing. Meanwhile the demons are sharpening their pitchforks and preparing a special hot spot in hell for this evil former dictator.”
Hot Air — “Dujail’s the tip of the iceberg, one notorious incident for which they had good evidence. The crimes against the Kurds have yet to be punished. But there’s small satisfaction, at least, in some of them having gotten to face the bastard down in court.”
Patterico’s Pontifications — “The Saddam Hussein verdict is about to come down, so it’s naturally time for the L.A. Times to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the court that tried him.”
Ankle Biting Pundits — “When you vote on Tuesday, try to remember that Saddam Hussein would not be on trial for war crimes if we had listened to the Democrats.”
Iowa Voice — “I’ll be honest, I think he’s getting what he deserves. But I have no idea what’s going to happen in Iraq because of this verdict. Could be that all hell breaks loose, or it could be that nothing much happens. I simply don’t know. But we should know rather soon, I would think.”
Jo’s Cafe — “A monster has been judged … now lets hope that the Iraq government has more backbone than ours and hangs this monster in front of the whole country.”
Pajamas Media — Livebloged with tons of links.
Leaning Straight Up — “Somewhere lost in the partisan bickering we lost sight of the reality of who and what he was.

He was a monster. He murdered people in his own country by the thousands, defied the world with his ambitions of domination and had no secret of his desire to see America burn. He financed terrorists worldwide, and harbored some within his own country.”

Flopping Aces
Gateway Pundit
Ed Driscoll
Alabama Liberation Front
Mensa Barbie Welcomes You
Squiggler
Perri Nelson’s Website
Hyscience
WuzzaDem
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
TacJammer

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Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing “real” men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. ~ Erma Bombeck

Blue Crab Boulevard Apology Not Accepted — “The people who think about our armed forces in the way John Kerry does, or the editorial writer for the Tennessean that I posted about yesterday simply do not understand the offense that was given. They are incapable of understanding how deeply those words struck, botched joke or no. They cannot comprehend the level of pain that those words inflict. Because they cannot understand, they ascribe the outrage being expressed to political spin. They do not understand.”

Confederate Yankee NY Times Justifies 2003 Invasion of Iraq — “The breaking article seems to be an attempt to attack the Bush Administration for releasing potentially classified information (yes, the ironymeter is pegged), but what they actually prove is that Saddam’s nuclear weapons program was indeed a significant threat.”

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) So I Guess The FMSO Documents Are Legit — “The Times wanted readers to cluck their tongues at the Bush administration for releasing the documents, although Congress actually did that. However, the net result should be a complete re-evaluation of the threat Saddam posed by critics of the war. Let’s see if the Times figures this out for themselves.”

In The Bullpen (Chad Evans) NYT: Saddam One Year Away from Building Nuke — “It was a Pentagon error to have posted documents detailing how to build a nuclear weapon, but it is also an error not to point out the obvious; that these documents represent actual intelligence rather than what non-Iraqi intelligence officials believed with respect to Saddam Hussein and a nuclear program. From both these documents and the Deulfer Report, there can be no other conclusion than Iraq was intent on building a nuclear weapon in the future had Saddam Hussein not be deposed.”

Flopping Aces (Curt) The Grey Lady Discovers Saddam Had Nuclear Aspirations — “You see, the story isn’t that Saddam had documents that showed them how to build a nuclear bomb and also tells us how close they were to building that same bomb….no, the story in their minds is that the Bush government put them on the web.

Will they now complain about all those documents that showed us the ties Saddam has with Al-Qaeda?”

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Saddam Lawyer and apologist, Ramsey Clark, has opened his mouth to say the utterly stupid once again.

Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general who is one of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers, said that any death sentence against the former Iraqi president would increase violence in the strife-torn country.

“It seems clear that a guilty verdict will set off catastrophic violence” and that a death sentence would be even worse, Clark told a Washington press conference.

“It’s hard to know how many Iraqis, dozens, hundreds, thousands, will die because of the sentence,” he said.

Even if his assessment is accurate, the number will still be dwarfed by the dozens, hundreds, and thousands that died because of this homicidal dictator.

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The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. ~ Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.

Happy 3rd Blogiversary to
The Path to Endarkenment

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) Bad Judgment — “In any fair trial, both parties should have judges who enter the case with no bias towards either in the case and at least a passing connection to reality. Amiri’s big wet kiss to Saddam showed that he had neither, and he deserved to be ejected. Maybe these activists can save some of their outrage for Saddam instead of the democratically elected government that managed to refrain from finding the nearest high tree when this bloodthirty monster came into their custody.”

GOP Bloggers (Jonathan R.) West Submits to Muslim Censorship from Afar – “The word Islam means “submission,” and Muslims clearly take it very seriously. It’s too bad that so many in the West who proclaim to stand for egalitarian freedom when it comes to abortion or gay marriage or secular government are silent when the right to express an opinion is under assault by mysogynistic madmen who would ban abortion, execute gays and violently impose religion on all.”

Blogs for Bush (Mark Noonan) What We’ve Been Doing in Iraq — “The MSM and the left like to paint a grim picture of Iraq – a picture of a military bogged down in an unwinnable fight, sitting ducks for IEDs, while military and civil leadership has no clue of what to do. For anyone who even makes a cursory examination of the situation, such a description of Iraq is, well, laughably stupid.”

The Jawa Report (Dr. Rusty Shackleford) British Muslim: “How dare (the police) come to a Muslim area” — “Abu Izadeen and other minions of Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed interrupt a press conference by the Home Secretary about terrorism shouting “how dare you come to a Muslim area”.”

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BREAKING (at least I just saw it):

Judge in Saddam’s genocide trial ousted

Iraq removed the judge in Saddam Hussein’s trial Tuesday. The judge had previously made statements deemed favorable to the former Iraqi leader, telling him in court one day, “You were not a dictator.”

You don’t have to follow the link. That’s the whole article. For now.

UPDATE: There is more at the link now.

The station did not say why the change was made, but the Arab satellite stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera said Judge Abdullah al-Amiri was replaced at the request of the Iraqi prime minister.

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Prosecutors had asked for al-Amiri to be replaced after he allowed Saddam to lash out at Kurdish witnesses. And last week, al-Amiri stirred further controversy when he told the former president that “you were not a dictator.”

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