Of course, I was being intentionally provocative when I commented on Saddam Hussein’s hanging by posting a picture of Saddam shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld, followed by the simple caption: “Hmm. One war criminal down.” That so many readers chose to infer “one to go…” is out of my control, though surely understandable given the historic context.
What I found a tad surprising though is the earnestness in which some on the right are determined to use Saddam’s execution as an opportunity portray their political opponents as allies of the brutal dictator. And the vehemence in which they have attempted to go personal. For example, over on the local right-wing Drudge-clone Orbusmax, my post was featured under the following headline: ‘PROGRESSIVE’ 710 KIRO TALKSHOW HOST ON RUMSFELD: “Hmm. One war criminal down…”
Huh.
Of course, that’s intentionally misleading. Saddam Hussein was the only war criminal executed yesterday, so of course my caption was referring to him, not Rumsfeld. As far as I know, Rumsfeld is still breathing, so could not possible be “down,” and besides, I never once described him as a war criminal. Still, it’s a catchy headline, so thanks for driving some traffic my way Orb.
But notice, that though I have made my mark as a liberal blogger, and the post in question appeared here on HA, that Orb chose to describe me as “710 KIRO TALKSHOW HOST.” I assume it’s not because he wants to promote my radio career. And it wouldn’t be the first time that some on the right have attempted to generate outrage over something or other that I have written or said in the hope that it might convince KIRO to take me off the air.
I find it flattering. And revealing. And in any case, futile.
KIRO knew full well what they were getting when they gave me a shot back in June, and as far as I know they have no plans to dump me. I’m still a relative novice and have tons to learn about the medium — and I don’t yet feel that I have completely found my on-air voice — but KIRO seems to be giving me every chance to succeed. And if in fact my blog creates the occasional controversy, then all the better. Advertisers don’t really care if the audience likes me or not, as long as they’re tuning in and hanging on through the commercials.
So for those of you angry righties who just discovered HA through Orb’s courteous link, I invite you to tune in to 710-KIRO tonight from 7 to 10PM, when I will surely have more to say on Saddam’s execution. And if you don’t like what I have to say, then give me a call at 877-710-KIRO and tell me to my face.
bullshit jewblogger.
You pull this ‘I’m so innocent’ bullshit all the time “it’s not what I mean, it’s what you infer”.
Your IMPLICATION was clear you America hating prick. Stand up and be a MAN, little dickless wonder…isn’t that your touch-feely liberal screed… own your actions?
Not much else to say here. Anti-Lib’s ravings pretty well tell the whole story.
Might be fun if he calls you tonight, but he’ll probably be too busy choking his chicken over the thought of another dead semite.
Another bigot exposed . . .
Oh, by the way…you might not have intended to imply it or not, but I’ll come right out with it:
I think George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the neocon junta are indeed criminals. I don’t necessarily want them dead (Yoiks! All we need is for one or more of these dorks to become martyrs!) but I’m sure peeved at all the death, destruction and misery they’ve brought upon thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of others, so they could get more obscenely rich and people like AL could get their jollies. At the very least, I’d want to see them banned from public life.
IS AUNTIE LIBERAL THE NEW NAME FOR THAT UGLY ASS THING THAT USED TO COME HERE A LOT?
bullshit jewblogger.
SURE IS UGLY, THAT’S FOR SURE.
yes they DO tell the whole story, tyvm… the jewblogger is a jew only when it’s convenient to be so: any other time he’s snuggling up with Israel haters,
and he is infamously a coward, blaming the READER for their interpretations.. what a fucker … although he gets a point or two for being duplicitous with his words… “oh gee you thought I meant that?… shame on you”.
anti-liberal,
Give it a rest, pardner. You’re not accompishing anything constructive by using hate-filled rhetoric to raise everyone’s blood pressure.
blaming the READER for their interpretations..
GOLDY MEANT THE GUY IN THE GREEN UNIFORM NEXT TO SADDAM. WASN’T IT OBVIOUS?
SHEESH. THESE WINGNUTS. YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO THEM!
I call it like I see it and I don’t use cowardly duplicitous language that I can weasel out of…. if it hurts your delicate sensibilities… tough shit.
clear enough for you?
anti-liberal[sic]
It’s the un-American, anti-patriotism of louts like you who make supporting the First Amendment such a damned chore sometimes. Your oafishness makes you one of the worst kind of citizen: foul-mouthed, ill informed, racist – and in your peculiar case, consumed with size of other men’s genitals. You spit on the Bill of Rights in your rhetoric, disabusing the Constitution of this great Republic in the process. You are a proverbial parking enforcer: spreading misery wherever you stop and speak.
Wingnuts have NOOOOOOO sense of humor — this is news?
They’re just like that Saddam guy was when the Shi’ites in that little town said, “Hey Boss Man, we weren’t really gonna kill ya, it was just an Ann Coulter joke, ya know?”
rah rah FORMER VOTER… your name says what a great American you are, asshole
So how many death threats did you get today from the humorless righties, Goldy? These guys take offense if anybody takes issue with anything that fat drug addict with the boil on his ass spews — or THEY spew — but get their panties all in a twist if a liberal cracks an Ann Coulter joke now and then … fuck ’em. They’re all un-American traitors who hold the Constitution in contempt anyway.
As someone who by today’s standard is a shade left of center thinks Saddam was a monster. That said, he should have gone off to the ICC at the Hague and furthermore how nice to get Ford’s comments to Woodward off the news. I am more than a little offended to have Saddam’s hanging being shown at the same time the late Ford was leaving for Washington. What a low-life fucker Bush is.
@13
Surprise! Another gob of spittle from the meter maid. Do you kiss your “dickless wonder” with that mouth?
And thank you for proving my point.
Unofficial Posting Rules on HorsesAss
In case we have any new rightwing readers this morning, I’d like to reiterate the informal posting rules on this blog, which have been adopted by a consensus of the regular posters:
1. This is a liberal blog;
2. Anyone can post here;
3. There is no censorship;
4. As liberals, our job is to verbally kick the living shit out of you unpatriotic, America-hating, Constitution-despising, anencephalitic fascist trolls;
5. Our terms are unconditional surrender, and there will be war crime trials;
6. No mercy for wingnuts;
7. klake is a nazi.
Any questions?
@1 As usual, the first post on this thread is by an anti-Semitic wingnut bigot who wears his hatred of Jews on his sleeve. These idiots can’t suppress their Nazi leanings even though it makes them look bad. It’s an impulsive hidden psychosis type of disorder.
@4 I don’t want them dead either. A life term on the litter pickup crew would serve justice — and serve them right. Besides, given how all the Republican assholes with SUVs around here drive, getting sentenced to the roadside litter crew is a death sentence anyway.*
* Hey, I don’t wish that on anyone. Just more Ann Coulter humor, ya know?!
Yesterday, I saw a pickup truck with a big American flag on a pole in the rear bed, a Bush/Cheney sticker on the tailgate, and a bumper sticker that said,
“Have You Flattened a Flagger Today?”
And despite all appearances, @17 DOES NOT speak for all posters, regulars, newbies, inbetweens.
This blog is also a personal dueling field for several…er…personalities, who will try to define what is permitted and allowed.
More questions?
@20 I made that up, but why not? Wingnuts make up bullshit about liberals every time they open their mouths or touch a keyboard, so why can’t I make up bullshit too? Why should wingnuts have a monopoly on fiction writing? Republicans want a monopoly on every fucking thing!
@6 You’ve shown your true colors — you’re a NAZI — now shut up and sit down.
@9 Well, I’ll give you credit for one thing, Heinz — you’re not mealy-mouthed like most wingnuts! At least we know exactly what you are.
So, Saddam Hussein was tried, convicted and executed by an Iraqi court operating under the laws of a freely-elected Iraqi government. At least this is what wingnuts would have us believe. If this is true, then the Iraqis are fully capable of carrying out justice all on their own.
So, wingnuts, why are American troops still in Iraq?
Questions hurt the wingnut mind.
@21 I voted for it, and my 6,237 children voted for it, and my 174,568 grandkids voted for it, and my 7,483,224 cousins voted for it, so it has an overwhelming majority that comes darn close to a consensus!
(Note: These numbers are approximate, and tend to fluctuate, as rabbits are being born and getting run over every minute.)
@25 Click here for photo of independent Iraqi judge operating under freely elected Democratic government:
http://tinyurl.com/jjoo3
Nice try Goldy….
No one took you out of context, you are not a victim of a right wing conspiracy…You are a victim of your own ideology…. When the heat gets turned up, becuase of your own words and views, you run for cover….
I would respect you more if you just took responsibility for your words…instead of blaming someone else for reacting to them….
Saddam? Good Riddance. Rumsfeld? Patriot. Who has done more for this country than 99.9% of those reading this….
@4 Of course I disagree…
But I respect your honesty and opinion….
@25 becuase they have asked us to stay to help them!
next
28.)
Rumsfield a patriot, not in my book. Go read what former President Ford just said about him.
@31 Since he JUST died I would guess you mean something he told to someone recently? Months ago? I don’t know, post a link.
2003 interview with Woodward, all over media. Released day after he died and on tape.
@30
So you are conceding the point that the Iraqi’s no longer need our assistance? That the only reason we’re still there is because they asked us to stay and help?
More than 3000 dead American soldiers, billions of dollars dumped down the drain, and we incur these extraordinary costs because the Iraqi’s asked us!
Meanwhile, millions of New Yorkers don’t have enough money to buy food. Is there any reason I shouldn’t be thoroughly disgusted with an ideology that not only permits these circumstances to coexist but hails both as necessary to society’s welfare?
32,
You may have missed it on Fox news!
libertarian says:
anti-liberal,
Give it a rest, pardner. You’re not accompishing anything constructive by using hate-filled rhetoric to raise everyone’s blood pressure.
————-
I kind of like the name anti-liberal. I wonder what this kool aid drinker supports….
He is not raising anyone’s blood pressure though. It is amazin how Rush has convinced all these people to hate liberals, and support true dishonest traitors.
Even Rush claimed he was happy he didn’t have to carry their water (lie for) republicans any more. He then went on to carry more of their water, and lie even more.
Anti-liberal
With a name like anti-liberal it kinda feels like someone living on this planet being anti-oxygen….
anti-liberal has volunteered to pay back the 5 trillion bush, and his republican criminal friends borrowed to keep our help the rich and screw the rest economy from imploding.
I have a suggestion for all. Get some popcorn, and tune in to c-span and watch the investigations coming up. Try to do it in front of your republican friends, and explain to them what the answers really mean, as the crooks describe their deeds under oath.
horse whisperer says:
As someone who by today’s standard is a shade left of center thinks Saddam was a monster. That said, he should have gone off to the ICC at the Hague and furthermore how nice to get Ford’s comments to Woodward off the news. I am more than a little offended to have Saddam’s hanging being shown at the same time the late Ford was leaving for Washington. What a low-life fucker Bush is.
————-
100% right. If this trial, and execution were to be legitimate, it would have to be done in front of the world court, and not one Bush, and his cronies could control. This trial, as was every other part of this occupation was a sham. I am not a Saddam fan, but what he did, many times he did for us. If he was such a bad dude, why was Rummy shaking his hand, and Reagan giving him the wmd’s anyway.
He was an asshole, but he was our asshole, and carried our our proxy war on Iran, just like we wanted.
The worst thing about being a republican, is the fact that you have to ignore facts, and history with every breath.
37.)
I have no doubt that Saddam would have been convicted at the ICC. History would have given us and Iraq a much cleaner chapter if the ICC had done it. But not as much fun for cowboy justice bush.
I would like your opinion on this. Should I feel sorry for wingnuts who refuse to acknowledge reality? If these wingnut hypocrites choose to live in denial, in an up is down, we are good, and they are evil, only because they are not us world, should I feel sorry for them, because of their mental problems, or should I call them hypocrites, and traitors at every step?
I love this blog. The righties spew their insand ideology, and a few of us throw their insanity, and bigotry right back in their faces.
I have a question for you righties.
What does it mean to be a conservative these days?
Thom Hartmann asks every “conservative” caller to his show this question, and not a one has come up with an honest answer that is not just plain wrong.
What does it mean to be a conservative these days?
Facts Support My Positions: What does it mean to be a conservative these days?
Take everything you dumb fucks are and apply the opposite.
We don’t kill babies or the helpless
We KNOW morality is black and white
The Founding Fathers honored and respected God, and made the decisions about our country based on Him
“Diversity” will destroy what’s left of our Country
We KNOW our country is great
Our ex-Presidents keep their mouths shut, not commit reason on foreign soil
The morality we KNOW is not based on the expediency of any given moment
Mommy government is a problem, never a solution
As Betty Ford said of her late husband, “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country,”
~~
Facts Support My Positions: I have a suggestion for all. Get some popcorn, and tune in to c-span and watch the investigations coming up. Try to do it in front of your republican friends, and explain to them what the answers really mean, as the crooks describe their deeds under oath.
Please God, please God YES.
Let the over-reaching liberal assholes expose their motive and treason in the cold light of day and cameras.
Please let the peHOsi and harry-don’t-pull-the-plug-on-my-majority send the subpoena’s flying.
Give us the senile byrd with a loud mic.
Show us the drunken teddy with a wide angle lens.
Document the hillabitch and drunken teddy’s baraq HUSSEIN osama/obama running for cover.
Let the world view kerry juggling his feet in his mouth… again.
Oh, yes! Please God, yes
Hey Anti-Liberal you cowardly, jew-hating, cum-sucking scum. Do you support our troops? If so, go take their place. If you don’t, you’re not only an inbred asshole who’s wife pulls trains on the local football team, your a coward.
What does it mean to be a conservative these days? To be a conservative is to be an ideologue. Everything is sacrificed for the sake of preserving their ideology. Everything. Truth. Honor. Justice. Even humanity itself. The best response I’ve ever read with respect to ideologues is:
The full text in context can be found here.
Saddam was silenced so that he couldn’t spill the beans about how deeply intertwined he and the neocons used to be when it suited their purpose.
Rummy, Darth Cheney, and the whole sick crew propped up Saddam for years, as long as he helped their attempts to regain control of Iranian oil assets. That’s why Rumsfeld is so happily shaking Saddam’s hand in that photo.
AL,
“Take everything you dumb fucks are and apply the opposite.”
But that’s not what you actually do. What you actually do is take a caricature of what we are and then apply the opposite. Caricature Liberalism is a collection of propositions that conservatives have plucked out of thin air, and you have plucked those propositions out of thin air for the simple reason that you cannot win an argument against the values that liberals actually hold dear.
The good news for the rest of us is that the bankruptcy of conservative ideology has become readily apparent to the majority of Americans. That’s why Republicans took such a drubbing in the mid-term elections last November.
So, keep railing, AL. So long as your “anti” is against something that doesn’t exist, you will continue to be marginalized. If Republicans keep behaving the way you behave, conservatives won’t get a whiff of real power for a long time to come. I consider that a good thing, and, therefore, encourage you to rail away. The more strident your tone, the more shrill your rhetoric, the better.
Ironic how Republicans, themselves, serve as the most compelling evidence in favor of a republican form of government.
“. . .not commit reason on foreign soil”
I guess if someone considers reason to be a crime that pretty much sums them up, doesn’t it.
“We don’t kill babies or the helpless” and “Mommy government is a problem, never a solution” yeah you cant be responsible for the weather and starvation that kills them. Who is being disingenous now?
“The Founding Fathers honored and respected God, and made the decisions about our country based on Him” Some day, just for kicks, try looking at a history book and read what the founding father had to say about god and religion.
“The morality we KNOW is not based on the expediency of any given moment” Right. And Iraq was about WMD, no wait, about Saddam, no no, I got it, about terrorist, no how about . . .
“We KNOW morality is black and white” Quick smart guy, is killing right or wrong? Is killing Saddam right or wrong?
@34 for the very same reasons we STAYED and helped the Japanese, Germans, French, Italians etc etc etc etc etc….We defeated Saddam. HIS countrymen, whom he brutalized, convicted him and carried out this just sentence. Bush had nothing to do with the trial. Give some credit to the Iraqi people…They deserve some.
You’ve got this backasswards, it would have been wrong to take Saddam out of Iraq. The Govt of Iraq took care of it’s own mess. (saddam that is)
@46, when did we defeat the French?
@46,
Now you’re equivocating. Our “stays” in Japan, Germany and France didn’t include some three years’ worth of having our troops play cops and robbers after the all-out war had come to an end. W. Edwards Demming didn’t carry a rifle.
So, please answer the question I asked: Why are our troops still in Iraq getting killed at an alarming rate when it’s clear that the Iraqi’s are, according to you, quite capable of policing themselves?
The choice to use the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam was of course silly and used entirely without historic context. It makes as much sense as showing a photo of Franklin Roosevelt shaking hands with Josef Stalin.
We don’t kill babies or the helpless
We KNOW morality is black and white
The Founding Fathers honored and respected God, and made the decisions about our country based on Him
“Diversity” will destroy what’s left of our Country
With rightist “Christians” like anti-liberal around, I think the Satanists should close up shop and go home: the Christians these days are twice as vicious, three times as angry, and four times as bloodthirsty.
-The choice to use the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam was of course silly and used entirely without historic context. It makes as much sense as showing a photo of Franklin Roosevelt shaking hands with Josef Stalin. –
Come again, Bill Cruchon? Roosevelt never attempted to create a puppet out of Stalin.
Saddam’s big mistake was to bite the hand that feeds.
For what it’s worth KIRO owes debt to Warren G Magnuson who helped
jumpstart the station in the 1940’s (See Shelby Scates, of PI fame. His
biography goes into the details…good read.) (That’s Magnuson of
Magnuson/Stevens Act protecting the Puget Sound from oil tankers while
he was Senator (D) Washington.
Goldy ,
Your depiction of Rumsfield linked with a mass murder and terrorist is over the top .. Compared to the rhetoric from right and left it is inappropriate . In this world of blog its common , thats not a good thing , but at least I am not nearly offfended as some people are . The problem is some people may take you seriously because from listening to you on Radio , and reading about you in the paper , you appeared to have something to add to the local and national of debate .
You took a few steps backward in the public’s eye , liberals will root for you , but when in the future you talk about our concentration camps and such , you lost creditability in the middle world of non involved citizens , you look like a nut , and a mean one at that .
Those who are tried as war criminals are always on the losing side. Whoops!! Someone better hand anti a gun