Hoping for a Better World in '07

Happy New Year, world. At this time every year, we hope that a new calendar offers us new beginnings, the opportunity to right the wrongs of our past and accomplish the goals we fell short of last year. Que Dios nos dé la fuerza y la voluntad para cumplir nuestras metas y mucho más.

Despite our wishes to start anew, we know that our actions in the past will have an impact on the future, and we must deal with them accordingly.

"Iraq" ended last year by hanging Saddam Hussein for killing 148 Iraqis in 1982. Somehow, a portion of the United States believes this is some kind of victory in the "War on Terror," despite no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, no link to Al-Qaeda, no real attempt to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger and no credible imminent threat from Hussein's regime.

The following is a crude video of Saddam Hussein's hanging being carried out. It was taken by an eyewitness with his or her camera phone.



Dead or alive, Saddam had been irrelevant since his capture at the end of 2003. It took a mere three weeks to overtake Baghdad and after that, Hussein's only realistic goal was to make it out alive. While it's true that much of the violence in Iraq was being made in hopes of bringing him back to power, he had no influence over those warriors, and we would imagine that under American custody he would not be able to issue orders to anyone.

At the end of the day, history will look back at December 30, 2006 (Iraq date) as the day Some Guy Who's Not Osama Bin Laden Was Hanged. Now our supposed mission in Iraq is to establish democracy out there. See, that's the new plan after we couldn't find any WMD. And the capture of Saddam Hussein? Well, that was kinda like a bonus, since he wasn't a nice guy anyway. It's true that he was a harsh dictator, as dictators tend to be almost by definition.

And exactly how "established" does this democracy have to be before we pull out? Didn't Iraq have elections already? I remember it well since right wing media outlets wouldn't shut the fuck up about how there was a 90% voter turnout and how they were risking their lives to be free. Supposedly Iraq doesn't have a trained army to keep the peace. No shit, is that why the U.S. took it over in less than a month? Even military leaders were surprised at how quickly and easily coalition troops seized Baghdad, which speaks volumes about our intelligence gathering agencies.

If the goal of the United States in the 21st century is to eradicate dictatorships and monarchies, I expect to be alive when America falls on its ass from the weight of a massive national debt.

America scored a victory last November when the Democratic Party took over both houses of Congress, putting a leash on Bush for the first time since he took office. But at the end of the day he's still Commander-in-Chief of the military. So unless Dubya grows a brain or a conscience, it's a countdown to January 20, 2009.