Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

[If Bush is The Weasel, then what might Cheney be...? I know. Perhaps it's just the inflence of the Harry Potter series (which Mrs. FLJB and I are re-watching), but I think the perfect handle for him is The Basilisk...]

The New York Times and other papers are reporting on The Basilisk's address yesterday to the American Enterprise Institute. (Complete transcript here. It always surprises me that these guys unashamedly post transcripts of their most godawful remarks, right alongside those nominally stressing statesmanship and moderation.)

The text was pretty much standard stuff -- starting with The Basilisk's disappointment at press reports about his comments last week:

Several days ago, I commented briefly on some recent statements that have been made by some members of Congress about Iraq. Within hours of my speech, a report went out on the wires under the headline, "Cheney says war critics 'dishonest,' 'reprehensible.'"

One thing I've learned in the last five years is that when you're Vice President, you're lucky if your speeches get any attention at all. But I do have a quarrel with that headline, and it's important to make this point at the outset. I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror or any aspect thereof. Disagreement, argument, and debate are the essence of democracy, and none of us should want it any other way. For my part, I've spent a career in public service, run for office eight times -- six statewide offices and twice nationally. I served in the House of Representatives for better than a decade, most of that time as a member of the leadership of the minority party. To me, energetic debate on issues facing our country is more than just a sign of a healthy political system -- it's also something I enjoy. It's one of the reasons I've stayed in this business. And I believe the feeling is probably the same for most of us in public life.

Here Cheney is responding, apparently, to the Reuters story on his remarks before something called the "Frontiers of Freedom Institute 2005 Ronald Reagan Gala"; the Reuters story has exactly the headline cited by The Basilisk. The Frontiers of Freedom Institute, in case you were wondering, "seeks to lead the conservative movement against an ever more powerful and intrusive federal government, and to restore and maintain individual rights." (This comes from the organization's capsule description on the Google Directory, category "Conservatism > Politics > Institutes.") I have no idea what was the purpose of its 2005 Ronald Reagan Gala, but perhaps The Basilisk was brought on for comic relief -- as there couldn't possibly be anyone less suitable to the Institute's stated purpose.

Here's the passage in Cheney's speech last week to which the Reuters headline alludes (all emphases mine):

I know what it’s like to operate in a highly charged political environment, in which the players on all sides of an issue feel passionately and speak forcefully. In such an environment people sometimes lose their cool, and yet in Washington you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of political debate. But in the last several weeks we have seen a wild departure from that tradition. And the suggestion that’s been made by some U.S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.

Got that? He's saying the criticism is dishonest and reprehensible -- not the critics. [IRONY ALERT ON] Jeez, Reuters, mislead your readers why dontcha? No wonder it got under The Basilisk's reptilian skin. [IRONY ALERT OFF]

Anyway, back to yesterday's speech to the American Enterprise Institute...

The Times summary focuses on Cheney's overall theme: that he welcomes, even "enjoys," healthy debate, but that he does not welcome, let alone "enjoy," the current debate over the validity of the pre-war intelligence -- or the misAdministration's selective presentation of this intelligence to Congress, the UN, and the American public. This debate is presumably unhealthy. And here's the passage to which the Times's article's headline ("Cheney Sees 'Shameless' Revisionism on War") refers:

American soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq go out every day into some of the most dangerous and unpredictable conditions. Meanwhile, back in the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood. This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate.

What The Basilisk (and The Weasel, and all the rest of the misAdministration's corrupt, shameless menagerie) would have us believe, in other words, is this: All the reasons they gave us for the need for immediate invasion remain true to this day. Any suggestion that these reasons were known to be false is, well, corrupt and shameless.

But, whoops, there's always a fly in the ointment whenever The Basilisk and his people assert "facts" about their way of governing:

• There's the notorious energy task force. Cheney always said -- continues to say -- that revealing any of the task force's participants, let alone what they said, would be to disrupt his ability to confer with experts without having the discussion subjected to the harsh glare of public knowledge. So Congress recently turned to the oil company executives themselves: Did they participate? "No." "I don't know." And so on. Until -- whoops -- it turns out that oil company executives did participate.
• The Downing Street Memos (as well as Paul O'Neill's memoirs, and others sources) reveal that the misAdministration's inner circle was actively pushing -- pushing hard -- for an Iraq invasion continuously, from within a few days after 9/11 all through 2002... without, uh, subjecting the discussion to the harsh glare of public knowledge. The only question was, how to justify it?
• ...To which the answer was: Find evidence, no matter how discreditable, which supports the need for the invasion. Present it as certain knowledge, not even remotely vague or flat-out wrong it might be. Especially good evidence for this purpose is the evidence supplied by expatriates eager to curry favor with the West; see Ahmed Chalabi, for example, and see "Curveball." (Wikipedia articles on these two are here and here. Be sure to check the external links and references at the foot of each article as well.)

In short, The Basilisk's and The Weasel's continuing efforts to tar critics' perfectly valid 20-20 hindsight as "revisionist," "reprehensible," or whatever -- such efforts themselves are based on a denial that the documented past ever happened. It's a failure to revise one's view of history to conform to facts. That's not a mote in the critics' eyes, O Dick. It's a big honking log in your own.

...a/k/a Voltaire, who would have been 311 years old if he'd lived till today. One of his most famous, widely quoted lines is, "People who believe in absurdities are in danger of committing [alternatively, tend to or will eventually commit] atrocities."

With a mindset like that, it's not hard to imagine what he'd make of present-day events. From Al Qaeda to PNAC, the movers and shakers of our world are all too often in thrall to absurd beliefs; the consequent atrocities, of course, seldom if ever directly affect the lives of the True Believers and their families. (I suppose that's a defining characteristic of an atrocity in the first place.)

Obviously, I haven't blogged much in recent weeks. Off-line events, commitments, and preoccupations have conspired to make blogging seem a self-indulgence. I expect to be getting back to something more like a daily schedule sometime in the next few weeks; in the meantime, I've got a bunch of draft posts in the vault.

The Associated Press, via USA Today, reports on an appearance by Stephen Hadley, The Weasel's national "security" "adviser," on CNN's "Late Edition" program. The topic: Did The Weasel and his minions really, y'know, lie about the intelligence in the run-up to Iraq? Hadley:

But I think the point that we need to emphasize here was, allegations now that the president somehow manipulated intelligence, somehow misled the American people are flat wrong.

[...]

The president and the secretary of state relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community as conveyed to him by the director of Central Intelligence. They were contained in a national intelligence estimate, a classified document that was provided to the president and provided to the Congress of the United States.

There were some dissenting views that were set out in that national intelligence estimate. But at the end of the day, the president has to go with the collective judgments of the intelligence community.

[...]

And it is unworthy and unfair and ill-advised, when our men and women in combat are putting their lives on the line, to relitigate an issue which was looked at by two authoritative sources and deemed closed. We need to put this debate behind us. It's unfair to the country. It's unfair to the men and women in uniform risking their lives to make this country safe.

All this is actually a follow-up of sorts to Hadley's remarks at a briefing on Thursday, as reported by the Washington Post

Some of the critics today... believed themselves in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American people. For those critics to ignore their own past statements exposes the hollowness of their current attacks.

Other than Condi's replacement, who, you might wonder, is Stephen Hadley? A great source of information about anyone in the current right-wing power structure is the Right-Web site ("Exposing the architecture of power that's changing our world"). Here's some of what they have to say about Hadley:

Stephen Hadley is a hardliner close to Vice President Dick Cheney and to the neoconservative camp. Named by the president in mid-November 2004 to replace Condoleezza Rice as his National Security Adviser, Hadley formed part of a loosely constituted group of foreign policy advisers known as the Vulcans who advised candidate Bush in 2000 and were at the core of the presidential transition team following Bush’s election. Among the other Vulcans who later moved into the first Bush administration were Rice, Colin Powell, Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

[...]

Hadley advocates extending the role of nuclear weapons to include deterrence against all so-called weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons. He wrote in the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, "To say that a security policy based on nuclear weapons was 'irresponsible' and 'immoral' from the outset is to accuse the United States government of pursuing a policy that was irresponsible and immoral. Such a serious and false accusation against a democratic government destroys public confidence in our institutions and our leaders.... It is often an unstated premise in the current debate that if nuclear weapons are needed at all, they are needed only to deter the nuclear weapons of others. I am not sure this unstated premise is true."

[...]

During the first Bush administration, Hadley served as the fall guy when allegations arose regarding Rice's alleged mishandling of information about Iraq's purported effort to buy uranium from Niger. According to the Washington Post, Hadley was told by CIA Director George Tenet that the Niger allegations, which were used by Bush in various speeches (including the January 2003 State of the Union Address) and served as a key justification for invading Iraq, were probably bogus and should not be used by the president. Hadley, who claimed that Rice had been unaware of the controversy, told the newspaper, "I should have recalled ... that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue." An Associated Press report of July 22, 2003 noted that Hadley said he had suggested that the president remove a similar statement about yellowcake from his October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, but as the State of the Union address was being prepared the two CIA memos about the shaky basis for the claim that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons had slipped from his attention.

Like Cheney, Hadley did not let the facts get in the way of his own public assertions about Iraq’s threat to U.S. national security. A few weeks after the infamous State of the Union Address in 2003, Hadley in a Chicago Tribune op-ed repeated the allegation that "the regime has tried to acquire natural uranium from abroad," pointing to what he said was a sustained, wide-ranging effort to acquire nuclear weapons.

Also of note is recent news provided by Italian journalists, that Hadley himself was point man on the bogus Nigerian-yellowcake-uranium story:

...investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

[The] exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to [the American Prospect, which reported on the Italian journalists' scoop].

If this is the kind of lying, self-serving jackass presented in all earnestness as the public face of the misAdministration, it's no wonder its credibility is in the toilet. Would you want your child to grow up to be Stephen Hadley? Didn't think so.

...doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

In today's Capitol Hill Blue "Rant" column, Doug Thompson recounts his discovery of a 100-page FBI file on him:

The printout, shown to me recently by a friend who works for Justice, identifies me by a long, multi-digit number, lists my date of birth, place of birth, social security number and contains more than 100 pages documenting what the Bureau and the Bush Administration consider to be my threats to the security of the United States of America.

It lists where I sent to school, the name and address of the first wife that I had been told was dead but who is alive and well and living in Montana, background information on my current wife and details on my service to my country that I haven’t even revealed to my wife or my family.

Although the file finds no criminal activity by me or members of my immediate family, it remains open because I am a “person of interest” who has “written and promoted opinions that are contrary to the government of the United States of America.”

[...]

According to my file, the banks where I have both business and checking accounts have been forced to turn over all records of my transactions, as have every company where I have a charge account or credit card. They’ve perused my book borrowing habits from libraries in Arlington and Floyd Counties as well as studied what television shows I watch on the Tivos in my house. They know I belong to the National Rifle Association, the National Press Photographers Association and other professional groups. They know I attend meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous on a regular basis and the file notes that my “pattern of spending” shows no purchase of “alcohol-related products” since the file was opened in 2001.

In The Weasel's America, of course, this is not supposed to concern us; if anything, we're to celebrate such blatant obscenities of police-state tactics. After all, fighting a Global War On Everyone Different From Us surely requires the monitoring not only of known terrorists, but also of unknown terrorists, terrorists (both known and unknown) in the making, those would encourage terrorists through their criticism of terror-fighting tactics, those who have helped or who might in the future help little old terrorist ladies cross the street, those whose children attend pre-schools also attended by children descended from natives of countries known to harbor terrorists or, heck, the countries bordering on those countries.

The specific bureaucratic mechanism for authorizing this compilation of data on any given "person of interest," says Thompson, is the "national security letter" (emphasis mine in the passage below):

A “national security letter” it turns out, can be issued by any FBI supervisor, without court order or judicial review, to compel libraries, banks, employers and other sources to turn over any and all information they have on American citizens.

The FBI issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year. When one is delivered to a bank, library, employer or other entity, the same federal law that authorizes such letters also prohibits your bank, employer or anyone else from telling you that they received such a letter and were forced to turn over all information on you.

The FBI has long had the power to gather this kind of information for criminal, intelligence, and (yes) even terrorist-fighting purposes. Previously, though, they had to get a court order. And previously, they were required -- if the investigation proved no wrongdoing -- to destroy all the records gathered on the individual in question. But as Thompson points out:

President George W. Bush in 2003 reversed that long-standing policy and ordered the bureau and other federal agencies to not only keep that information but place it in government databases that can be accessed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

In October, Bush also signed Executive Order 13388 which expands access to those databases to “appropriate private sector entities” although the order does not explain what those entities might be. In addition, the Bush Administration has successfully blocked legislation and legal actions that have tried to stop the expansion of spying and gathering of information on Americans.

Yet another instance, here, of ways in which The Weasel cannot be said to be "just doing what they've always done." No. The Weasel & Company are something unique in the history of the country. The threat to the US from terrorists is real, no doubt. But the threat to large numbers of US citizens from their own elected and appointed officials is far more insidious, far more destructive, far more dangerous than all the shaking of fists, the throwing of rocks, and -- yes -- the launching of horrific attacks on citizens, here and abroad, by Osama & Company. It's all those things because it pretends to be for our own good. (To paraphrase the Vietnam-era slogan, "Attacking civil liberties in order to preserve freedom is like fucking to save your virginity.")

These evil bastards cannot be stopped soon enough.

Hugh Hewitt, one of the articulate morons with whom the American right wing is rife, has an Op-Ed piece in today's NY Times (no Times Select subscription required). The headline means to grab the attention of anyone who awaits a resurgence of common sense across the political spectrum: "Why the Right Was Wrong."

Alas, Hugh's apostasy fails to produce the longed-for results with the right-is-wrong EPT test stick; he remains barren. His point is simply that the right was wrong in the way it handled the Miers nomination:

The right's embrace in the Miers nomination of tactics previously exclusive to the left -- exaggeration, invective, anonymous sources, an unbroken stream of new charges, television advertisements paid for by secret sources -- will make it immeasurably harder to denounce and deflect such assaults when the Democrats make them the next time around.

Any fan of twisted political discourse, to say nothing of selective memory and/or historical revisionism, will thrill to the passage I've emphasized there. For it to make sense, the right must never have exaggerated anything; must never have employed invective; must always have scrupulously named sources for all charges; must never have assailed an opponent unrelentingly; must always have made a point of announcing, unambiguously, who's paid for a given TV ad.

And we all know how true all that has been, even -- or especially -- looking back at just the first 4-1/2 years of The Weasel's sorry tenure.

With no particular relevance to the thieves in the misAdministration:

I was hidden in the roof of a house one evening, waiting for an opportunity to slip in and steal something. I had seen the man of the house ride away at sunset, and I expected that his wife would soon go to bed, when I would be able to ransack most of the rooms. ‘Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door. The woman admitted her lover and sat him at a table on which she soon arranged all manner of luscious dishes. ‘They were about to partake of this elegant meal, when they heard the trumpet of the husband’s outrider announce his unexpected return. The woman, in a panic, pushed her lover into a large closet, and piled the viands onto shelves beside him, motioning him to stay silent until she could effect his safe release.

Over at Anulios, read the rest of this satisfying tale of Lateef the Thief, entitled "The Magic Sack."

Via Peking Duck, news of yet another chapter in the sad ongoing saga of a White House crumbling beneath the weight of its own lunacy: threatened legal action against The Onion for use of the presidential seal, particularly on the page for accessing the publication's occasional parody of The Weasel's radio addresses:

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda -- stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

[...]

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

I remain an optimist. Eventually, it will sink in on even the misAdministration's most ardent supporters: If this is the kind of bizarre decision The Current Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight make on such trivial matters, why should anyone think the absurdity of their decisions on big issues (war, economy, taxes, on and on) hasn't been simply scaled up?

One news site which I don't see cited often enough, even (or especially) on lefty blogs, is Doug Thompson's Capital Hill Blue. A terrific example of why it ought to be on everyone's required reading list is today's rant, "Death Watch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Of course this isn't a literal death watch. Rather, it focuses on the crumbling façade of what's left of The Weasel's credibility.

For all practical purposes, governing the nation has stopped at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as aides deal with an increasingly despondent President, mounting scandals and defecting dissidents from the Ship of State.

White House insiders say George W. Bush’s mood swings have increased to the point where meetings with the President must be cancelled, schedules shifted and plans changed to keep a bitter, distracted leader from the public eye.

“He’s like a zombie some days, walking around in a trance,” says one aide who, for obvious reasons, asks not to be identified. “Other times he launches into angry outbursts, cussing out anybody who gets near him.”

Aides say gallows humor has descended on the White House, where the West Wing is now referred to as “death row” and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, along with Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, are known as “dead men walking,” a reference to the last walk death row inmates take to the execution chamber.

[...]

“Rove’s role is diminished already,” says one White House aide. “He still meets with The President daily but all this has taken its toll. He looks terrible.”

So does White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, who has served longer in the job than anyone in modern times. Card works 16 and 17-hour days and, in the words of one Republican member of Congress, looks “completely burned out.

Despite the piece's categorization in Thompson's "The Rant" file, it actually comes across as quite level-headed. No flaming insults, no calls for someone's head on a platter. Just straightforward reportage. (Granted, Thompson sometimes comes in for criticism on his "ReaderRant" bulletin board, for his practice of using unnamed sources. But his track record of sources is remarkable for its reliability; I haven't been reading Capitol Hill Blue since its inception, in 1994, but I don't think I've ever seen a retraction or news of a libel lawsuit.

Ironically, or not, the complaints themselves have all the earmarks of unattributed "information" and mere assertion but that, naturally, doesn't stop them from being flung onto the forum's wall -- whence they typically slide down to the floor, leaving in their wake a glutinous track.

One of a blogger's great pleasures comes from the occasional opportunity to cite one's earlier writings on a topic of current interest. Thus, I happily point to my August entry, posted before John Roberts's confirmation (before Rehnquist died, for that matter). In that post, I argued that Roberts's famous "modesty" in his views on the role of the judiciary vis-à-vis the other two branches was in fact an abrogation of responsibility:

[Citing a memo Roberts wrote on behalf of former Attorney General William French Smith:]

Congress and the Executive can be checked by the judiciary when they exceed their powers, but the judiciary is unique among the three branches in that it is the judge of its own power. As Justice Stone put it, "the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint." ... In such circumstances it is incumbent upon the other branches to aid the courts in their exercise of self-restraint. This is precisely what the Department of Justice will be doing in the arguments its lawyers present in litigation. Our effort is one to persuade the courts, who of course retain the ultimate power of decision.

A conscious effort in our litigation to curb judicial activism should not be viewed as an effort to politicize the courts. The federal judiciary is an independent branch of government, purposefully and carefully insulated by the Framers from direct popular pressure. The reason the courts were insulated from popular pressure, however, was precisely because their function was not conceived to embrace policymaking. Responsibility for policymaking in a democratic republic must reside in those directly accountable to the electorate.

You've gotta love that phrase, "to aid the courts in their exercise of self-restraint." This is Roberts trying to have it both ways -- starting out, apparently conciliatorily, by conceding that the legislative and executive branches may not interfere with the courts; and then following that "concession" with the mealy-mouthed claim that the other two branches must "help" the courts to "restrain themselves."

This is bullshit. Conservatives foam at the mouth about how "activist" judges fail (in the cons' eyes) to honor the Constitution, and then they turn around and assert stuff like this which has no Constitutional basis at all. In fact, the only executive and legislative oversight of the judiciary which the Constitution allows is (a) to nominate judges to the Federal bench (executive branch), and (b) to confirm or reject the nominations (legislative). The oversight is long-term and in perpetuity, not ad-hoc.

[...]

I'd also take issue with the assertion that the reason for insulating the courts from "popular pressure" was to forbid "policymaking." Here's the deal: Whatever the reason for it, you must grant that the courts are in fact meant to be insulated from popular pressure (the Roberts-written passage grants it); you then must also grant that this includes includes political pressure by the people's elected representatives in the executive and legislative branches. You, O President, go ahead and nominate whomever you want; and you, Senators, go ahead and confirm or deny them the appointment. And in doing so, you agree to be bound by your appointees' decisions, and the decisions of your predecessors' appointees -- just as your successors will agree to be bound by yours.

This isn't "activism," for chrissake. It's the way the system prevents activist tampering with the judiciary.

This argument is made anew in Dahlia Lithwick's Op-Ed piece in today's NYT, this one on the subject of Harriet Miers:

How could a man [i.e., The Weasel] who got it so right with John Roberts get it so wrong with Ms. Miers?

If the lesson of the Roberts confirmation was to pick someone superbly qualified and watch him whiz through his confirmation, why did President Bush almost deliberately flout that wisdom by nominating an inexperienced crony?

[...]

... nowhere is John Roberts more deferential as a judge than when it comes to the executive branch. In his rulings when he sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, he offered expansive readings of presidential authority. He ruled on that court that the Geneva Conventions do not confer on so-called enemy combatants any individual rights. And he was unwilling to answer at his hearings whether Congress has the power to end a war started by the president.

If you think of John Roberts as the justice who will urge a far more sweeping judicial deference - particularly to the executive branch - the subsequent Miers nomination makes sense. If Mr. Bush wants to refashion the courts into a weaker, passive entity that exists primarily to check its own institutional prerogatives, then a former White House counsel like Ms. Miers is the perfect choice.

Lithwick takes it further, though, to its logical (and disturbing) conclusion:

The president has long claimed that Congress and the courts were usurping his powers. The hallmark of his presidency has been efforts to reclaim those powers, be it through Patriot Act provisions that curtail judicial oversight, his invention of new courts to deliver justice-lite to Guantánamo detainees or threats to veto legislation that would prohibit torture.

Now he has had two openings to render the court toothless. He has filled those vacancies with a brilliant jurist who apparently believes the court should sit on its hands in perpetuity, and a place-filler -- his new judicial ideal.

Again the question arises, as it does almost minute by minute in Weasel World: How in the world can anyone who really cares about what happens to this country possibly support The Weasel in any of the evil-goofball enterprises he lays his hands to?

This week's The Onion summarizes the highlights of the Iraqi leader's trial so far.

You can see the rest at the current "Infographic" feature of America's Finest News Source.