Saturday reading:
Gates of Vienna's series on Tablighi Jamaat, part I, part II, and part III. If you're wondering what is Tablighi Jamaat,

Some of the better known Western jihadis such as Jose Padilla, Richard Reid and John Walker Lindh were indoctrinated by the Tablighi Jamaat before they moved on to military training organized by other groups in Afghanistan.

From Maria, This is the Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" school of public relations. It doesn't seem quite appropriate for a major war, and Lawyer Who Helped Build Saddam Case Tells Of Iraq Horrors

In one instance, he said, his team learned that about 400 women and children had been rousted from a village under the guise they would be having a picnic. They were killed and buried together.

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner Saddam et al are sent to fry in hell, the better. Hitchens writes about Clark's Sticking Up for Saddam

The first charge being brought against Saddam Hussein is that in 1982, after his motorcade came under fire near the mainly Shiite town of Dujail, he ordered the torture and murder of 148 men and boys. It's a relatively minor item in the catalog, but there it is. The first prosecution witness in the case, Wadah al-Sheikh, has actually testified that he knows of no direct link between Saddam and the killings. The defense team has to hope that it can prove the same, or perhaps suggest that no such massacre occurred. Not so Ramsey Clark. In a recent BBC interview, he offered the excuse that Iraq was then fighting the Shiite nation of Iran:

He (Saddam) had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt.

Just go back and read that again. Ramsey Clark believes that A) the massacre and torture did occur and B) that it was ordered by his client and C) that he was justified in ordering it and carrying it out. That is quite sufficiently breathtaking. It is no less breathtaking when one recalls why Saddam "had this huge war going on." He had, after all, ordered a full-scale invasion of the oil-bearing Iranian region of Khuzestan and attempted to redraw the frontiers in Iraq's favor. Most experts accept a figure of about a million and a half as the number of young Iranians and Iraqis who lost their lives in consequence of this aggression (which incidentally enjoyed the approval of that Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter). And Ramsey Clark says that the aggression is an additional reason to justify the massacre at Dujail.

Hitchens writes about the double standard of the "Not really anti-war at all, but pro-war on the other side" blab one hears "from Saddam sympathizers, Fidel and Kim groupies, and Islamic fundamentalists". Atlas Shrugs went to a party and came back listing ten items on the Continued Reconstruction Success from 15 Nov to 27 Nov 05.

Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred came across the yahoos at Yahoo News.

Parkway Rest Stop asks a question.

On a lighter vein, The Antiques Road show swings by the Parkway Rest Stop.