The New York Times reports on how and when Bush decided to get rid of Donald Rumsfeld.

President Bush was moving by late summer toward removing Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary, people inside and outside the White House said Thursday. Weeks before Election Day, the essential question still open was when, not if, to make the move.

Mr. Bush ultimately postponed action until after the election in part because of concern that to remove Mr. Rumsfeld earlier could be interpreted by critics as political opportunism or as ratifying their criticism of the White House war plan in the heart of the campaign, those people said.

Law Professor Marjorie Cohn presents her case for a war crimes prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld. She includes this:

On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations will ask the German federal prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation into the war crimes of Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any country under the well-established principle of universal jurisdiction.

Via BBC, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he expects Saddam Hussein to be executed by the end of the year.

So much for appeals. How can the appeals judges even read the record that fast?

What a sham of a trial system.

Three more reasons to vote:

The Pentagon says 40-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Eric J.-Kruger of Garland was one of three officers killed in the Thursday [roadside] bombing. The military has said they were in the same vehicle in eastern Baghdad.

Because the rule of law is indifferent to identity, even the loathsome deserve a fair trial. Curtis Doebbler, a member of Saddam Hussein's defense team, explains why the Hussein verdict and death sentence is "a classic instance of 'victor's injustice' imposed on the heels of the illegal US invasion of Iraq."

All exculpating evidence was withheld from the defense; defense witnesses were threatened by court officials; defense lawyers were assaulted by US officials; and the defendants we not given the charges against them until eight months after the prosecution had started presenting evidence and the day the defense was required to start its case. The list of violations is long and undoubtedly the reason why every independent expert has found the trial unfair.

The Right again demonstrates simplemindedness on Iraq:

The DNC chairman praises the result that would not have come without the actions he opposed:

Justice for the Iraqi people was finally served today with the conviction of Saddam Hussein. This dictator ruled by fear, torturing and murdering his own people to satisfy his malicious interests. It’s commendable and important that he was brought to justice in the country where he committed these atrocities against humanity.

Is is too much for Byron York to understand that justice for Saddam Hussein was not worth the Iraq Debacle? Apparently not. Indeed, THAT is the referendum for the American People on Tuesday. Byron York and the Republicans believe the Iraq Debacle was a success because of today. And that we should stay the course and do the same for Iran. Democrats and the American People do not.

Let us vote accordingly.

This is shocking . . . not.

UPDATE: I have to add this from Ledeen's response to the criticism:

As for the Scowcroft excoriation left bloggers are pointing to, I never address military action in it. Which, again, anyone who's been reading me all this time know wasn't my solution to the problem.

His cited reference has him saying:

So it's good news when Scowcroft comes out against the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters. . . . Blessedly, President Bush knows by now that the Palestinian question can only be addressed effectively once the war against Saddam and his ilk has been won.

. . .[Scowcroft] fears that if we attack Iraq "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror."

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That's our mission in the war against terror.

An insane liar. Scary.

Update: Saddam has been sentenced to die by hanging.

A curfew is in place in Baghdad for the release of the 200 page verdict Sunday against Saddam Hussein. Saddam faces hanging if convicted.

Saddam says he will die with honor and no fear.

Saddam's lawyers told Reuters they chatted with him for more than three hours on Saturday, saying he was in high spirits and talked about mounting U.S. military losses and the insurgency.

"I will die with honour and with no fear, with pride for my country and my Arab nation but the U.S. occupiers will leave in humiliation and defeat," they quoted Saddam as saying.

"They will see rivers of blood for years to come. It will dwarf Vietnam."

If sentenced to death, it is unlikely to happen soon.

Chalabi speaks:

"The real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz," Chalabi says, referring to his erstwhile backer, the former deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. "They chickened out. The Pentagon guys chickened out." Chalabi still considers Wolfowitz a friend, so he proceeds carefully. America's big mistake, Chalabi maintains, was in failing to step out of the way after Hussein's downfall and let the Iraqis take charge. The Iraqis, not the Americans, should have been allowed to take over immediately - the people who knew the country, who spoke the language and, most important, who could take responsibility for the chaos that was unfolding in the streets. An Iraqi government could have acted harshly, even brutally, to regain control of the place, and the Iraqis would have been without a foreigner to blame. They would have appreciated the firm hand.

More pressure for Rumsfeld to resign, this time from an unexpected source -- the Military Times newspapers.

An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The papers are sold to American servicemen and women. They are published by the Military Times Media Group, which is a subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc.

You can read the editorial here.

Even President Bush's neo-con advisors now say the mess in Iraq is all his fault.

As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

Bump and Update: 10:00 am. The deployment of Santos Cardona has been stopped. But, it was not because of concern of what he might do to others. It was because of concern others might try to harm him.

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Original Post:

If this weren't so totally disgusting, it would be comical. Time Magazine reports Sgt. Santos Cardona (holding the dog in the picture) is headed back to Iraq for another tour of duty -- this time to train Iraqi police:

Sgt. Santos Cardona, 32, a military policeman from Fullerton, Calif., served in 2003 and 2004 at Abu Ghraib as a military dog handler. After pictures of Cardona using the animal to threaten Iraqis were made public, he was convicted in May of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, the equivalent of a felony in the U.S. civilian justice system. The prosecution demanded prison time, but a military judge instead imposed a fine and reduction in rank. Though Cardona was not put behind bars, he was also required to serve 90 days of hard labor at Ft. Bragg, N.C.