SADDAM COMEBACK
My semi-serious remarks about a rehabilitation of Saddam may not be far off the mark. According to a report on commondreams.org James Baker has been talking to one of Saddam's lawyers. The lawyer was informed that Tariq Aziz is to be released to negotiate with the Baathist resistance, presumably to cut ties with the Sunni Fanatics if any such ties ever existed.
Meanwhile Tony Blair mourns the death of one Pierre Gemayyel. OK Tony, tell us all you know about this political giant. I'm betting he'd never heard the name before the assassination. Pierre was one of the anti-Syrian faction in Lebanon. That means pro-American, that's the America that sent the Israelis into Lebanon to kill as many Lebanese as possible, and to turn the country to rubble. I can see why he might be a target for people other than the Syrian Mukhabarat.
Lebanese politicians are assassinated with regularity, usually by other Lebanese, and its my opinion that the Maronites, Gemayyel's own confessional group, top the assassination charts. Observers are pointing out that Pierre was killed in what should have been a relatively safe area for him.

Another claimed political murder, that in London of Litvinenko, raises some questions. He is supposed to have upset Putin with his claims about the Moscow bombing, that it was done by Putin's people, not Chechen terrorists. Well this story has been in the public domain for some time and the western media and western politicians have chosen not to hear it. Why should Putin worry? As long as he pays lip service to Bush's "war on terror" he can do what he likes to his own people.
We are supposed to sympathise with this Litvinenko, yet he was once part of this state terrorist set-up. That's how he knows so much. He chose to transfer his allegiance to the gangster, sorry oligarch, Berezovsky; doubtless a much more rewarding post, financially speaking. I can't swear to this but I'm sure I heard his friend Nekrasov say that he knew he'd been poisoned because he was once part of the department that carried out these operations.
I have to ask, who are these people, Litvinenko, Goldfarb, Nekrasov? What are they doing here? Russian politics and gangsterism are so closely linked that we should treat all these people with suspicion. At the moment the Berezovsky boys are having a free run in the British media, and they are muddying the waters in my opinion. Their activities merit closer scrutiny.