The saddest part of all this is that all these political manoeuvrings will do nothing for Obama politically. His supporters will deplore him for it, and his detractors will find other justifications for hating him.

The only thing it will do is ensure forever that no one will be held accountable for the war crimes committed by our government.

I think that there needs to be a serious movement towards impeaching Obama, and soon, and put Bush et al on trial. It's clearly the only thing that will stop them.

It is always amazing to see people in the most aggressive nation on Earth chastise others for failing to want "peace" sufficiently enough.

Do you have any reason to believe that Ahmadinejad's goal is NOT peace? The problem is of course that "peace" is defined differently depending on who you ask, and especially the conditions under which it can be achieved. I mean, there IS peace now between the US and Iran, but it's not an ideal situation anyway.

There are some groups in this situation that do NOT want peace, but I'd wager that both Obama and Ahmadinejad have a desire to achieve something that could be called "peace" by both of them, and that is better than the "peace" today.

http://salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/31/torture/index.html

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga. His conviction was the first use of a 1994 law allowing prosecution in the U.S. for acts of torture committed overseas.

Here, the crimes (though not war crimes) actually took place in Italy, and people in the US are COMPLAINING about this? No doubt the same people that didn't object at all to the US prosecution of acts that didn't take place in the US.

The hypocrisy of the media and the government (if there's a difference anymore) is astounding.

...just put "High Tension" on a list of good horror movies? I HATED that movie (anyone who's seen it probably understands why), and it depresses me whenever I see someone recommend it.

I've seen most of the others mentioned on the list, and I thought most of them were forgettable. I understand the point of the list is partly to highlight more obscure movies, but sometimes the well-known stuff is more well-known for a reason. Though I do like that "Hardware" is on the list, but for some reason it never occurred to me to classify it as horror. I don't classify "Alien" as horror either though - both feel more like sci-fi to me, so I don't think of them when horror movies are discussed.

I would include "Dead Silence (2007)" in this list - yeah, maybe many people don't like it, but it's one of the best horror movies of the decade IMO. A throwback to the good old days of 70's horror, with the washed out colors.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN— According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.

In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.

"We've spent a lot of time and money fostering the turmoil and despair necessary to make this a sustaining quagmire, and we're not going to stop now," President Barack Obama said in a national address Monday night. "It won't be easy, but with enough tactical errors on the ground, shortsighted political strategies, and continued ignorance of our vast cultural differences, we could have a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012."

Added Obama, "Together, we can make Afghanistan into a nightmarish hell-scape Americans will regret for generations to come."

Link at signature.

Thank Allah that AIPAC would never try and infiltrate our beloved Congress like this.

matt.x:"All politics and party affiliations aside, does it make ANY sense to award a "peace prize" to the leader of a nation currently making war on and occupying two foreign nations?"

No, it doesn't. But the right is NOT criticizing this award based on this reasoning. They are criticizing the award because they believe that it shows that Obama is NOT AGGRESSIVE ENOUGH. They criticize it because it, to them, shows that Obama really IS just a Euro-style socialist intent on destroying America.

I agree that saying that someone criticizing this award is anti-American is ludicrous. But I find little enthusiasm for standing up and defending the likes of Beck, Rush, Malkin, etc, since their reasoning for criticism is insane.

Someone wrote earlier "But really, does anyone really care if Iran gets a nuclear weapon?"

See, that's the crux here to me - does it really matter that much? But it does, to the war fetishists, because if Iran has nukes, it's more difficult to argue for invasion of that country.

So they use the method of scaring everyone that Iran is not run by a rational leadership, and that they would use nukes not as a MAD style negotiation asset, but actually as an offensive weapon, consequences be damned.

In reality, of course, it would be better if Iran had an above board nuclear weapons arsenal, like China, and not a hidden one, like Israel.

As Glenn has pointed out before, a rational Iranian leader WOULD probably want to develop a nuclear program. They are faced with almost daily explicit threats of war and invasion by opinion makers and politicians in the largest aggressor nation on the planet - why would they NOT want nukes?