It's kind of sad when a homicidal dictator is more honest than your own president

Alas, it is our cross to bear for a few more years anyhow:

"Secret Saddam tapes" say Saddam had no WMDs, according to AP:

Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons.

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show....

Saddam's inner circle entertained notions of reviving the programs someday, the newly released documents show. "The factories will remain in our brains," one unidentified participant told Saddam at a meeting, apparently in the early 1990s.

At the same meeting, however, Saddam ... led a discussion about converting chemical weapons factories to beneficial uses.

...Scores of Iraqi documents, seized after the 2003 invasion, are being released at the request of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who has suggested that evidence might turn up that the Iraqis hid their weapons or sent them to neighboring Syria. No such evidence has emerged.

Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon.

"We played by the rules of the game," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said at a session in the mid-1990s. "In 1991, our weapons were destroyed." ...

According to last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann the CIA was also paying off the Iraqi foreign minister for intel on WMDs, and the guy was telling them exactly the same thing during the run up to war. Sadly, they chose to ignore this information and continue to insist that the fairies and leprechauns supplying their intel, via means of magic crystals and pixie dust, were far more accurate. Curse those evil gnomes for casting invisibility spells upon the vast hordes of unicorn powered Iraqi nukes and shielding them from US inspectors' eyes. Damn them to hell!

This is far and away the coolest thing I've read in ages

Many thanks to Aelf for forwarding me this:
Giago: Oglala Sioux president on state abortion law

"When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother’s life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state.

Napoli suggested that if it was a case of “simple rape,” there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli’s description of rape as “simple.” He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by “simple rape.”

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Strong words from a very strong lady. I hope Ms. Fire Thunder challenges Gov. Rounds and the state legislators on this law that is an affront to all independent women."

President Fire Thunder is my new hero.

Edit: Hat tip to the always well informed kirbyk

Want to help out? kathrynt has a post up with all the contact info: http://kathrynt.livejournal.com/366823.html

I'll be sending along good wishes and a check to help out the effort today!

Update:
For those playing the home game, here are the governor of SD's latest results in the polls:

I thought people would enjoy knowing that Mike Rounds, the South Dakota governor who signed the abortion ban, has seen his approval/disapproval numbers go from 72-23 in February to 58-38 in March. He doesn't have a challenger for 2006, though that could change soon. I was sort of guessing that this abortion ban would blow up in its proponents' faces -- pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers in South Dakota only 49-47.

Let's hope that the birth-control-denying state legislators of Missouri are next.