Author: Eric Garris

U.S. soldiers Monday used batons to break up a demonstration in Tikrit to protest against the capture of Saddam Hussein near his hometown.

About 700 demonstrators gathered outside Tikrit University chanting pro-Saddam slogans. Soldiers shouted back “Saddam is in our jail.”

Shorty afterwards, US soldiers charged the protest, beating and arresting some protesters.

Lt. Col. Steven Russell said that
“protests are not authorized and that participation in protests is punishable.”

Meanwhile, there are numerous reports of anti-Saddam demonstrations that are not being broken up, even though they are also not authorized. Many of these protesters are freely firing guns in celebration without any arrests.

UPDATE 12/17/03: US troops killed several protesters as pro-Saddam demonstrations continued across Iraq.

Finally!

Justin Raimondo’s The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection is now available from Amazon.com.

The Houston corporate headquarters for Halliburton-Kellogg, Brown and Root has had the old building sign removed and replaced with a new KBR sign.

The story did not appear as a regular news story, but rather as a series of captions for ten Reuters photos.

Today, President Bush announced that Halliburton will be forced to pay back any money overcharged for Iraqi oil.

Antiwar.com’s Blog has been nominated for the WizBang Weblog Awards.

Half of the categories are denoted by evolutionary state. We are in the category of Best Crawly Amphibians Ecosystem Level Blog, which is the lower end of the evolutionary scale (not an insult, we are new).

People can vote multiple times in each category, but no more than one vote per 12 hours.

Update: We are now in second place.

For what it’s worth, check it out and vote for us.

I also urge a vote for Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo in the Best Liberal Blog category, and in the Best Overall Blog category.

Updated: Iraqis, including US-employed police, report that no more than 8 Iraqis were killed in the “battle.”

The US claims that a total of 68 people were killed over the weekend, marking the end of the bloodiest month so far in Iraq.

The US-claimed total includes 54 Iraqis killed in a major battle in Samarra, as well as 2 GIs, 7 Spanish intelligence officers, 2 Japanese Diplomats, 2 South Korean workers, and a Colombian contractor.

Sumarra residents claim that the casualty figures are much lower but that the majority of those killed were civilians.

105 Allied Troops were killed in November, marking the worst monthly total since the war began.

This morning a US soldier was killed in an attack west of Baghdad.

Justin Raimondo’s column yesterday, along with his piece on Neal Boortz brought in more hate mail than any time since the height of the Iraq War.

Very few of the letters appeared to be from libertarians defending Boortz as one of our own. Most of them appeared to be vocally pro-war and pro-Bush. Many were also attacking Justin’s homosexuality, which they learned about on one of the pro-Boortz blogs.

Boortz certainly has a lot of supporters, and I am sure the ever-opportunistic Libertarian Party will welcome the addition of these pro-war and anti-gay members. No doubt the LP will get their money’s worth for the $7500 they are spending on Boortz’s speaking fee.