November 6, 2006

Saddam Verdict Not Yet Fully Written, Yesterday’s Announcement Was Early Release

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In a blog post over at NBC News, reporter Richard Engel observes that details on why Saddam is being sentenced to death are still unclear. (The reasons are obvious, of course, and the verdict a foregone conclusion for years, but the court released little by way of supporting argumentation.) Turns out, the verdict hasn’t been fully written and is expected to be completed Thursday. Money paragraph:

The full verdict, a document of several hundred pages, explaining how and why today’s judgment was reached was not released. U.S. officials said it should be ready by Thursday. So why issue the verdict today? U.S. court advisors told reporters today it was delayed mainly for technical reasons. All insist the verdict was not politically timed and that it was an Iraqi decision; there is no reason to doubt their word.

Huh. The verdict will be completed two days after the American midterms, but the decision is made public two days before. I’ll bet the Bush Administration didn’t plan for that to come out.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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