The Associated Press reported today that the death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq has now hit 3,000. The NYT has this interactive showing each and every one.

However, there were only 24 other violent deaths reported in the country on Sunday, so the Eid holiday could mean a slowdown, if only temporary, in the carnage.

The NYT indicates that that Saddam has already been factored into the market of public opinion for the Iraq war. Unfortunately for Dubya, the Iraq support index is still falling.

Saddam Hussein's execution is a sideshow to Iraq's far graver problems. A bigger concern is what will the U.S. do next, and will its actions make things better -- or, God forbid, worse -- in the country it invaded, asks BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, one of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants, was executed at dawn on Saturday in Baghdad, along with two senior members of his deposed regime.

Does it matter if he is guilty, but, in the opinion of one major human rights group, wasn't fairly convicted?

Expect the West to put more pressure on Pakistan to deal with the Taliban -- and expect that pressure to go nowhere, writes the Beeb's Paul Dahar.

The Rev. Al Sharpton had this to say about James Brown, who lay on the stage at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem on Thursday:

"It was James Brown that with one song erased the word negro from our vocabulary forever and made us say it and say it loud, that we were black and we were proud.

"He proved to us if you believe in God and you believe in yourself you can make it no matter what."

If you don't know what I'm referring to, it's his famous 1968 song.

From the NYT story:

James Brown, with a catalog of socially conscious music, including “Say It Loud -- I’m Black and I’m Proud,” which at least one person waiting in line yesterday called “the real black national anthem,” changed America’s collective black consciousness, Mrs. Harper said.

“When he said, ‘Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ that was very important for us,” Mrs. (Brenda) Harper said. “At that point, black people as a whole were confused about where we stood in America. But he said, ‘You are beautiful, you are important.’ He made us feel that and believe that.”

Harper first saw Brown perform at the Apollo in 1961, when she was eight years old. She was the first in line for the public viewing of his body on Thursday.

Here's the BBC's photo gallery. This CTV.ca story has video attached and links to a few backgrounders on Brown. My initial post on JB has been updated with some YouTube links.

Addendum

The popularity of Say It Loud among the black militant set of the time may well have cost Brown some of his white audience. Here's what he wrote in his autobiography:

"The white community took it entirely the wrong way, as a kind of aggressive statement meant to induce fear. So negative was the reaction to the song that radio programmers refused to play it on white stations."

The Beeb's Jane Little writes that while the Christmas wars may have eased in the U.S., they are going strong in Europe.

Pity the poor Project for the New American Century. The whole Iraq debacle may have ruined its agenda, like, forever, writes BBC world affairs analyst Paul Reynolds.

In a sobering story, Newsweek claims that al Qaeda is using its new playpen of North Waziristan in the tribal area of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan to train a small group of Westerners to lead attacks in their homelands.

ABC News is reporting that al Qaeda is urging Islamist terrorists to conduct a strike in Britain over the Christmas period. The reporters base this claim on web postings and other Internet "chatter."

However, the story also contains this proviso:

While there are no specifics to the concern -- no targets, no corroborated intelligence and no very specific timing -- authorities are taking the information more seriously than they otherwise might.  Their concern stems from the knowledge that at least 1,200 al Qaeda operatives are at large in Great Britain, with about 18 key al Qaeda members among them and at least two highly placed linchpins to al Qaeda operations, who may have made Britain their home base.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.

Oddly, neither the UK-based BBC, the Guardian, the Times Online, the Independent or the Telegraph are prominently reporting this dire news on their websites at this time.

I'll check back and see if that changes.

Meanwhile, the big news is the holiday travel havoc at London's Heathrow Airport due to a thick bank of (terrorist-caused?) fog.

Update

The closest news story I could find about a terror threat was this BBC story:

Defending the high security levels which have been maintained in London, Sir Ian (Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) said the threat of terrorism was "far graver" than those faced during World War II, the Cold War or the IRA.

He said although there were no details about a terrorist attack during the Christmas period, the country faced a "level of unparalleled threat".

He added: "I think the threat of another terrorist attempt is ever-present.

"We have no specific intelligence but listeners may remember that there was a terrorist plot in Germany against one of their Christmas markets in 2002, so it's a possibility."

That story was played "below the fold" (the first screen) of the UK home page in a subsection entitled "England."

Now, maybe it's not big news on Friday in Britain because Home Secretary John Reid made a similar warning last Sunday (see this Dec. 11 Guardian article).

However, here is what Sir Ian Blair said in a Dec. 23 Guardian article:

There was no specific evidence of any immediate threat, he said, playing down a recent suggestion from the home secretary, John Reid, that an attack was highly likely before Christmas.

I then went to the home page of MI5, Britain's domestic security agency (the Brit equivalent of CSIS).

That page hasn't been updated since Dec. 15.

They do describe the threat as "severe" -- as of Aug. 14, 2006.

"Severe" means an attack is highly likely. "Critical" means an attack is imminent.

However, if the agency hasn't updated its threat level, perhaps MI5 doesn't consider the al Qaeda chatter to be as threatening as ABC News does.