Weekly Video Roundup

This week’s installment of Truthdig-flavored videos includes a hawkish U.S. senator articulating his change-of-heart on the Iraq war; U.S. military officials abusing their rank and influence in an evangelical recruiting video; and Jon Stewart bidding goodbye — and good riddance — to the 109th Congress.

No. 1: Gordon Smith Goes to Washington

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) on “This Week” elaborated on remarks he made earlier on the Senate floor, where he called the Iraq war “absurd” and possibly even “criminal.” Asked what had brought about his change of heart, Smith replied: “Waking up the other morning and turning on the news and hearing that yet another 10 of our soldiers died the same way that several thousand have … and I went from steamed to boiled.”

Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer sounds off on nuclear negligence, Kucinich’s candidacy, the Christmas blues and more.

Watch it:

A military watchdog group is accusing senior officers of coercing soldiers and airmen into adopting evangelical Christianity — as demonstrated in a promotional video the senior officers appeared in. “We apparently have a radicalized, evangelical Christian Pentagon within the rest of the Pentagon,” says the head of the watchdog group.

Jon Stewart says farewell to the 109th Congress, which used its final session to “pass last-minute tax cuts, expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, clear GOP leadership of wrongdoing in the Mark Foley scandal, and pardon Hitler … .”

Appearing on “The Daily Show,” Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, said Bush still believes his policy is working in Iraq and suggested that the president may be the last neoconservative left in power. When asked by Jon Stewart what role the president’s advisers might be able to play, Zakaria responded: “Without being flippant, I think maybe what [Bush] needs is a therapist.”