Saddam Executed
Saddam Hussein has been hung for the crime of killing 148 men 24 years ago*. The rush to execute the only man who held Iraq together in modern times for a crime which pales in comparison to the toll of our invasion of that country seems unseemly, dishonorable. And given the impenetrable turmoil and violence we have unleashed there, executing Saddam at this point may be also be yet another big mistake.
UPDATE: As it turned out, Saddam was hung by a jeering clutch of hooded Shiite militiamen, who chanted Moktadr! Moktadr! as Saddam tried to pray. To rub salt in the Sunni wound, the execution was held on the Sunni first day of the holiday Id, a day of forgiveness; (the Shiia celebrate Id beginning Sunday.)
Here is the infamous cell-phone video of the botched execution.
(*Note that Saddam was not yet tried for his two greatest crimes, the Kurdish massacres of the early eighties, and the Shiite massacres of 1991. In the first case, the US supplied the chemicals and turned a blind eye. In the second, Bush Sr, having called on the Shiias to rise up following the Gulf War, allowed Saddam to keep his attack helicopters and turned a blind eye as he used them to massacre the Shiia. US complicity in these crimes was probably also the reason he could not be delivered to an international war crimes court, like the Hague. Instead he was tried and executed for killing the 148 Dawa Shiia of Dujail, following an assassination attempt, a crime the US clearly had nothing to do with.)
See Juan Cole's article on the execution at Salon
Chris Floyd is doing a great job covering the execution and it's context at Empire Burlesque
UPDATE: Saddam's co-conspirators in the Dujail trial, Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were hanged Jan 15; this time no cell phones got in... and a good thing since Barzan's head was pulled clean off by the noose. At least that's the official story. I don't know if that's really possible or not, but it sounds to me like the militiamen were in charge of this execution too, and with no cell-phones bearing witness, they cut off Barzan's head in true terror style, with a big knife.
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