Saddam Hanged by Hooded Thugs in Kidnap-Style execution
He's dead.
Saddam Hussein was hanged nary a day after he was 'handed over' to 'Iraqi custody.' It was a horrific end. Film footage, bootlegged and grainy, looped endlessly all over the world. Some, like President Bush and others (including such enlightened movers and shakers as the President of Australia) were self-righteous and satisfied.
Many sensible people around the world, however, were appalled.
The video showed Saddam among a clutch of ski mask-wearing thugs, who deigned to put a black cloth around the former dictator's neck before they brought the noose. God forbid he suffer a little rope-burn on his way down.
Down to hell, of course. Before the trap-door gave way under Hussein's feet, onlookers shouted the name of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
Moqtada! Moqtada!
"Go to hell!" they yelled.
"Be a man!" Saddam is reported to have said.
Before he had finished his prayers, the floor gave way, and he dropped to his death.
The execution, I must point out, follows the former Iraqi leader's conviction on only the first of the multiple charges against him - that of the 1982 murders of 148 Shiites in Dujail.
But what about the charges of Genocide? Wasn't Saddam supposed to face trial for the 1988 massacre of some hundred thousand Kurds?
Well, yes. It's just that that trial is still going on.
So, Saddam Hussein was executed before the completion of a trial on far more serious charges.
Why?
Because his testimony would have implicated none other than the United States government, which supported Hussein throughout the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, and which also provided weapons - chemical weapons - the kind used to carry out the slaughter of the Kurds in Hussein's Anfal campaign.
Who knows who else might have been implicated.
The trial was a farce and a mockery of justice, and it is absolutely ludicrous for anyone to say Saddam Hussein received a fair trial and "due process of law."
Human Rights Watch says Hussein's trial was "deeply flawed."
Read their 97-page report
Saddam Hussein was hanged nary a day after he was 'handed over' to 'Iraqi custody.' It was a horrific end. Film footage, bootlegged and grainy, looped endlessly all over the world. Some, like President Bush and others (including such enlightened movers and shakers as the President of Australia) were self-righteous and satisfied.
Many sensible people around the world, however, were appalled.
The video showed Saddam among a clutch of ski mask-wearing thugs, who deigned to put a black cloth around the former dictator's neck before they brought the noose. God forbid he suffer a little rope-burn on his way down.
Down to hell, of course. Before the trap-door gave way under Hussein's feet, onlookers shouted the name of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
Moqtada! Moqtada!
"Go to hell!" they yelled.
"Be a man!" Saddam is reported to have said.
Before he had finished his prayers, the floor gave way, and he dropped to his death.
The execution, I must point out, follows the former Iraqi leader's conviction on only the first of the multiple charges against him - that of the 1982 murders of 148 Shiites in Dujail.
But what about the charges of Genocide? Wasn't Saddam supposed to face trial for the 1988 massacre of some hundred thousand Kurds?
Well, yes. It's just that that trial is still going on.
So, Saddam Hussein was executed before the completion of a trial on far more serious charges.
Why?
Because his testimony would have implicated none other than the United States government, which supported Hussein throughout the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, and which also provided weapons - chemical weapons - the kind used to carry out the slaughter of the Kurds in Hussein's Anfal campaign.
Who knows who else might have been implicated.
The trial was a farce and a mockery of justice, and it is absolutely ludicrous for anyone to say Saddam Hussein received a fair trial and "due process of law."
Human Rights Watch says Hussein's trial was "deeply flawed."
Read their 97-page report
