As I’m sure you all know by now, Saddam Hussein has been hanged to death — executed for his role in the slaughter of 148 in the Shi’ite town of Dujail.
Iraqis, according to the Times, “spent much of the day crowding around television sets to watch mesmerizing replays of a videotape that showed the 69-year-old Mr. Hussein being led to the gallows at dawn by five masked executioners, and having a noose fashioned from a thick rope of yellow hemp lowered around his neck.“
But, as Xeni notes in an excellent round-up of the execution coverage, “explicit images of Hussein’s corpse and ‘unedited’ cellphone video of the hanging (which includes the moment of death) have already shown up online,” on Google Video.
The video is grotesque. But “I think there’s a public interest in making this available for adults who choose to see it, non-passively,” Xeni tells Defense Tech. I agree.
UPDATE 9:26 PM: Defense Tech pal Michael Hastings has himself a scoop, interviewing Ali Al Massedy, who “was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator’s execution at dawn on Saturday.“
UPDATE 10:24 PM: Eric Umansky has “the most telling part of the execution.” Let’s just say Moqtada Al-Sadr is psyched.
UPDATE 12/31/06 11:49 AM: “We are seeing 21st century psychological operations,” says TPM Cafe. “It can be concluded there were elements within America’s government and/or military, working in concert with Iraq’s current scarecrow power-holders, who wanted as many people as possible in the world to see Saddam hang.” I’m not sure I buy this. And I can’t get with screeching tone. But it’s an interesting notion, nonetheless.
UPDATE 12/31/06 11:56 AM: Juan Cole gets into the execution’s religious dynamics.
The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam’s hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday — and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.
The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a sacrifice for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public.
The political ineptitude of the tribunal, from start to finish, was astonishing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basically gave Saddam a platform on which to make himself a martyr to Iraqi unity and independence — even if by unity and independence Saddam was really appealing to Sunnis’ nostalgia for their days of hegemony.
(Big ups: Josh)
Saddam Hussein deserved to die, but how this happened is a tragedy for America’s image.
We allowed a drum trial to take place, and called it “free and fair”. We handed him over. We watched as something out of an Al Quaeda video as he was hung…
I do not mourn this monster’s passing, but how it happened will NOT be good for us in the long run.
Noah, is that right? Has what Umansky said been checked?
That’s bad news if it is … bad news.
what he did is barbaric and wrong and how he went is barbaric and wrong.. well as obvious as it is; two wrongs don’t make right.
Saddam Hussein got what he deserved. Only it shou–
ld’ve happened a long time ago. He’s had no resp–
ect for his country, his people, his family, him–
elf, nor people of other countries as well. He is
an ENEMY to alot of people & countries. He is the
SON OF SATAN!!! Very, very EVIL!!! What a MONSTER!
He was given a fair trial. I know it’s true, because George Bush said so.
Therefore, there is no reason why the American soldiers accused of killing civilians should not be handed over to the Iraqi justice system. Right?
Sure, I come from the EU, where a death sentence is considered ‘wrong’ to begin with, but I am very against the hanging of Saddam.
Sure, Saddam has performed evil deeds, I have no doubt of that. Slobadan Millosevic has done so too. Adolf Hitler was probably even worse and I could name about a million other “nice guys”…
However, the death penalty solves nothing here. The only reason to approve death sentences –IMHO– would be to prevent the culprit from doing his/her evil deeds again. Now come on, did anyone really believe Saddam could _ever_ get back in the saddle? Of course not. So the reason for this hanging was purely sensational…
Nobody doubts that he richly deserved it. The problem is the way it happened: a show trial, widely criticised, followed by a hasty execution. This was such a bad idea, that will do nothing to calm the situation in the short term of the long term. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Nobody doubts that he richly deserved it. The problem is the way it happened: a show trial, widely criticised, followed by a hasty execution. This was such a bad idea, that will do nothing to calm the situation in the short term of the long term. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It always amazes me that the people who advocate against the death penalty for a monster like Sadam worship the abortion of an innocent baby.
BOB X from Texas
Think about all the death we could have avoided if Saddam had been aborted. Eh bob?
Beyerstein nails it:
Executing Saddam Hussein was no more meaningful than pulling down the Saddam statue after the invasion. Hussein’s trial and punishment could have been an opportunity to get Saddam’s crimes on the record and administer real justice to a war criminal. Like every other opportunity in this war, the Americans managed to squander it.
Human Rights Watch, a group that has been lobbying to bring Saddam Hussein to justice for 15 years found published a 97-page report detailing the miscarriages of justice in Saddam’s trial.
Giving Saddam Hussein an unfair trial is the equivalent of the cops planting evidence at the OJ crime scene. If you need to cheat to get a conviction against someone who committed as many crimes as Saddam, there’s something very wrong with your justice system.
Saddam wasn’t hanged for genocide against the Kurds, in fact, he wasn’t even tried for those crimes against humanity. Instead, Saddam was executed for his role in a government-led purge following an assassination attempt in 1982. No doubt, the Americans wanted to make sure Saddam was executed on lesser charges before he could be tried for his larger crimes against humanity in which the United States and its allies were complicit.
Should this have happened?
Lets here your views:
http://saddamshusseinsfinalday.blogspot.com/
Saddam should have been in the ICC, and should not have been tried, convicted in Iraq, and not executed. No one supports mob rule. It
TB — Take your Human Rights Watch and shove it up your ass. Count the French, Russians, Germans in on your “complicity” as well.
PS: I thought TB was something you got in a shit-hole 3rd world country.
Bye the way, his neck snapped like a twig. Interesting how they positioned the rope — to tension at his front. I caught a nice still shot by camera flash toward the end of the reel.
RTLM, that’s a FANTASTIC answer.
It combines the strategic thinking of Schlieffen/Rumsfeld with the self loathing and homophobia of Col. Frank Fitts.
Comedy gold.
Unless you were sincere. In that case … comedy gold!
What happened to the theory that the man captured in the rat hole and put on trial was Saddam Hussein’s look-alike?
When Sadam Hussein had some Americans from the American Embassy in Irak detained, he was shown on the news holding the children of American Embassy workers. He did this to show that he was not a bad guy. I‘m sure most people that saw the news clip could tell that Hussein was a very evil person using children for his evil manipulation. He invaded Kuwait and was defeated by American led coalition. It was after this that the first bombing of the World Trade Center took place. I believe that Hussein was behind that plot as well as the last attack that destroyed the Twin Towers, killing thousands of civilians. It was his way of taking revenge against whoever opossed him. He paid $25,000 to suicide bombers families, had the WMD‘s transported to Syria and Lebanon before the U.S. troops hit the sand, shot missiles at SaudiArabia and Israel etc. Good ridence,he came to power in a coup by the sword and he died by the sword.
Excuse me. How to Raise your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children
, Fitzpatrick.
I am from Lanka and also now teach English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Stop excessive sweating and be confident again.“
Best regards