quote:

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The room was quiet as everyone began to pray, including Mr. Hussein. “Peace be upon Mohammed and his holy family.”

Two guards added, “Supporting his son Moktada, Moktada, Moktada.”

Mr. Hussein seemed a bit stunned, swinging his head in their direction.

They were talking about Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose militia is now committing some of the worst violence in the sectarian fighting; he is the son of a revered Shiite cleric, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, whom many believe Mr. Hussein ordered murdered.

“Moktada?” he spat out, mixing sarcasm and disbelief.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, asked Mr. Hussein if he had any remorse or fear.

“No,” he said bluntly. “I am a militant and I have no fear for myself. I have spent my life in jihad and fighting aggression. Anyone who takes this route should not be afraid.”

Mr. Rubaie, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Hussein, asked him about the killing of the elder Mr. Sadr.

They were standing so close to each other that others could not hear the exchange.

One of the guards, though, became angry. “You have destroyed us,” the masked man yelled. “You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.”

Mr. Hussein was scornful: “I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans.”

The guard cursed him. “God damn you.”

Mr. Hussein replied, “God damn you.”

Two witnesses, apparently uninvolved in selecting the guards, exchanged a quiet joke, saying they gathered that the goal of disbanding the militias had yet to be accomplished.

---

[ 01 January 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

quote:

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Even the crimes for which he was tried were a source of ethnic friction. Saddam Hussein had had many Sunni Arabs killed, and a trial on such a charge could have been politically savvy. Instead, he was accused of the execution of scores of Shiites in Dujail in 1982. This Shiite town had been a hotbed of activism by the Shiite fundamentalist Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, which was founded in the late 1950s and modeled on the Communist Party. In the wake of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran, Saddam conceived a profound fear of Dawa and similar parties, banning them and making membership a capital crime. Young Dawa leaders such as al-Maliki fled to Tehran, Iran, or Damascus, Syria.

When Saddam visited Dujail, Dawa agents attempted to assassinate him. In turn, he wrought a terrible revenge on the town's young men. Current Prime Minister al-Maliki is the leader of the Dawa Party and served for years in exile in its Damascus bureau. For a Dawa-led government to try Saddam, especially for this crackdown on a Dawa stronghold, makes it look to Sunni Arabs more like a sectarian reprisal than a dispassionate trial for crimes against humanity.

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quote:

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A second trial of Saddam on charges of genocide, related to a 1987-1988 campaign in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, continues. The next session is scheduled for January 8.

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That should be really fair, what with the defendant already dead.

news about saddam's future court dates

[ 01 January 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

quote:

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We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

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Fisk

quote:

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From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family…" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell…" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala…?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood…?".

Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched.

So, no, CNN, his last words were not "Muqtada Al Sadr" in a mocking tone- just thought someone should clear that up. (Really people, six of you contributed to that article!)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Nanuq:
We already know enough about the West's support of Saddam's regime and their efforts to conceal his abuses from public scrutiny. It's hard to imagine what else he could have told that would have been any more damning than that.

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I respectfully disagree.
There is a great deal more information Sadaam could have provided, chapter and verse, of the role of his US masters during his greatest years of butchery. Even though it is an "open secret", the number of voters who know the basic facts about US support for Sadaam is likely a lot less than you might think.

The fact that they executed him before his second trial has occurred is unbelievable and an absolute mockery of justice. They should be declaring any trial still continuing now a mistrial due to the fact that the defendant has been already killed by the state that is prosecuting him, and that they killed him knowing that he was still on trial for something else. What, they couldn't have waited until all of his trials were over?

So long as it did not come out as matter of record in what the US called a "fair trial", it remains in the arena of conspiracy and whispers rather than fact.

quote:

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George Bush's New Year's present to the world was the death of Saddam Hussein by hanging in Iraq on December 30. Of course the argument will be made that it wasn't the U.S. that hanged Saddam, but the Iraqi people who tried and found him guilty of crimes against humanity in an Iraqi court. Yeah, and the moon is made of green cheese, too.

---

Bloody revolution is what it will take to arraign these bastards on charges of crimes against humanity. Kangaroo trials wouldn't be necessary, just a town square and the families of millions of the victims. Imagine handing Bush, Rummy and Cheney over to their accusers. Imagine horse-dragging the CEO's of Raytheon, Haliburton and Exxon through the streets of Baghdad and televised for all the world to see.

[ 02 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
But lots of people don't know to look for it. They believe what they see about him on mainstream television and think they already have the whole story. If they were to hear through non-mainstream sources about the CIA assisting Hussein in his crimes against humanity, they'd just scoff at it as a conspiracy theory.

The folks who run these kangaroo courts are counting on this. It's the only reason not to have a fair trial or to carry out the execution before his trials have gone through court, since I think most people are pretty confident that the outcome would have been the same had the trials been conducted fairly.

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But I also think a lot of damaging things about the US would have come out had they done it fairly, and that this is their motivation for not observing basic standards of jurisprudence (like, oh, not killing the defendant before all his trials are over). I guess they figured that if they're going to kill him anyhow, they might as well do it with as little embarrassing stuff as possible being thrown into the spotlight.

He was tried in a kangaroo court under US direction and control. And in a venue that allowed for the death penalty.

Had he been remanded to the ICC there is little doubt that he would have been found guilty. However, no death penalty and eventually all of his crimes would have been addressed. None of this under US direction or control.

quote:

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The madman is gone, but there's still the doctor to be hanged, I mean given a fair trial.

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Bhagat.
------------
Jan. 3, 2007

Why the rush to execute Saddam?

Second trial might have proven too embarrassing to the White House, notes Tarek Fatah

Four days after the ugly and degrading execution of Saddam Hussein, neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor any other Canadian politician has the courage to comment or say anything on the matter.

The execution, which was more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th century than a considered act of 21st-century justice, has shocked even the harshest critics of Saddam, but has left our politicians in a state of paralyzed silence.

quote:

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Saddam - The Sacrificial Lion
Akber Choudhry
January 2, 2007


An Eulogy to Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti

Saddam was a brutal dictator, but no better or no worse than the many others supported by the United States. Open the files on Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, the Jordanian Kings, Musharraf, Zia-ul-Haq, Niyazov, Putin, Karimov, and many many others.

As a secular Arab, he despised the religious fundamentalists, and provided his people with a higher standard of living and access to progress than any one of the Arab states around him. As a street-fighter, he had the smarts and the bravery of someone who has faced death many times.

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I say that because it would be easy for the judge to rule that most of that compromising material was inadmissible.

In Canada or other serious legal entity, it would be admissible, of course. But somehow I think that the "court" in Iraq might be pretty willing to follow direction from the "government", AKA the OTHER terrorist militia.

And I doubt the imlication that the Iranians were responsible for Halabja. I am pretty sure the Kurds didn't just blame the wrong guy by mistake.

quote:

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t was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging--- most of it (bar the last moments) shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. After a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch---the largest single unit of the US Human Rights industry--- had to condemn it as a total travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders; defense lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque. The Great Thinker President's reference to it 'as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy' as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger.

(snip)

That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who now occupy the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington (and the poison gas supplied by West Germany) that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. He deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this. The double standards applied by the West never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto who presided over a mountain of corpses (At least a million to accept the lowest figure) was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.

And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Fallujah; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad, the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantanamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful.

---

I'd propose marriage to Ali but I promised to stop doing that. I will say that I'm glad for the world and the planet that he's here.

I say this even though I would dispute his contention that this trial, "till now, been the crudest and most grotesque," form of victors justice. I would say that the Mongols trampling the Russian princes to death under the boards upon which they set up their table for their victory feast, was more grotesque.

But then of course the Mongols made a practice of suffocating or squashing (the Caliph was rolled into a carpet and then stamped on by horses) their most prestigious victims out of respect for their royal blood, thinking that it should not be shed upon the ground.

So, taking into account cultural factors these executions entailed a kind of respect.

quote:

---

Originally posted by bhagat:
Here is some fodder for Tarek Fatah's naysayers to chew on. Fatah's article appears in today's Toronto Star

Bhagat.
------------
Jan. 3, 2007

Why the rush to execute Saddam?

Second trial might have proven too embarrassing to the White House, notes Tarek Fatah

Four days after the ugly and degrading execution of Saddam Hussein, neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor any other Canadian politician has the courage to comment or say anything on the matter.

The execution, which was more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th century than a considered act of 21st-century justice, has shocked even the harshest critics of Saddam, but has left our politicians in a state of paralyzed silence.

Tarek Fatah's Op-ed in Toronto Star on the hasty Saddam Execution

---

Tarek will say this or that, on any particular day, he believes none of it, or more to the point, only defines the quality of his words on the baisis of what he thinks makes him look good. Compare him to Haroon Sidiqi, someone whom is a little to conservative for my taste, but he is at least consitent, and believe what he says.

Tarek is not a world class thinker, like Tarik Ali nor is he a particularly principled person like Maliah Chisti, or Haroon Sidiqi.

[ 03 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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You have my permission to marry Tariq Ali, despite your previous commitment to me.

I say this even though I would dispute his contention that this trial, "till now, been the crudest and most grotesque," form of victors justice. I would say that the Mongols trampling the Russian princes to death under the boards upon which they set up their table for their victory feast, was more grotesque.

---

Does that help?

[ 03 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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"In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The cellphone video, leaked to the internet and broadcast on Al-Jazeera satellite television, showed Saddam was taunted and insulted by witnesses moments before his death.

---

1. Cover for the withdrawal of US troops. Saddam is dead, mission accomplished, now we let those uncivilized Iraqis kill each other. US and the rest wash hands of the matter and shrug - 'what can be done about people like that?' Bush, or at least his more competent advisors, are probably searching desperately for even a slightly credible pretext for evacuation. We'll find out in the State of the Union speech - coincidentally happening in the next few days...

quote:

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"In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity

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Actually, this appears to be false. They arrested someone, namely, a guard. However an Iraqi prosecutor present at the scene had a different version:

quote:

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Munkith al-Faroun was a prosecutor at Saddam's trial. And by all accounts he was the one at the execution demanding that the executioners stop their taunts and harangues and complete the process in a dignified way. "Please, I am begging you not to. The man is being executed," he is heard saying on the now-infamous cell-phone vid.

al-Faroun first said that he saw two Maliki government officials making videos of the execution by holding up their cell phones as the events took place. He later identified one of the two men as Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie. In response to Maliki government claims that it was one of the guards who took the cell phone video, al-Faroun said, not likely. "I am confident that they were not the guards, for I checked the guards. I kept them under my eye," he said.

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So, he was quite confident it wasn't one of the guards. Later, he changed his story and said he wasn't accusing anyone, particularly not someone as powerful as al-Rubaie.

So, it musta been the guard after all.

quote:

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U.S. officials tried to delay the execution, fearing it would fuel perceptions the death of the former Iraqi dictator was more about Shiite retribution than about justice.

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I'm watching it on TV... They've got this guy talking:

quote:

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Iraqi prosecutor Munqith Faroon, who was present at the execution, said he saw two Iraqi officials holding their cell phones in the air to capture the images and sound of Hussein's hanging.

"To be precise, the officials whom I saw filming the execution were in the group of 12 officials that accompanied myself and Judge Munir Haddad to the execution," Faroon said.

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Don't want to post too much of the article... But here's what they say bout the video

quote:

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After Hussein offers prayers, the guards shout praise for Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose father is believed to have been murdered by Hussein's regime.

They chant, "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!"

Hussein smiles. "Is this how you show your bravery as men?" he asks.

"Straight to hell," someone shouts back at him.

"Is this the bravery of Arabs?" Hussein asks.

A sole voice is heard trying to silence the taunts.

"Please, I am begging you not to," the unknown man says. "The man is being executed."

Faroon, the chief prosecutor, said that was his voice. "I personally shouted at them and said there is no need, and kept on shouting and my voice is clear in the recording, I think," he said.

Another shout, "Long live Mohammed Baqir Sadr," referred to a relative of Muqtada al-Sadr and a founder of the Shiite Dawa movement, who was executed by the Hussein regime. Dawa is al-Maliki's party.

---

They've actually got part of the video up on there too. The american media is putting a 'This is a success and promised fulfilled' spin onto this all for al-Maliki... Kinda a 'yay' success.

Not sure if I agree with that take mind you. It is afterall a Shi'a dominated Gov't with a Shi'a leader putting to death a Sunni and spark more tension... Especially after the video was released with this taunting and jeering (and a victory dance apparently) as he was hanged. His last words (I think) was the "Is this the bravery of Arabs?" line.

[ 03 January 2007: Message edited by: Noise ]

This was closer to a lynching than an execution.

Added:
Oh Michelle... You may be right with his last words. The jeers and pro-muqtada chanting drowns everything out by that point.

[ 05 January 2007: Message edited by: Noise ]

quote:

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Count me as one of the ghouls who watched the 2½-minute video of Saddam Hussein's execution more than once. Why? “Such graphic violence plays to our most base instincts,” a media studies prof told the National Post, which added that the clip ranked among the top 10, between “sex accident” and “Brazilian goddess immerses into the sea.” I don't agree. I watched it, I've come to think, to be reminded about potential dignity in the human species. No kidding.

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[ 05 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Salutin trying to wax profound is as hard to read as Rosie Dimano trying to sound humane.

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Someone who faces death with the sertitude that they are right, is very likely to present themseleves in a dignified manner.

Similarly Heidrych, after being machine gunned by Czech guerillas had the temerity to try an pursue his executioners. Bravery is not the sole domain of the just or the good.

[ 05 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

She has actually tried? When?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Noise:
(New Jersey banned it recently too... Best reason ever! It costs more to execute someone than it costs to put em in jail for life apparently).

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What? Are you serious? I don't remember hearing about that. Was josh asleep or something at the time? Surely that would've been noteworthy for babblers!

Huh. Sure enough.

[ 05 January 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

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In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

In Libya, which canceled celebrations of the feast of Id al-Adha after the execution, a government statement said a statue depicting Mr. Hussein in the gallows would be erected, along with a monument to Omar al-Mukhtar, who resisted the Italian invasion of Libya and was hanged by the Italians in 1931.

. . . .

By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past.

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”

Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November.

But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to them. From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr.

“The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time,” said Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. “The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too.”

Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al Ghad, said, “The last image for many was of Saddam taken out of a hole. That has all changed now.”

At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation.

In much of the predominantly Sunni Arab world, the timing of the execution in the early hours of Id al-Adha, which is among the holiest days of the Muslim year, when violence is forbidden and when even Mr. Hussein himself sometimes released prisoners, was seen as a direct insult to the Sunni world.

The contrast between the official video aired without sound on Iraqi television of Mr. Hussein being taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose around his neck and the unauthorized grainy, chaotic recording of the same scene with sound, depicting Shiite militiamen taunting Mr. Hussein with his hands tied, damning him to hell and praising the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, touched a sectarian nerve.

“He stood as strong as a mountain while he was being hanged,” said Ahmed el-Ghamrawi, a former Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. “He died a strong president and lived as a strong president. This is the image people are left with.”

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian media critic and director of the online radio station Ammannet.net, said: “If Saddam had media planners, he could not have planned it better than this. Nobody could ever have imagined that Saddam would have gone down with such dignity.”

---

quote:

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Iraqi forces launched a new security drive in Baghdad Saturday to quell violence... state television reported 30 militants killed in gun battle...police said they had found 27 bodies in same area..

...The bodies were among 71 found in Baghdad, with nine more found outside the capital in what has become a daily tally of sectarian and reprisal killings in the capital. Most of the victims showed signs of torture.

"We are full aware that implementing the plan will lead to some harassment to all of beloved Baghdad's residents, but we are confident that they fully understand the brutal terrorist attacks Iraq faces," he said during a speech to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Iraqi army.

Elsewhere in the capital and nationwide Saturday, police said at least 17 other people were reported killed dead as a result of sectarian violence.

In one incident, eight members of a senior Shia police official's family were murdered while he was away from home at work.

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BTW, this is interesting from that article you posted, remind:

quote:

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police said at least 17 other people were reported killed dead

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quote:

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Rome has lit up the arches of the Colosseum to highlight Italy's support for a global ban on the death penalty.

Italy launched its campaign in the wake of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's execution, which sparked widespread protest among Italians. [...]

Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni said: "The Colosseum originally was a place of persecution and unspeakable violence. But now it is a symbol of peace and reconciliation."

He said the lighting of the Colosseum would be a sign of encouragement for Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government, which this week began a diplomatic push to have the issue taken up by the UN General Assembly.

Mr Prodi has said no crime can justify one person killing another.

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quote:

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Mr Brown told BBC One's Sunday AM show the manner of the former Iraqi leader's hanging was "completely unacceptable".

The chancellor said he was personally against the death penalty, and he hoped lessons would be learnt from the mistakes made in Saddam's execution...

Last week Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, in charge of the country...also described the filming of the execution as "deplorable".

Mr Blair has said he will speak about the 30 December execution next week, although Downing Street said the PM supported an Iraqi investigation into the hanging.

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But just the filming was deplorable?
BBC

[ 06 January 2007: Message edited by: remind ]

quote:

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“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

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quote:

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Here in Beirut, hundreds of members of Lebanon's Baath party and Palestinian activists marched Friday behind a symbolic coffin representing that of Saddam, praying for his soul. Photographs of Saddam standing up in court, against the backdrop of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem were pasted on city walls, praising "Saddam the Martyr."

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quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
new york times

[ 01 January 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

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Gary Brecher, brilliant as always, has shared his thoughts on the Hussein execution:

http://www.exile.ru/2006-December-29/war_nerd_eulogy_saddam.html

quote:

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The US and their Iraqi puppets in the green zone chose to execute Saddam on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice. This is the most joyous day in the Muslim calendar when more than 2 million pilgrims in Mecca start their ancient rituals, with hundreds of millions of others around the world focused on the events. They then further humiliated Muslims by releasing the official video of the execution, with the 69-year-old having a noose placed around his neck and being led to the drop. The unofficial recording shows Saddam looking calm and composed, and even managing a sarcastic smile, asking the thugs who taunted him "hiya hiy al marjala?" ("is this your manliness?"), a powerful phrase in Arabic popular culture connecting manliness to acts of courage, pride and chivalry. He also managed to repeatedly say the Muslim creed as he was dying, thus attaching himself in the last few seconds of his life to one billion Muslims. Saddam had literally the final say. From now on, no Eid will pass without people remembering his execution.

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quote:

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair has joined those criticizing the way in which Saddam Hussein was executed, his office said Sunday.

"He believes that the manner of the execution was completely wrong, but that should not lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam Hussein committed, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," a spokeswoman for Blair's office said.

Blair is expected to publicly comment on the execution this week. He has faced increasing pressure to share his views on the execution after his deputy, John Prescott, and his likely successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, both criticized the hanging.

Blair declined to answer questions on the matter after returning from a holiday in Florida on Thursday.

CBC

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But the other day she said to "they should not have done that to Saddam."

For example, if Ali X says that Saddam ordered him to drop gas on a civilian area, Saddam should have the right to say: "No I didn't, I didn't even know that was done".

So, this is just a show trial, worse than the one they used to justify killing him.