The world did not deserve to see his hanging which was handled appallingly by a crew of clowns in a halfbaked carnival atmosphere.
In fact, it baffles the mind how something so important, so obviously explosive, could be left in the hands of men not worthy of organizing a sock drawer.
But it is indicative of everything that has gone wrong in the U.S. mission in Iraq. No forethought, no plan, no anticipation of possible reaction or consequence.
If you missed it -- or if no one sent you the YouTube link seen by hundreds of thousands already -- the full video of the Iraqi dictator's death drop is available online thanks to a witness with a video cellphone capturing all the dramatic moments from inside the hangman's room.
Although the video is shaky, it has already enraged Sunnis across Iraq, sparking riots and no doubt more militancy in the violent region.
The video shows guards yelling "Go to hell" and other insults, and taunting the Butcher of Baghdad. Other observers chant "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" for Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. In response, Hussein is said to be the one that's dignified, replying: "Is this what you call manhood?" Then the floor drops from under Saddam Hussein -- apparently while he's saying his prayers.
Now, we know the American position that Iraqis have to move toward self-government, but someone had to know the hanging of Saddam Hussein shouldn't be trifled with. Killing the killer needed to be handled in the most professional, structured and rehearsed way possible, not by an unruly mob of wild men taking part in amateur hour.
The U.S. forces who handled Saddam Hussein and took him to a secret location in the north of Baghdad for the execution were said to have screened the official delegation and stripped them of their cell phones before entering the death chamber. Nice job.
If this is an indication of the work under new U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, we have to question why Donald Rumsfeld ever got the axe. Already the U.S. casualties number more than 3,000 from this conflict. Allowing the inmates to run the execution will undoubtedly lead to more deaths in Iraq.
Iraqis deserved to see evidence the tyrant is dead. No one should have ever seen the entire circus.
ANd where are the weapons of mass destruction? As Margoulis write: The U.S and England supplied those chemicals and new about Irak using them against Kurds ans Shii people. I guess it was ok then since they were allies. MAny years latter they use these killings against Hussein. It was probably well planned since the beggining.
It's hard to believe that after year 2000 justice is still just a word that some can manipulate to justify there needs.
I remember when BIn ladden boys were freedom figthers figthing against soviets, and now soviets are allied figthing against those "terrorists".
oye your right sadam was no saint but **** he didn't deserve that
he was treated like an animal
and as i turned to CNN they were honoring ex presedent FORD (que es eso)
humans should be treated with dignity and respect when its their time 2 die
but they recorded the whole execution
i couldn't handle all that stuff and i dont want to swear but thats is all da F**Kin Americans faults my little sister even saw the whole video which pisses me off cuz cant they not show that on TV?
she asked me and my mom questions about that video
Motown Junkie wrote: How bad is it??? I got nervous alone just watching what CNN was showing.
Does he twitch?? Do his eyes bug out??!!! Ugh, I can't believe he didn't want the hood on!!!
It's not as bad as other execution scenes... there're a lot of camera movements and the image is unclear at times... you can see the guy falling but it's very vage, then a lot of shouting in the background...
Motown Junkie wrote: How bad is it??? I got nervous alone just watching what CNN was showing.
Does he twitch?? Do his eyes bug out??!!! Ugh, I can't believe he didn't want the hood on!!!
It's not as bad as other execution scenes... there're a lot of camera movements and the image is unclear at times... you can see the guy falling but it's very vage, then a lot of shouting in the background...
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Roses are red violets are korny, when I think of you Ohh baby I get horny...
I got the full version of the hanging... looks like it was filmed with a camera phone...it's not very clear, but you can get the feeling of what's going on...
Not suitable for a sensitive audience... PG-13
How bad is it??? I got nervous alone just watching what CNN was showing.
Does he twitch?? Do his eyes bug out??!!! Ugh, I can't believe he didn't want the hood on!!!
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Knock people down at their own expense, they'll take it as a compliment!!!!
I got the full version of the hanging... looks like it was filmed with a camera phone...it's not very clear, but you can get the feeling of what's going on...
Not suitable for a sensitive audience... PG-13
can you teach to that dumb as camera man how to film properly ! They should hang him too!
I got the full version of the hanging... looks like it was filmed with a camera phone...it's not very clear, but you can get the feeling of what's going on...
Not suitable for a sensitive audience... PG-13
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Roses are red violets are korny, when I think of you Ohh baby I get horny...
As Muslims (so the idea of Christmas didn't play a factor), they wanted it to be done before Eid.
Also they had to do it ASAP to avoid any intervention from activist/religious groups, Pope, Bono, Angelina Jolie , and any other Latino Artist or Promoter.
Or Paris, whose new resolution is to stop at a sick kids' hospital in every city she visits.
Oh, the poor children, not only do they have terminal diseases, but now they have to meet Paris. The poor, poor children.
And no more just kissing.
I'm dead serious by the way.
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Knock people down at their own expense, they'll take it as a compliment!!!!
As Muslims (so the idea of Christmas didn't play a factor), they wanted it to be done before Eid.
Also they had to do it ASAP to avoid any intervention from activist/religious groups, Pope, Bono, Angelina Jolie , and any other Latino Artist or Promoter.
Or Paris, whose new resolution is to stop at a sick kids' hospital in every city she visits.
Oh, the poor children, not only do they have terminal diseases, but now they have to meet Paris. The poor, poor children.
As Muslims (so the idea of Christmas didn't play a factor), they wanted it to be done before Eid.
Also they had to do it ASAP to avoid any intervention from activist/religious groups, Pope, Bono, Angelina Jolie , and any other Latino Artist or Promoter.
There are plenty of other brutal regimes that rival Saddam's Iraq for nastiness. Most are close U.S. allies. As Henry Kissinger once quipped, being America's ally is far more dangerous than being its enemy.
Great article!!!! This was my favorite line!!!!
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Knock people down at their own expense, they'll take it as a compliment!!!!
I have no doubt that Hussein was guilty of many atrocities. One could argue that he deserved it.
What surprised me was the swiftness in which the execution was carried out. It highlights how different the justice system is different in other countries. -I'LL LET ERIC MARGOLIS FROM THE TORONTO SUN ANSWER THIS ONE.
Sun, December 31, 2006
U.S. buries truth Saddam's execution eliminates main witness against accomplices
By ERIC MARGOLIS
On my first visit to Iraq in 1976, so-called "Israeli spies" were being hanged in front of my Baghdad hotel.
While covering Iraq just before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's secret police threatened to hang me as an American/Israeli spy.
I always considered "President Hussein," who was hanged Friday, a sadistic bully and a loathsome megalomaniac.
No one can accuse me of sympathy for Saddam or his fellow thugs who terrorized Iraq. But I was thoroughly disgusted and ashamed by the kangaroo court created and stage-managed by the U.S. that condemned Saddam.
It was a disgraceful farrago of Soviet-style show trial and judicial circus. Washington, which claimed to be bringing the fruits of democracy to the benighted Arab World, put on a sinister legal farce worthy of, ironically, Saddam's courts.
Iraq's deposed president, whom Osama bin Laden called "the worst Arab despot" should have faced real justice at an international legal tribunal like the UN Hague Court. That would have served warning to other despots who violated human rights and committed aggression.
The United States did right to hand over Serb tyrant Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague. But Saddam had to be silenced before he told the world about his long collusion with the United States. Dead men tell no tales.
Saddam's biggest crime was not killing rebellious Kurds or Shia. As ruler of the unnatural, British-created Frankenstein state Iraq, Saddam was forced to keep putting down rebellions.
Saintly Winston Churchill authorized the RAF to bomb Iraq's rebellious Kurdish tribesmen with poison gas -- exactly as Saddam later did. Saddam's most brutal repression of Kurds and Shia occurred when they revolted during Iraq's wars with Iran and the U.S.
Saddam should have faced trial for his unprovoked 1980 aggression against Iran that ended up causing one million dead and wounded.
But in this crime, Saddam was covertly backed by his principal accomplices, the U.S. and Britain. Donald Rumsfeld even went to Baghdad to offer Saddam arms, finance and intelligence. Hanging Saddam eliminated the main witness.
Saddam was helped into power by the CIA, which stood by while he slaughtered Iraqi communists and Nasserites.
The U.S. and Britain, as I discovered in Baghdad in 1990, supplied Saddam with poison gas and germs to make battlefield weapons (these were not "weapons of mass destruction." The germs were never successfully weaponized).
So long as Saddam was killing and torturing people America and Britain did not like, he was "our SOB."
But when Saddam grew too big for his britches and invaded Kuwait, he went from being the West's regional bullyboy to devil No. 1.
Once he touched the West's oil in Kuwait, he was marked for death.
Some of the tame U.S. media have been spinning Saddam's execution as a justification for the Bush/Cheney administration's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, without ever asking why Saddam was an ally in 1988 yet a devil in 1991 and again in 2003.
Nor has there been much reporting that under Saddam, Iraq became the Arab world's most industrialized nation, a leader in women's rights, medical care, education, and public projects.
Back in 2003, I predicted that once the U.S. got rid of old pal Saddam, it would look for another Saddam-clone to replace him. The mutant state of Iraq and its feuding peoples can only be ruled by an iron fist. Saddam's greatest error was believing he had frightened Iraqis into a national unity that would support invasions of his neighbours. He was dead wrong.
There are plenty of other brutal regimes that rival Saddam's Iraq for nastiness. Most are close U.S. allies. As Henry Kissinger once quipped, being America's ally is far more dangerous than being its enemy.
After jubilation among Shia and Kurds over Saddam's execution subsides, Iraq will return to its daily bloody chaos. Saddam called himself a martyr. In years to come, many Arabs will forget his many crimes and remember him as a flawed hero and martyr who dared challenge the United States and Israel, and paid the price for his audacity.
I have no doubt that Hussein was guilty of many atrocities. One could argue that he deserved it.
What surprised me was the swiftness in which the execution was carried out. It highlights how different the justice system is different in other countries.
What bothers me is that the execution is ultimately the result of American intervention when there was no global support for the Iraq invasion. The take-home message is that the U.S. has the liberty and power to do as they wish and indirectly decide when 'justice' is to be carried out.
Hoy Hussein(puesto en el poder por la CIA), anteriormente Noriega,tambien Bin Ladden ( la familia Bin Ladden..muy bien gracias con sus negocios en E.U).
Mientras son usables son amigos,despues... a la M los mandan
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein met a grim end Saturday, as he was led to the gallows in handcuffs and hanged for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims.
CTV.ca News Staff
An Iraqi family watches television in their home in Basra, 550 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Dec. 30, 2006, as Iraqi state TV transmits a video of the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. (AP Photo, Nabil al-Jurani)
Millions of Iraqis are believed to have stayed up all night to watch news of the event on TV. State television aired national songs after the first announcement, and had a crawl on the screen that read: "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."
A witness said Saddam was handcuffed before he was brought into an execution chamber and did not resist. He also said there was visible fear on his face before he was hanged, but he refused to wear a head-covering.
Saddam, 69, was convicted for his role in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a primarily Shiite town north of Baghdad. The victims had been detained after an attempt to assassinate him in Dujail, northern Iraq.
Mariam al-Rayes, a former member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was also present there."
Edward Peck, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said the execution could actually do more harm than good for the country.
"I don't think this is going to advance America's interests in Iraq at all," said Peck, arguing it could spark further sectarian violence.
Late Friday, a U.S. judge dismissed a last-minute court challenge by Saddam's lawyers, who had argued the execution should be stayed because Saddam also faced a civil lawsuit in Washington.
The judge said the U.S. courts could not interfere with another country's judicial system, according to AP.
Saddam had been formally in Iraqi custody since his capture three years ago, but physically held by U.S. military guards at Camp Cropper, a military prison near the Baghdad airport.
Prior to the execution, the administration of U.S. President George Bush said the timing was a matter for the sovereign Iraqi government.
"That is a matter for the Iraqi people; we are observers to that process. They are a sovereign government and they will make their own decisions regarding carrying out justice," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in Crawford, Texas.
Saddam himself had appeared to be preparing himself for the hanging on Friday. AP reported his half-brothers visited him in his jail cell and he gave them his will.
And in a final farewell letter posted Wednesday on Saddam's former Baath Party website, he urged Iraqis not to retaliate against American citizens.
"I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking," he wrote in Arabic. The Associated Press translated the letter.
Hussein added: "I also call on you not to hate the people of the other countries that attacked us."
Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were also reportedly hanged, although their deaths have not been confirmed.
U.S. forces in Iraq are preparing for any attacks following the execution, U.S. Defence Department officials say.
Saddam was also in the middle of another trial, in which he was charged with genocide and other crimes during a 1987-88 military crackdown on Kurds in northern Iraq.
That trial was adjourned until Jan. 8, but experts have said the trial of Saddam's co-defendants is likely to continue despite his execution.
Coalition forces stopped capital punishment in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, arguing the court system was incapable of rendering fair decisions.
But the Iraqi government reinstated the death penalty after the handover in June 2004, partly in order to have the option of executing Saddam if the High Tribunal found him guilty.
The Iraqi government has since released footage of some executions, showing convicts lined up in a row with black hoods covering their faces. Saddam rarely made executions public during his rule.