Twisting Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

Dubya Says . . .

Before: "My name is Inigo Bushoya. You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die."

After: "Daddy, Daddy! Now you have to love me best!"

The execution of Saddam Hussein occurred on Eid ul-Adha, the culmination of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. This holy day is
also known as the Feast of the Sacrifice, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Choosing to execute Hussein on this date of all days in the calendar is comparable in foresightedness with the Romans executing that crazy rabble-rouser Yeshua bar Joseph at Passover. Just asking for trouble, and of a very specific kind: creating martyrs to inspire further rebellions and uprisings.[1]

We've done enormous damage in Iraq. The number of civilians killed by direct military action is over 50,000. We've lost just about 3,000 soldiers, with a minimum of seven times as many as that being wounded. (Some estimates of wounded American soldiers give the ration as 33 wounded for every 1 killed.)

There's evidence that the CIA helped the Baathist Party -- Saddam's party -- to reach power in a 1963 coup designed to protect our oil interests. That's an unjustified act of war.

There is no evidence, and I mean none, that the weapons of mass destruction ever existed or that Iraq helped the suicide bombers who wreaked such destruction on 9/11. That's another unjustified act of war.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this?

[1] Yes, I worship that rabble-rouser as God incarnate. Nevertheless, from a purely political point of view, Herod and Pilate made a poor decision.