Martyrisation 101

Of all the ways they could have brought Saddam to justice, USA chose an unfair trial. There was no international body, no United Nations, to oversee the proceedings. The prosecution was mostly financed by USA and the defense team was mostly killed.

Of all the reasons they could have hanged Saddam for, they chose the least convincing. The first charge - indeed, the one and only charge that the court ordered execution for - is Saddam's action against people suspected of plotting to kill him themselves! The US waited for only one guilty verdict to be handed out, and hanged him in a hurry, while all the other ghastly crimes that actually brand Saddam the dictator that he was - the gassing of Kurds, various tortures and repressions - all these are left behind without closure.

Of all the times they could have hanged Saddam to death, US / Iraqi government chose Eid.

The one final time they could have pretended that Saddam's end was justice delivered, they chose to make it a raucous setting. Hecklers shouted 'Muqtada' - the name of a man whose militia is a prime perpetrator of civil war in Iraq - making it clear that Iraq's future had not passed on to better hands.

I can't think of any reason why George Bush would want to make Saddam a martyr, but he really couldn't have done it better. Of course, what can you expect of a man who claimed that bringing war to Iraq would give it peace. Really, next he'll suggest sex as the way to virginity.

Here's the lynching:


To understand why I call it lynching, and for a translation of what is being spoken in the background read here.

Journalist Gwynne Dyer gives a very interesting perspective on why Saddam was executed so soon after the verdict :

With all of Hussein's other crimes to choose from, why on earth would you hang him for executing the people suspected of involvement in the Dujail plot?

Because the US was not involved in that one. It was involved in the massacre of the Iraqi communists (the CIA gave Hussein their membership lists). It was implicated up to its ears in Saddam's war against Iran. The Reagan administration stopped Congress from condemning Hussein's use of poison gas, and the US State Department tried to protect Hussein when he gassed his own Kurdish citizens in Halabja in 1988...

(Read full text of her article here)


----------