Krauthammer: The Hanging: Beyond Travesty

[question everything]

washingtonpost.com

The Hanging: Beyond Travesty

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 5, 2007; A17

(snip)

In late 2005, I wrote about the incompetence of the Hussein trial and how it was an opportunity missed. Instead of exposing, elucidating and irrefutably making the case for the crimes of the accused -- as was done at Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial -- the Iraqi government lost control and inadvertently turned it into a stage for Hussein. The trial managed to repair the image of the man the world had last seen as a bedraggled nobody pulled cowering from a filthy hole. Now coiffed and cleaned, he acted the imperious president of Iraq, drowning out the testimony of his victims in coverage seen around the world.

That was bad enough. Then came the execution, a rushed, botched, unholy mess that exposed the hopelessly sectarian nature of the Maliki government. Consider the timing. It was carried out on a religious holiday. We would not ordinarily care about this, except for the fact that it was in contravention of Iraqi law. It was done on the first day of Eid al-Adha as celebrated by Sunnis. The Shiite Eid began the next day, which tells you in whose name the execution was performed.

(snip)

That larger canvas will never be painted. The starting point became the endpoint. The only charge for which Hussein was executed was that 1982 killing of Shiites -- interestingly, his response to a failed assassination attempt by Maliki's Dawa Party. Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later. However, Saddam Hussein will now never be tried for the Kurdish genocide, the decimation of the Marsh Arabs, the multiple war crimes and all the rest.

Finally, there was the motley crew -- handpicked by the government -- that constituted the hanging party. They turned what was an act of national justice into a scene of sectarian vengeance. The world has now seen the smuggled video of the shouting and taunting that turned Saddam Hussein into the most dignified figure in the room -- another remarkable achievement in burnishing the image of the most evil man of his time... The whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but also the ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.


We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401347.html

[acmavm]

1. The most evil man of his time? Oh no doubt that he was bad, but

Charles, you exaggerate. Which is unusual for you. Generally you out and out lie.

[rodeodance]

2. well good for the kraut-----not a fan but glad he wrote this.

[rodeodance]

3. We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. ..

[regnaD kciN]

4. The "New Republic's Neanderthal In Residence"...

...(thank you, Alexander Cockburn) proves once again that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

But...

This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

...being able to wash our hands of the situation as Kraut suggests is way too easy. It was our invasion that resulted in the Shiites coming to power. It was our influence that put Maliki and his cronies in an "acceptable" government. In short, it was the U.S. that created the conditions for the likely "ethnic cleansing" of Iraqi Sunnis. Saying "we don't approve, so keep us out of it" and walking away won't remove that responsibility in the eyes of the world -- nor should it.

[Briar]

5. Oh please

So it was the wicked, barbarous Iraqis who did it? I suppose that way, Krauthammer can live with himself. I would hope liberal Americans would be more honest and dismiss the "Pontius Pilate" defence.

[MADem]

6. No, that's not what he said at all. Not even CLOSE. Read the article.

He puts the blame for the clusterfuck right where it belongs, on the Shi'as, their Dawa Party, and al-Maliki as a puppet of Sadr. I'm stunned, because I never agree with this guy--this is a first, and suggests that there's hope that the right is starting to see the goddamned light:

Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later....
Finally, there was the motley crew -- handpicked by the government -- that constituted the hanging party. They turned what was an act of national justice into a scene of sectarian vengeance. The world has now seen the smuggled video of the shouting and taunting that turned Saddam Hussein into the most dignified figure in the room -- another remarkable achievement in burnishing the image of the most evil man of his time.

Worse was the content of the taunts: "Moqtada, Moqtada," the name of the radical and murderous Shiite extremist whose goons were obviously in the chamber. The world saw Hussein falling through the trapdoor, executed not in the name of a new and democratic Iraq but in the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose death squads have learned much from Hussein.

The whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but also the ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.

We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

[Briar]

7. I read the article

and I repeat that this is the Pontius Pilate defence. The US bears ultimate responsibility for what happened, from the moment it went into Iraq to the moment it determined the place and procedure of the "trial" right to the end. It can't wash its hands - Saddam was in them up to the moment he was handed over to the executioners outside the execution chamber. Executioners who were transported there by the US together with "witnesses" it also transported there. Those people did dreadful things and bear their own guilt, but it in no way diminishes the guilt of the power which has made itself ultimately responsible for that shattered country.

[MADem]

10. Your 'blame the Iraqis' remark came off as glib, and suggested you didn't read it carefully.

While the Shi'a are the majority, the Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomen and a few other odd tribal groups make up a not insignificant minority, and they, each for their own reasons, were mightily pissed that the hanging happened. Many Sunnis thought the trial was unfair, should have been done in international court, or should not have been done at all, and other ethnic groups were furious that they were denied a chance to look SH in the eye and accuse him. And many faithful, regardless of sect, found the execution in such proximity to Eid simply abhorrent.

You may not see it this way, but Muqtada al-Sadr (who decides when/if US soldiers can come anywhere near Sadr City, and ensures that kidnappers of our people aren't punished or captured) pulled those strings to make this happen on the day that it happened, and al-Maliki was his compliant puppet.

The US has averred ever since the government got up and running that the only reason they were holding Saddam instead of handing him over was strictly for 'security' reasons, and that's logical, given how individuals who are wanted by the Iraqi government can manage to bribe their way through Saddam Baghdad International Airport (not once, but twice) and escape to freedom with relative ease. http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1015496

It is my belief that this shit has spun well out of control well before this "Fuck You, Sunnis" Eid lynching of the former dictator, and the US just went with the flow, as usual, not realizing the full impact of the Eid start dates because that is what happens when you let cronies make policy instead of country experts. The Iraqi government even violated their own law and custom by failing to get sufficient signatures on the death warrant, but I guess they take their cues on legal niceties from their mentors who helped them set up shop. That said, I don't think these mentors were calling the shots, in fact, everything I've read suggested that the US ambassador tried to delay the execution, and had a bitch of a time getting al-Malaki to even give them the body to hand over to the Sunnis after the guy had been hanged. He surely didn't behave like a US puppet during this hideous event, but he sure seemed to be dancing to the Dawa tune.

If any stupid American paws can be seen on this debacle, they're the long-distance, obtuse, and essentially hands-off paws of Rice and Hadley:

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=90709&d=8&m=1&y=2007

‘US Struggled to Delay Execution of Saddam’
Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 8 January 2007 — US opposition to the hastily arranged execution of Saddam Hussein is slowly emerging with surprising detail of a last-minute battle between top Iraqi and American officials, and even between the Americans themselves, over whether the execution, full of legal ambiguities and Islamic religious sensitivities, should go ahead.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki argued with American military and diplomatic officials to hand Saddam over....This was further complicated by the fact that both US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, and the top American military commander, Gen. George Casey, were both out of Iraq on leave.

For Gen. Casey and Amb. Khalilzad, “the messy ending (of Hussein’s death) was made worse by the confirmation this week that Mr. Bush will soon replace both men...Negotiations with Maliki were headed by Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, and Margaret Scobey, head of the embassy’s political section, due to the absence.....“Tempers frayed” during the late Thursday night meeting, says the NYT, with Gen. Gardner insisting that Iraq’s constitution requires Iraq’s three-man presidency council approve all executions, and a Saddam-era law forbidding executions during religious holidays.

The NYT says Amb. Khalilzad “even made a last-ditch call to Maliki asking him not to proceed with the hanging. But, Maliki was adamant.....It appears Khalilzad then contacted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “and she gave the green light for Mr. Hussein to be turned over, despite the reservations of the military commanders in Baghdad,” notes the NYT, adding that Stephen Hadley, Bush’s National Security Adviser, supported Rice’s decision......once Saddam was over to the Iraqis at 5:30 a.m. “we then had absolutely nothing to do with any of the procedures or control mechanisms or anything from that point.”....It was the Americans who flew a delegation from Tikrit to Baghdad, and back again, when at midnight, Maliki finally agreed to let the body go. ...

[Behind the Aegis]

8. What is the "Pontius Pilate" defence?

[MasonJar]

9. "Most evil" by whose standards? He didn't boil his enemies like

one of our allies; he didn't lie his nation into a pre-emptive war for Haliburton; etc. Even his attack on Kuwait, which George Sr. probably sanctioned, was about disputed territory.

[MADem]

11. Come on. He was no saint. Allow CK a little hyperbole. When he gets it even

eighty percent right, that's a damned miracle.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Charles Krauthammer is a neocon pig

and one of the biggest war hawks. The fact that he is now writing that Bush's surge is a bad idea is a good indication of how fractured the rightwing is about the Decider's Last Stand.

[struggle4progress]

13. Since war-mongering Charlie has reliably lied over and over again ..

.. to push the Bush imperial agenda, the fact that he suddenly appears to sing with the international choir on this matter can only mean one thing:

Charlie thinks the shithouse burning down, and he's not gonna be the last person out. No, sirree! Charlie's gonna hide amongst the centrists until there's less interest about exactly how the shithouse caught fire and exactly who who helped set it ablaze