By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA
Published: January 1, 2007
BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 — With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.
Snip...
Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.
Snip...
While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government — frustrated at what they call the government’s failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.
But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.
more...Monday, January 01, 2007
Snip...
Or, put another way, the Iraqi Government -- revealingly "frustrated" by the need to pretend to operate within the law -- knew that hanging Saddam in this manner was illegal, but they did it anyway because they know there will be no consequences. No wonder the President praised their adherence to "due process" and the "rule of law" -- the President's followers and the Shiite militias ruling Iraq appear to share a similar understanding of those terms.
As Chris Floyd
notes, many of the "facts" reported by the
Times article are almost certainly rank fiction emanating from the White House with the intent of distancing itself from this grotesque affair -- hence, all of the oh-so-concerned Bush officials oh-so-worried about the need to adhere to legal constraints, urging the Iraqis to slow down and carry out the execution in a dignified, orderly and legal manner, and consenting only because the Iraqis asserted the prerogatives of their sovereignty.
Snip...
So this is the grand and noble achievement which the President and his band of bloodthirsty followers are reduced to celebrating -- a lawless, thugish hanging, carried out in clear and deliberate violation of the law, by a bunch of homicidal street thugs and militia foot soldiers who themselves will be included among our next kill targets once our glorious "sustained surge" begins.
No matter what we touch in Iraq, no matter what we do, it only makes things worse -- never better -- because the root of what we are doing is itself so rotted and incoherent and corrupt. It's beyond doubt that we're going to be treated to much more "freedom" and "justice" like this over the next two years in Iraq, at least.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Saddam Hussein was laid to rest in the village of al-Awjah near Tikrit, his birthplace.
In Salahuddin Province there is anger about the haste with which Saddam was executed and its timing, early on the morning of the Eid al-Adha.
Although the US press is reporting that there weren't many demonstrations by angry Sunni Arabs and those were subdued, Aljazeera is providing videotape of several demonstrations, in places like Dhuluiya as well as in Bagdad, that look to me substantial.
There were also demonstrations
throughout India (see also
this link) and in
Pakistan.
Libya declared three days of mourning. Jordan, Egypt and the Palestine authority protested the execution.
more...
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