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Invasion of Iraq: The Fatal Hazing of a Dictator
Wednesday, January 03 @ 18:36:51 UTC |  by Ted Rall, tedrall.com
January 03, 2007
Take note, dictators considering an alliance with the United States: we'll throw you to the wolves as soon as you cease to be useful.
Saddam Hussein's order to execute 148 men and boys in Dujail, in northern Iraq, in 1982 was his nominal casus morti. Actually, he was the fatal victim of a labor-management dispute.
Anyone who works for a difficult boss can sympathize with Saddam. After unsuccessfully attempting to reach President George H.W. Bush and other top officials (who were on vacation) to ask for permission to invade Kuwait, he finally touched base with Bush's ambassador to Iraq on July 25, 1990. At the time Hussein was a close American ally, receiving billions of dollars in arms shipments and subsidies. Baath Party-ruled Iraq, a U.S. client state, had waged the 1980-88 war against Iran largely at Washington's behest.
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Invasion of Iraq: Hang 'em High in Baghdad
Wednesday, January 03 @ 11:49:55 UTC | The Object Lesson of Saddam's Execution
by Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
December 30, 2006
It was like a scene from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western—Saddam Hussein, or somebody we are told is Saddam Hussein, was marched to the gallows and strung up, a victim of frontier justice, the frontier in this case being a country illegally and brutally invaded for the sake of Israel, as Philip Zelikow unabashedly tells us, not that the corporate media pays attention to such bothersome details.
In old B-movies, characters often declared the guilty to be "hung at dawn," and this is precisely what happened to the man we are told was Saddam. "Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday for crimes against humanity, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who brutally ruled Iraq for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reports the CIA's favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.
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Invasion of Iraq: CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues
Tuesday, January 02 @ 19:09:22 UTC | by Chris Floyd, chris-floyd.com
Rush to Hang Hussein Was Questioned (New York Times)
This is a very curious story. Some of it is probably true, some of it is patently false – and all of it is a massive, panicky CYA job by American officials. However, through the heavy fog of this assemblage of spin, it seems fairly obvious what has really happened: the same group of dim-witted fools, ideological cranks and violent sectarians who have driven the whole misbegotten enterprise in Iraq came up with yet another plan that they thought was a great idea. But as always, it turned out to be a botched job that has made a hellish situation even worse.
Two things stand out in this story by Burns and Santora – or rather, two salient facts lurk behind the furious spin that the reporters have assembled. First, that despite all the protestations by U.S. officials here, it was the Americans who actually had the final say in letting the execution go forward. And second, the rank lawlessness of the execution is in fact a direct emulation of American "democracy" under the Unitary Executive Decidership of George W. Bush.
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Invasion of Iraq: Dying for Our Sins
Sunday, December 31 @ 05:46:33 UTC | A Lawyer for Saddam Describes How His Execution on the First Day of Eid May Transform Him Into a Martyr
By Paul Wolf, counterpunch.org
December 30, 2006
Today is the first day of the Eid al adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. Celebrated by Muslims worldwide, it's a major holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah, commemorating the willingness of the Prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael to God. In Islam, God stopped Abraham just before he killed Ishmael by giving him a lamb to sacrifice instead of his son. Muslims who can afford to do so sacrifice domestic animals, usually sheep, as a symbol of Abraham's sacrifice. Today, thousands of sacrifices will be made across the Muslim world to celebrate Eid.
Jews and Christians also believe that God spared Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac. Muslims believe that they are descended from Ishmael, and Jews believe they are descended from Isaac.
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Invasion of Iraq: Hanging Saddam
Saturday, December 30 @ 13:19:48 UTC | By Mike Whitney
December 29, 2006
"There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of the Americans in their tanks, fear of the police patrols in the black bandanas, fear of the Iraqi soldiers wearing their black masks at the checkpoints."
--Riverbend; blogs from Baghdad The execution of Saddam Hussein is another grim chapter in the catalogue of war crimes perpetrated against the Iraqi people. It is a gratuitous act of barbarism devoid of justice.
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Invasion of Iraq: The execution of Saddam Hussein
Saturday, December 30 @ 09:09:38 UTC | By the Editorial Board, wsws.org
December 30 2006
The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein serves not justice, but the political purposes of the Bush administration and its Iraqi stooges. The manner in which the execution was carried out—hurriedly, secretively, in the dark of night, in a mockery of any semblance of legal process—only underscores the lawless and reactionary character of the entire American enterprise in Iraq.
There were conflicting statements throughout Friday about how and under what circumstances the death sentence against Hussein, confirmed by an Iraqi government tribunal December 26, would be carried out. There were continual communications back and forth between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which nominally controlled the judicial proceedings, and the American military authorities who had physical control of the prisoner and delivered him to the execution site in the US-controlled Green Zone.
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Invasion of Iraq: Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America
Saturday, December 30 @ 04:32:44 UTC | By Robert Fisk, independent.co.uk
December 30 2006
Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.
But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?
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Invasion of Iraq: Episode of the Victors' Injustice
Friday, November 10 @ 02:39:51 UTC | Saddam's Trial in Context
By Nicola Nasser, counterpunch.org
American and European official and public opinion reactions to Saddam Hussein's guilty verdict on Sunday artificially removed both the trial and the death sentence out of context and focused instead on "flaws" in the legal technicalities of a fair trial and on death penalty as a punishment, which exposed the trial/s in Baghdad as merely another episode in the U.S.-British so far unsuccessful efforts to establish their occupation of Iraq and to develop the current status quo there as the new order.
Saddam's trials were staged to buy the U.S. and British leaders as well as the rulers of their new Iraq some time for political survival, but the trials needed no time to prove they are counterproductive and will in no way make the conclusion of a farce trial a turning point, a "milestone" or an end of era as President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki prematurely stated.
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Invasion of Iraq: A Guilty Verdict on America, as Well
Tuesday, November 07 @ 11:28:53 UTC | By Robert Fisk, The Independent UK
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas--along with the British, of course--yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.
Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict--nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man.
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Invasion of Iraq: Saddam Didn't Mass Murder His People with Gas
Tuesday, July 06 @ 22:48:21 UTC | Another Bush Lie About Iraq: Saddam Didn't Mass Murder His People with Gas. But is it Worse than that?
by Rob Kall, OpEdNews.Com
Now we're discovering that one of the last excuses G.W. Bush has remaining for going to war, that Saddam gassed thousands of his people, is also a lie-- a lie that Bush should of and probably did know was a lie.
Back in 1988 thousands of Kurds were reported killed in the gassing of Halabja. The CIA even prepared a report on it. Too bad the Bush people don't like to bother with reports. They have direct info from God.... Oh. I guess this proves that it's not God talking to George. Maybe he's having flashbacks. Maybe it's a case of the DTs. Maybe he's having strange symptoms from choking on another pretzel.
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Invasion of Iraq: Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Monday, January 12 @ 18:50:46 UTC | By KURT NIMMO
January 8, 2004
Is it possible French lawyer Jacques Verges will be allowed to defend Saddam Hussein? Verges told AFP on December 19 that if called to defend Saddam, he'd march a slew of US and European witnesses to the stand.
At the top of the list are Reagan and Bush Senior.
"Right now the former Iraqi regime is being blamed for certain events that took place at a time when its members were treated as allies or friends by countries that had embassies in Baghdad and ambassadors not all of whom were blind (to Iraqi crimes)," said Verges.
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Invasion of Iraq: America Bags The 'Jackal Of Samarra'
Friday, December 19 @ 20:59:37 UTC | By Ben Roberts
December 17, 2003
We have been saturated, satiated, numbed, and waterlogged with screaming
newspaper headlines and late breaking TV exclusives of the capture of Saddam
Hussein. There was such a surge in news transmission of this man's being
apprehended that we have to assume that aliens billions of light years away
knew about it promptly. Whilst back on earth, I had to hear of it via an early
morning jangling phone waking me from deep sleep. A call from a dear friend as
she breathlessly told me to quickly turn on my TV to witness events of the
capture.
I like to refer to Saddam Hussein as the Jackal Of Samarra. To
understand why run don't walk to your favorite bookstore, or let your keyboard
transport you to any of the well known Internet book portals, and find a fiction
novel with just that name, 'Jackals Of Samarra.' You will certainly find it quite
revealing, in light of the war in Iraq, the recent headlines of the alleged huge
firefight in the town of Samarra in Iraq, and now even more so with the capture of
Saddam. On hearing of the capture my first response was 'Yikes! What now?'
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War and Terror: Saddam Hussein: Taking out the CIA's trash
Saturday, August 02 @ 14:15:38 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo
A few years ago, a friend visiting the United States from Switzerland remarked upon what she viewed as one of the more conspicuous American personality quirks: Americans often seem to possess absolutely no curiosity when it comes to history -- not their own or that of the world at large. How can Americans make informed opinions, she mused, when they have no stomach for history, politics, or current events? My Swiss friend found this incomprehensible -- not only incomprehensible, but dangerous.
Enter Colin Powell. In a Reuters interview, Powell characterizes the missing Saddam Hussein as "a piece of trash waiting to be collected" by the United States military. Personalizing the vendetta against Saddam is nothing new -- Bush has done it from the start, as his father did the last time the US invaded Iraq. For millions of Americans, the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing devastation of that unfortunate and victimized country are all about Saddam. Like the irritating neighbor who cuts his grass at three in the morning and dumps the clippings over the fence, Americans react to Saddam Hussein on an emotional and personal level. Saddam -- thanks to Bush and the corporate media -- has taken on a biblical semblance of evil. Saddam Hussein is the yardstick we now use to measure wickedness. He is our Emmanuel Goldstein, replacing Osama in the neocon pantheon of evil.
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War and Terror: Once reviled, Hussein now winning many Arabs' support
Wednesday, April 02 @ 16:26:14 UTC | By Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe
AMMAN, Jordan -- From the bustling souk, or traditional Arab market, to the upscale boutiques of the Sheyfiyyeh district, Jordanians are hailing a new folk hero.
Before the war, Saddam Hussein was widely despised across the Arab world as the brutal killer of his own people, the "Butcher of Baghdad." But as his Ba'ath regime stands up to the modern armies of the United States and Britain, Hussein is emerging in the region as a modern-day Saladin, the fabled 12th-century Muslim warrior who crushed the Christian Crusaders.
"In my brain, I know Saddam is a beast, a monster among men," said Tareq Awwad, 31, a banker who spent his lunch hour Monday trying on sunglasses at La Lunette, a trendy eyewear emporium. "But my heart feels such pride to see an Arab who refuses to kneel."
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War and Terror: Plans to reshape Middle East
Sunday, September 29 @ 20:54:04 UTC | by Sergei Alekseev, www.kavkaz.org
Iraq is a state created after the First World War by the victors on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Iraq has the population of 23 million. 80 percent are Arabs and up to 16 percent are Kurds, and you should also add Turkmen and Armenian minorities.
The majority of the Iraqis, at least 55%, are Shiites, 45 percent are Sunni minority, Kurds being among them. The head of the state Saddam Hussein is a Sunni. According to the Constitution, since 1970 the country has been a democratic republic. Saddam Hussein has been in power since 1979.
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