Death or Glory

I’m no friend of Saddam Hussein, but the whole lynch mob (which included Shiite Iraqi officials) was kind of barbaric, wasn’t it? I mean, c'mon, the guy had been convicted of some of the crimes against humanity that he committed—and then he was sentenced to death. So he’s down and out in a major way (even though he was tried and convicted for just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that he's ordered killed)…yet he’s heckled at his own hanging!

Couldn’t the mob at least have the courtesy to wait until after he was dead to dance around his body, gloat, and hurl insults? Then again, life is pretty cheap in Iraq these days.

I understand that the Bushies wanted to distance themselves completely from Hussein's rushed execution (though not because our great leader has any problem with capital punishment: Dubya presided over the state-sanctioned killings of 151 men and one woman during his six years as governor of Texas--and remember how Bush mocked born-again murderess Karla Faye Tucker, "Please, please don't kill me!" and refused to commute her sentence to life in prison?)--most people in the Arab world believe that the U.S. is orchestrating everything behind the scenes anyway. But you’d think that Cheney, Rove et al would have realized that the Iraqi government, which barely functions as it is, should not have been trusted to control the recorded images of Hussein’s hanging. All it takes is some idiot with a camera cell phone--and presto, the world's most famous snuff film all over YouTube--and you have another international crisis on your hands and increased sectarian violence throughout Iraq, instead of a moment of "victory" for U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East.

Can't wait to see what Bush & Co. have in mind for winning the war in Iraq in 2007...