The execution of Saddam Hussein
Electronic Iraq is covering the global response to the Saddam Hussein hanging. Visit eIraq to hear from human rights organizations, journalists, Iraqi bloggers and more.
A full index of our coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging, including frequently updated news headlines, can be found here:
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2771.shtml
Don't miss John Collins' analysis of the mainstream media's handling of the Saddam Hussein hanging. "Reading and watching the kind of mainstream coverage provided by CNN and the New York Times during the last 48 hours," Collins writes, "one could be forgiven for believing that the relationship between Saddam and the U.S. had always been one of enmity and violence. Yet as Juan Cole and others have tirelessly pointed out, the U.S. government began 'enabling' Saddam as early as 1959 when the CIA enlisted his help in undermining the government of Abdul Karim Qasim."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2779.shtml
Our coverage of the global response to the Hussein hanging continues today with a piece by Hasan Abu Nimah, former Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations.
"Many truths which the world deserved to know have perished forever with that savage execution," writes Abu Nimah. "Yet, even if Saddam's trial had been impeccably handled, the fundamental principle of justice is equality before the law. Such "justice" has no chance of winning over the masses in this region when they observe that punishment is so swift and brutal when the accused is an Arab, Muslim head of state, while other accused former leaders, like Slobodan Milosevic, receive elaborate trials in The Hague."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2790.shtml
And Thalif Deen reports: "The swirling controversy over the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is threatening to trigger a backlash at the United Nations. Italy, which has condemned the death penalty as "barbaric", is trying to bring the issue before a sharply divided world body by calling for a "universal moratorium" on capital punishment. If Italy -- which became a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 1 and will hold office during 2007-2008 -- decides to take the initiative, a resolution on the proposed moratorium could go before the 192-member General Assembly."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/newsanalysis.shtml
--------
Saddam Hussein's Baath party threatens to retaliate if their leader is executed
Saddam Hussein's Baath Party threatened Wednesday to retaliate if the ousted Iraqi leader is executed, warning in an Internet posting it would target U.S. interests anywhere.
http://tinyurl.com/yng42m
Reverse Decision to Execute Saddam
The Iraqi government should not implement the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, which was imposed after a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.
http://tinyurl.com/yhp3wm
Saddam's Death To Be Videotaped
The date of the deposed dictator's execution will not be made public, to avoid possible unrest from Saddam's supporters, but everything from the signing of the final orders by the judge, to the hanging itself will be recorded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/28/iraq/main2304318.shtml
Hussein is “a prisoner of war”, says chief lawyer
Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying he should enjoy protection from his enemies as a “prisoner of war.”
http://tinyurl.com/y33n9t
Saddam's Hanging Verdict Is Illegal And Unjust
Are we now going to compound our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we now have condoned the hanging of this sovereign country's leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial ?
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/12/28.html
The trials of occupation
Executing Saddam will not bring peace to Iraq. That can only come when US forces leave
By Burhan al-Chalabi
The US and its allies should apologise to the Iraqi people for the suffering the war has caused. It should offer compensation based on criteria used in Kuwait after the first Gulf war. Under the auspices of the UN, it must end the occupation and hand over power to a sovereign Iraqi government mandated to respect human rights.
http://tinyurl.com/y5unfq
The Black Bull died today
By Mirza Yawar Baig
Are we, the people of the world saying that it is the right of America or anyone with the power to do so, to take by force what they want from whoever they want? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the rapist to rape? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the bandit or the highway robber to hold you up and take from you what he wishes by force? Because in my opinion, by remaining silent, that is exactly what we will be saying. You decide what you want to do. I have already made my decision..
http://tinyurl.com/ygfsau
And the Empire Mourned…
By Jason Miller
In the wake of the United States’ recent facilitation of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, we in the self-proclaimed “bastion of human rights” are in the midst of six days of mourning for a man would have swung from the gallows long ago had he been judged by the same standards as Saddam.
http://tinyurl.com/yfmdnq
Video Shows Saddam at the gallows
Dec. 30 - Iraqi state television and Al Arabiya television have shown footage of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows and a noose being placed around his neck.
http://tinyurl.com/y55uha
Video - Saddam's body displayed on TV
Dec. 30 - Biladi, a Shi'ite-run channel in Iraq has showed Saddam Hussein's body lying with his neck twisted and with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.
http://tinyurl.com/y3s56p
3 Minute Video: Ramsey Clark reacts to the execution of Saddam Hussein
"A tragic assault on truth and justice"
http://tinyurl.com/y369yg
Juan Cole: Saddam: The death of a dictator
Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/print.html
Saddam: The questions that will live on
"It takes remarkable obedience to authority to believe that the US would have 'liberated' Iraq - or taken revenge - if its main exports were lettuce and pickles, and the major petroleum resources were in the South Pacific."
http://tinyurl.com/y5rqmj
Arab haj pilgrims outraged at Saddam execution
The death could harden hatred for Shi'ite Muslims in Saudi Arabia, a bastion of Sunni Islam whose Islamic orthodoxy -- known as Wahhabism -- regards Shi'ites as virtual heretics.
http://tinyurl.com/vyma4
Hanging Saddam ‘barbaric’ says top EU official
Hanging former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was 'barbaric' and may turn him into a martyr, the European Union's aid and development Commissioner said.
http://tinyurl.com/tntwj
Arabiya says Saddam half-brother, ex-judge executed
Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander were also executed by hanging on Saturday.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L3077992.htm
Libya declares national mourning for Saddam
LIBYA declared three days of national mourning today after the execution of Iraqi ex-president Saddam Hussein who had been a "prisoner of war," official media said.
http://tinyurl.com/y3jya2
Tariq Ali: Saddam at the End of a Rope
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq12302006.html
He takes his secrets to the grave: our complicity dies with him
By Robert Fisk
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal.
http://tinyurl.com/yzvpg9
Unofficial Video Of Saddam Hanging
Officials taunted Saddam on the gallows
After he falls through the trap, abruptly cut off in his recitation of the Muslim profession of faith, someone in the room cries "The tyrant has fallen!" and the film shows the 69-year-old former strongman swinging on the rope, his eyes open and his neck twisted at a 90-degree angle to his right.
3 Minute Video
WARNING
Some viewers may find the video disturbing. It should only be watched by a mature audience.
http://tinyurl.com/ylka4c
Hold these grotesque executioners to account
By Iain Macwhirter
The execution of Saddam may have brought "closure" to the White House, but it left a bitter taste in the mouths of the rest of us. He was executed under the auspices of an Anglo-American occupation that has brought little but death and destruction to Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/yesr5p
Selective Justice And The Execution Of Saddam Hussein
By Gregory Elich
It is impossible to avoid concluding that the trial of Saddam Hussein was little more than a case of selective justice, meant to provide post-justification for an invasion that was itself a grave violation of international law.
http://tinyurl.com/yj9nzu
The Executioner's Face is Always Well Hidden
By Jerry Ghinelli
http://tinyurl.com/yzs44d
How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy
The dealings between the US and Saddam's Iraq over the quarter of a century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end, in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/yf33th
Pledging revenge, hundreds flock to Saddam's tomb
In an outpouring of grief and anger from Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs at the Shi'ite-led government that rushed through the execution, mourners knelt and prayed by the tomb in Awja over which the Iraqi flag had been draped.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L31887490.htm
'He is already history'
In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980557,00.html
Death of One Tyrant a Coverup of Crime by Another
Once again the barbarians have succeeded in professing human dignity while ignoring human life's sanctity. My thoughts are filled with disgust as the so called civilized world revels in the hanging of Saddam Hussein yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/ydpbzw
Victor's justice
The deliberate taking of a human life is a crime. It cannot be right, therefore, to punish a crime by committing another. Ultimately, nothing can resist the force of that argument and eventually the death penalty will be outlawed all over the world. But not, yet, in Iraq, or in most southern states of the US.
http://tinyurl.com/ymk4c9
In Search of a Criminal
Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of Accused of War Crimes
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1166522799501
A Lynching...
http://tinyurl.com/y5b8l6
The Barbaric Lynching of Saddam Hussein
http://tinyurl.com/y8ecnq
Conveniently Forgotten
By Tariq Ali
It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty.
http://tinyurl.com/y284zj
The Conscience Of The Conqueror
The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?
By Kola Odetola
The silence of the western antiwar movement on the lynching of Saddam Hussein is deafening and is increasingly beginning to prove what a lot of discerning people have suspected all along – that the mainstream anti-war movement (including large parts of its left wing) in the west is the well concealed left boot of western imperialism, the conscience of the conqueror.
http://tinyurl.com/u9xcy
Former Saddam judge says execution violates Iraqi law
The first chief judge who presided over Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity has said that the late dictator's execution by the Iraqi government was illegal.
http://tinyurl.com/w9bdj
Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan
When will the people stand trial who have used cluster bombs and white phosphorous against the Iraqi people; those who are guilty of the siege of Fallujah and Najjaf that bombed and starved these cities' population to death; those who are responsible for the anarchy and chaos the Iraqi people had to endure after the "liberation"?
http://tinyurl.com/tkqpg
Saddam tended birds and plants in jail, nurse says
Master Sergeant Robert Ellis was under orders to prevent the former Iraqi dictator from dying in US custody.
http://tinyurl.com/y5fjzq
Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons
It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened. [Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate) ]
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
'Illegal' Execution Enrages Arabs
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
Saddam Hussein was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, who was sacrificed by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God.
http://tinyurl.com/tehea
Angry Muslims slam Iraq, US for Saddam death
Muslims in their thousands, both inside and outside war-torn Iraq, have lashed out at the country's Shiite leaders as well as the United States for executing Saddam Hussein during one of Islam's holiest periods.
http://tinyurl.com/y6pz2w
Saddam Hussein Hanged for the Wrong Reason
It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters that chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials went ahead; the United States government did.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=90555
Short video explains the CIA's role in Saddams rise to power
http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html
Saddam: From monster to martyr?
How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece
Reports Saddam executed by militia
An Iraqi official says the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry, but that militias infiltrated the executioners' team.
http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/default.aspx?id=69125
Moqtada al-Sadr may have been present at the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
"I saw al-Sadr wearing the black hoods inside the room – the eyewitness said – and there was also Abdulaziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq – SCIRI]. They were among the six men wearing hoods that one can see in the images aired by the TV".
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m29511&s1=h1
Guards did not even allow Saddam to sleep
Baghdad: In the middle of the night, hours after Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki signed the death warrant on Friday evening, Saddam Hussain was moved from US custody at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport, and handed to the Iraqi authorities.
http://tinyurl.com/v49go
Hussein: terrorist or terrorized?
SOMEONE has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."
http://tinyurl.com/y23jfc
Hanging will haunt Bush
I am taken aback by the reaction in India to Saddam Hussein's hanging. The anger cuts across religious and political divides.
http://www.thestar.com/article/167592
Saddam key in early CIA plot
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
http://www.upi.com/archive/view.php?archive=1&StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r
The whole bloody thing was obscene
By Robert Fisk
The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003.
http://tinyurl.com/yb27cj
Crimes Against Humanity From Ford to Saddam
If we do not limit our analysis of Ford to his role as a U.S. "statesman," and instead examine his behavior through an internationalist lens similar to that employed to judge Saddam Hussein and concerned with crimes against humanity, we find that Ford, too, was responsible for mass murder-in East Timor.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nevins01062007.html
The Unmentionable Hypocrisy: Hussein Hanged, Bush and Blair Remain in Power
By Sean M. Madden
Saddam Hussein was hanged a week ago, today, for executing 148 people. Yet, even by conservative estimates, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are responsible for hundreds, or thousands, of times more deaths due to their war of aggression — the supreme international crime — in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/y2k2cf
A drop into the abyss
Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far worse than under his rule.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1982309,00.html
New leader with the $10m bounty
The 64-year-old fighter, stricken with leukaemia, who befriended Saddam as a young man, supposedly cried and read the Holy Koran when he heard that his comrade had been executed early Saturday morning, a senior Baath official said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2530419,00.html
Body of Saddam in the Morgue
Video
Warning - This video should only be viewed by a mature audience.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16116.htm
Fresh Saddam pictures 'released'
The new video reportedly shows the former Iraqi dictator with a gaping neck wound.
http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=7782428
Saddam aides hanged
swissinfo [Switzerland]
01/15/07
Two of Saddam Hussein’s aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said. But despite its efforts to avoid the uproar that marred the execution of the former president two weeks ago, news that the noose ripped the head from Saddam’s cancer-stricken half-brother as he plunged from the gallows appalled international critics of the process and fuelled fury among Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs. … The hangings took place at 3 a.m. (midnight British time) at the same former secret police base where Saddam was hanged on December 30, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Officials tried to impose a media blackout for some hours but word leaked out...
http://tinyurl.com/y67ubt
From Information Clearing House
--------
An Imperfect Trial
Le Monde evaluates the trial and pending execution of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806G.shtml
The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein
The New York Times writes: "Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won't either."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906K.shtml
Saddam Hussein Executed at US Base in Baghdad
Hussein was hung around 6 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EST) in the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad. Hussein was executed before a small group of observers.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906Z.shtml
A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America
Robert Fisk revisits the circumstances that resulted in Saddam Hussein's rise to power, and asks, "Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006Z.shtml
An Execution Will Not Quell Iraq Violence
The Independent UK writes: "Saddam Hussein awaited his imminent end last night, sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity. His last hours were punctuated by the necessary rituals: the signature on the death warrant from Iraq's Prime Minister; the leave-taking from his closest relatives; the handover of his last will and testament, the release of a valedictory letter to Iraqis, and, at the last, his transfer from US into Iraqi custody, so that his own people could do the deed. That the US and British invasion of Iraq would entail the death of Saddam Hussein had a grim inevitability."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006B.shtml
On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors"
The final hour of Iraq's former ruler began about 5 a.m., when American troops escorted him from Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, to Camp Justice, another American base at the heart of the city. Two American helicopters flew 14 witnesses from the Green Zone to the execution site - a former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government's much feared military intelligence outfit, now inside the American base.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Z.shtml
History of Bushes and Hussein Is Hard to Ignore
The history of animosity between the Bushes and Hussein is hard to ignore. The relationship actually began as one of pragmatic friendship in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war with the main US enemy in the region, Iran, and George H.W. Bush was vice president in an administration that offered him help. A 1992 New Yorker article suggested that Bush, through Arab intermediaries, advised Hussein to intensify the bombing of Iran. Hussein soon became too much to handle.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Y.shtml
Hussein the Rabbit
"My cell phone has been buzzing with regularity all day, alerting me to the arrival of text messages from my conservative friends. 'Saddam is dead woohoo' reads the latest one, and that pretty much describes all the others. Somehow, a lot of people are finding meaning or gratification in the fact that Hussein met his fate at the end of a rope Saturday morning. I just can't get there," says William Rivers Pitt.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106A.shtml
Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness
"Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the US military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity," writes Robert Parry. "The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be - as the New York Times observed - the 'triumphal bookend' to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106D.shtml
Timing of Saddam Execution Risks Arab Backlash: Analysts
Images of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows on one of Islam's most important feast days risk further alienating public opinion in an Arab world already bristling at perceived Western insensitivity, analysts have warned. Even the West's leading Middle East allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, publicly spoke out against the choice of the first day of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice to put Saddam to death.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106F.shtml
Puppet Kills Puppet
Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash examines the hypocrisy that led the US to prop up Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s, writing that "as long as Saddam obediently protected and facilitated the economic and territorial interests of the American (and European) colonialists who backed him, his ruthlessness was their profit, and clearly tolerable."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010107Y.shtml
Sunni Grief, Anger Flow at Funeral
A video of Saddam Hussein's execution, which appears to have been recorded with a cellphone, showed onlookers taunting Hussein with chants of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" - a reference to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose Al Mahdi militia is accused of hunting down Sunni Arabs and killing them. As the trapdoor snapped open beneath Hussein, some in attendance cheered, "The tyrant has fallen!" The shocking spectacle appeared to deepen the deadly sectarian divide between Sunnis and the Shiite majority that now leads Iraq's government.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207P.shtml
Saddam Video Inquiry Promised
Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shiite officials taunting him on the gallows.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207C.shtml
An Unbelievable Gift
Laurent Joffrin wonders why the US and Iraqi governments gave Saddam the unbelievable gift of martyrdom ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207G.shtml
Saddam Hussein's Execution Is a Mistake
France's interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy - a sort of combined attorney general and head of the Department of Homeland Security and Intelligence - and a clear favorite to win the ruling UMP center-right party's nomination as presidential candidate in the 2007 elections, comments on the Saddam Hussein execution.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010407G.shtml
Egyptian President Mubarak Slams Hussein Execution
Saddam Hussein was made into "a martyr" by the manner of his execution, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned today, saying he had urged Washington not to hang him during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010507F.shtml
Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many
In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe. At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607Y.shtml
The Timely Death of Gerald Ford
"The very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn't always paramount among them," says Frank Rich. "Forty percent of today's American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It's a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of the New Year's weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010707E.shtml
--------
The execution of Saddam Hussein
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/sh-d30_prn.shtml
Informant: SIUHIN
--------
The misguided execution of Saddam Hussein
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061230/58144555.html
Informant: Henry D.
--------
Hanging Saddam
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16011.htm
Informant: Jennifer Van Bergen
Saddam execution insulted 'the entire Muslim community'
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5492/
Comment on Saddam's execution
SADDAM AND THE CELLPHONES
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5490/
Sunni protests 'building' in aftermath of Saddam's
humiliating death
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5505/
EXECUTING SADDAM, PROTECTING THE RACKETS
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5506/
Informant: jensenmk
Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BEL20070101&articleId=4275
Informant: Dave
From: ufpj-news
--------
‘I Saw Fear, He Was Afraid’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16401644/site/newsweek/
Informant: rafeswhiterose
--------
Iraq's Shallow Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1229-24.htm
Saddam Execution Set to Destabilize Iraq Further
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1229-04.htm
Enraged Sunnis Protest Saddam Spectacle
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0102-53.htm
Saddam's Demise, Like His Rule, Was a Travesty of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-53.htm
A Monster of Our Creation
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-60.htm
The Fatal Hazing of a Dictator
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-55.htm
US-Ordered Rush Job
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-56.htm
Blair Fails to Condemn Hanging as Bush Ducks the Question
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0104-03.htm
A Question of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0104-30.htm
Hanging 'Makes Martyr of Saddam'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0105-04.htm
--------
With the hasty exekution Husseins one covers much
http://tinyurl.com/yhhvq8
--------
Bush calls for Saddam execution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3326311.stm
--------
Who's Guilty? The Fatal Handshake in Baghdad
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2895642/
--------
Hang Times: A Whitewash of White House Complicity
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd51.html
US Buries Truth
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis62.html
CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd52.html
--------
Execution 'should not have happened on our holy day'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2116901.ece
--------
Ein zweites Video zeigt die ganze Hinrichtung Saddams
"See how Saddam Hussein was executed. He is peeing in his pants."
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24344/1.html
Saddams Exekution und das Video
Die inszenierte Exekution oder: Wollen wir Wirklichkeit oder eine gesäuberte Simulation?
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24352/1.html
Victor's revenge at last
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24348/1.html
-------
Saddam: The death of a dictator
Salon
by Juan Cole
12/30/06
The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/
"Gruesome" ... "Barbaric" ... "Politicized" ... "Farcical"
The Nation
by John Nichols
12/31/06
While much of U.S. media coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution has strained to echo the Bush administration's suggestion that 'justice' was done, the international reaction to the hurried hanging of the former dictator has recognized what one of the world's top experts on the Middle East refers to as the 'gruesome, occasionally farcical' nature of the process that led to the execution. 'It's tawdry,' Rosemary Hollis, the director of research at Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London, said of the execution. 'It's not going to achieve anything because of the way the trial was conducted and the way the occupation was conducted. Life in Iraq has become so precarious that many people are saying it was safer under Saddam Hussein -- it makes the whole thing look like a poke in the eye as opposed to closure or some kind of contribution to the future of Iraq...
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15
Appetite for destruction
CounterPunch
by John Stanton
01/02/07
The two images from the Vietnam War and the photos and video of the hanging of Hussein capture in vivid detail the end results of strategies and tactics designed and executed by incompetent American leaders. Failure is everywhere in the stills and video. Failure to manage risk, failure to anticipate, failure to understand, failure to have compassion for human life, failure to accept change, failure to realize that perception is often not reality. Title, rank or advanced degree have never been a barrier to poor decision making or the maniacal drive for power to ensure a lasting place in world history. On what basis can one make such an outrageous claim?
http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton01022007.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
--------
Saddam Hussein was lynched by one of the sectarian death squads that rule Iraq
Saddam's Death Squad Hanging
http://ga3.org/ct/n720pgF1bRkt/
--------
Saddam Execution: More Staged Propaganda
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/040107Saddam_execution.htm
--------
Saddam Hussein's Execution and the Iraq War
http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/299/86/
Informant: Cort Greene
--------
SADDAM LAWYERS CLAIM HIS BODY WAS ABUSED
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3349346,00.html
Behind The Scenes Of Saddam Hussein's Execution
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07ticktock.html
Informant: NHNE
--------
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Saddam+Hussein
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executed
A full index of our coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging, including frequently updated news headlines, can be found here:
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2771.shtml
Don't miss John Collins' analysis of the mainstream media's handling of the Saddam Hussein hanging. "Reading and watching the kind of mainstream coverage provided by CNN and the New York Times during the last 48 hours," Collins writes, "one could be forgiven for believing that the relationship between Saddam and the U.S. had always been one of enmity and violence. Yet as Juan Cole and others have tirelessly pointed out, the U.S. government began 'enabling' Saddam as early as 1959 when the CIA enlisted his help in undermining the government of Abdul Karim Qasim."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2779.shtml
Our coverage of the global response to the Hussein hanging continues today with a piece by Hasan Abu Nimah, former Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations.
"Many truths which the world deserved to know have perished forever with that savage execution," writes Abu Nimah. "Yet, even if Saddam's trial had been impeccably handled, the fundamental principle of justice is equality before the law. Such "justice" has no chance of winning over the masses in this region when they observe that punishment is so swift and brutal when the accused is an Arab, Muslim head of state, while other accused former leaders, like Slobodan Milosevic, receive elaborate trials in The Hague."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2790.shtml
And Thalif Deen reports: "The swirling controversy over the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is threatening to trigger a backlash at the United Nations. Italy, which has condemned the death penalty as "barbaric", is trying to bring the issue before a sharply divided world body by calling for a "universal moratorium" on capital punishment. If Italy -- which became a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 1 and will hold office during 2007-2008 -- decides to take the initiative, a resolution on the proposed moratorium could go before the 192-member General Assembly."
http://electroniciraq.net/news/newsanalysis.shtml
--------
Saddam Hussein's Baath party threatens to retaliate if their leader is executed
Saddam Hussein's Baath Party threatened Wednesday to retaliate if the ousted Iraqi leader is executed, warning in an Internet posting it would target U.S. interests anywhere.
http://tinyurl.com/yng42m
Reverse Decision to Execute Saddam
The Iraqi government should not implement the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, which was imposed after a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.
http://tinyurl.com/yhp3wm
Saddam's Death To Be Videotaped
The date of the deposed dictator's execution will not be made public, to avoid possible unrest from Saddam's supporters, but everything from the signing of the final orders by the judge, to the hanging itself will be recorded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/28/iraq/main2304318.shtml
Hussein is “a prisoner of war”, says chief lawyer
Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying he should enjoy protection from his enemies as a “prisoner of war.”
http://tinyurl.com/y33n9t
Saddam's Hanging Verdict Is Illegal And Unjust
Are we now going to compound our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we now have condoned the hanging of this sovereign country's leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial ?
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/12/28.html
The trials of occupation
Executing Saddam will not bring peace to Iraq. That can only come when US forces leave
By Burhan al-Chalabi
The US and its allies should apologise to the Iraqi people for the suffering the war has caused. It should offer compensation based on criteria used in Kuwait after the first Gulf war. Under the auspices of the UN, it must end the occupation and hand over power to a sovereign Iraqi government mandated to respect human rights.
http://tinyurl.com/y5unfq
The Black Bull died today
By Mirza Yawar Baig
Are we, the people of the world saying that it is the right of America or anyone with the power to do so, to take by force what they want from whoever they want? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the rapist to rape? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the bandit or the highway robber to hold you up and take from you what he wishes by force? Because in my opinion, by remaining silent, that is exactly what we will be saying. You decide what you want to do. I have already made my decision..
http://tinyurl.com/ygfsau
And the Empire Mourned…
By Jason Miller
In the wake of the United States’ recent facilitation of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, we in the self-proclaimed “bastion of human rights” are in the midst of six days of mourning for a man would have swung from the gallows long ago had he been judged by the same standards as Saddam.
http://tinyurl.com/yfmdnq
Video Shows Saddam at the gallows
Dec. 30 - Iraqi state television and Al Arabiya television have shown footage of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows and a noose being placed around his neck.
http://tinyurl.com/y55uha
Video - Saddam's body displayed on TV
Dec. 30 - Biladi, a Shi'ite-run channel in Iraq has showed Saddam Hussein's body lying with his neck twisted and with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.
http://tinyurl.com/y3s56p
3 Minute Video: Ramsey Clark reacts to the execution of Saddam Hussein
"A tragic assault on truth and justice"
http://tinyurl.com/y369yg
Juan Cole: Saddam: The death of a dictator
Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/print.html
Saddam: The questions that will live on
"It takes remarkable obedience to authority to believe that the US would have 'liberated' Iraq - or taken revenge - if its main exports were lettuce and pickles, and the major petroleum resources were in the South Pacific."
http://tinyurl.com/y5rqmj
Arab haj pilgrims outraged at Saddam execution
The death could harden hatred for Shi'ite Muslims in Saudi Arabia, a bastion of Sunni Islam whose Islamic orthodoxy -- known as Wahhabism -- regards Shi'ites as virtual heretics.
http://tinyurl.com/vyma4
Hanging Saddam ‘barbaric’ says top EU official
Hanging former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was 'barbaric' and may turn him into a martyr, the European Union's aid and development Commissioner said.
http://tinyurl.com/tntwj
Arabiya says Saddam half-brother, ex-judge executed
Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander were also executed by hanging on Saturday.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L3077992.htm
Libya declares national mourning for Saddam
LIBYA declared three days of national mourning today after the execution of Iraqi ex-president Saddam Hussein who had been a "prisoner of war," official media said.
http://tinyurl.com/y3jya2
Tariq Ali: Saddam at the End of a Rope
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq12302006.html
He takes his secrets to the grave: our complicity dies with him
By Robert Fisk
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal.
http://tinyurl.com/yzvpg9
Unofficial Video Of Saddam Hanging
Officials taunted Saddam on the gallows
After he falls through the trap, abruptly cut off in his recitation of the Muslim profession of faith, someone in the room cries "The tyrant has fallen!" and the film shows the 69-year-old former strongman swinging on the rope, his eyes open and his neck twisted at a 90-degree angle to his right.
3 Minute Video
WARNING
Some viewers may find the video disturbing. It should only be watched by a mature audience.
http://tinyurl.com/ylka4c
Hold these grotesque executioners to account
By Iain Macwhirter
The execution of Saddam may have brought "closure" to the White House, but it left a bitter taste in the mouths of the rest of us. He was executed under the auspices of an Anglo-American occupation that has brought little but death and destruction to Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/yesr5p
Selective Justice And The Execution Of Saddam Hussein
By Gregory Elich
It is impossible to avoid concluding that the trial of Saddam Hussein was little more than a case of selective justice, meant to provide post-justification for an invasion that was itself a grave violation of international law.
http://tinyurl.com/yj9nzu
The Executioner's Face is Always Well Hidden
By Jerry Ghinelli
http://tinyurl.com/yzs44d
How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy
The dealings between the US and Saddam's Iraq over the quarter of a century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end, in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/yf33th
Pledging revenge, hundreds flock to Saddam's tomb
In an outpouring of grief and anger from Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs at the Shi'ite-led government that rushed through the execution, mourners knelt and prayed by the tomb in Awja over which the Iraqi flag had been draped.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L31887490.htm
'He is already history'
In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980557,00.html
Death of One Tyrant a Coverup of Crime by Another
Once again the barbarians have succeeded in professing human dignity while ignoring human life's sanctity. My thoughts are filled with disgust as the so called civilized world revels in the hanging of Saddam Hussein yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/ydpbzw
Victor's justice
The deliberate taking of a human life is a crime. It cannot be right, therefore, to punish a crime by committing another. Ultimately, nothing can resist the force of that argument and eventually the death penalty will be outlawed all over the world. But not, yet, in Iraq, or in most southern states of the US.
http://tinyurl.com/ymk4c9
In Search of a Criminal
Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of Accused of War Crimes
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1166522799501
A Lynching...
http://tinyurl.com/y5b8l6
The Barbaric Lynching of Saddam Hussein
http://tinyurl.com/y8ecnq
Conveniently Forgotten
By Tariq Ali
It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty.
http://tinyurl.com/y284zj
The Conscience Of The Conqueror
The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?
By Kola Odetola
The silence of the western antiwar movement on the lynching of Saddam Hussein is deafening and is increasingly beginning to prove what a lot of discerning people have suspected all along – that the mainstream anti-war movement (including large parts of its left wing) in the west is the well concealed left boot of western imperialism, the conscience of the conqueror.
http://tinyurl.com/u9xcy
Former Saddam judge says execution violates Iraqi law
The first chief judge who presided over Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity has said that the late dictator's execution by the Iraqi government was illegal.
http://tinyurl.com/w9bdj
Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan
When will the people stand trial who have used cluster bombs and white phosphorous against the Iraqi people; those who are guilty of the siege of Fallujah and Najjaf that bombed and starved these cities' population to death; those who are responsible for the anarchy and chaos the Iraqi people had to endure after the "liberation"?
http://tinyurl.com/tkqpg
Saddam tended birds and plants in jail, nurse says
Master Sergeant Robert Ellis was under orders to prevent the former Iraqi dictator from dying in US custody.
http://tinyurl.com/y5fjzq
Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons
It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened. [Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate) ]
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
'Illegal' Execution Enrages Arabs
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
Saddam Hussein was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, who was sacrificed by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God.
http://tinyurl.com/tehea
Angry Muslims slam Iraq, US for Saddam death
Muslims in their thousands, both inside and outside war-torn Iraq, have lashed out at the country's Shiite leaders as well as the United States for executing Saddam Hussein during one of Islam's holiest periods.
http://tinyurl.com/y6pz2w
Saddam Hussein Hanged for the Wrong Reason
It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters that chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials went ahead; the United States government did.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=90555
Short video explains the CIA's role in Saddams rise to power
http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html
Saddam: From monster to martyr?
How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece
Reports Saddam executed by militia
An Iraqi official says the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry, but that militias infiltrated the executioners' team.
http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/default.aspx?id=69125
Moqtada al-Sadr may have been present at the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
"I saw al-Sadr wearing the black hoods inside the room – the eyewitness said – and there was also Abdulaziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq – SCIRI]. They were among the six men wearing hoods that one can see in the images aired by the TV".
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m29511&s1=h1
Guards did not even allow Saddam to sleep
Baghdad: In the middle of the night, hours after Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki signed the death warrant on Friday evening, Saddam Hussain was moved from US custody at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport, and handed to the Iraqi authorities.
http://tinyurl.com/v49go
Hussein: terrorist or terrorized?
SOMEONE has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."
http://tinyurl.com/y23jfc
Hanging will haunt Bush
I am taken aback by the reaction in India to Saddam Hussein's hanging. The anger cuts across religious and political divides.
http://www.thestar.com/article/167592
Saddam key in early CIA plot
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
http://www.upi.com/archive/view.php?archive=1&StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r
The whole bloody thing was obscene
By Robert Fisk
The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003.
http://tinyurl.com/yb27cj
Crimes Against Humanity From Ford to Saddam
If we do not limit our analysis of Ford to his role as a U.S. "statesman," and instead examine his behavior through an internationalist lens similar to that employed to judge Saddam Hussein and concerned with crimes against humanity, we find that Ford, too, was responsible for mass murder-in East Timor.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nevins01062007.html
The Unmentionable Hypocrisy: Hussein Hanged, Bush and Blair Remain in Power
By Sean M. Madden
Saddam Hussein was hanged a week ago, today, for executing 148 people. Yet, even by conservative estimates, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are responsible for hundreds, or thousands, of times more deaths due to their war of aggression — the supreme international crime — in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/y2k2cf
A drop into the abyss
Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far worse than under his rule.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1982309,00.html
New leader with the $10m bounty
The 64-year-old fighter, stricken with leukaemia, who befriended Saddam as a young man, supposedly cried and read the Holy Koran when he heard that his comrade had been executed early Saturday morning, a senior Baath official said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2530419,00.html
Body of Saddam in the Morgue
Video
Warning - This video should only be viewed by a mature audience.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16116.htm
Fresh Saddam pictures 'released'
The new video reportedly shows the former Iraqi dictator with a gaping neck wound.
http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=7782428
Saddam aides hanged
swissinfo [Switzerland]
01/15/07
Two of Saddam Hussein’s aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said. But despite its efforts to avoid the uproar that marred the execution of the former president two weeks ago, news that the noose ripped the head from Saddam’s cancer-stricken half-brother as he plunged from the gallows appalled international critics of the process and fuelled fury among Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs. … The hangings took place at 3 a.m. (midnight British time) at the same former secret police base where Saddam was hanged on December 30, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Officials tried to impose a media blackout for some hours but word leaked out...
http://tinyurl.com/y67ubt
From Information Clearing House
--------
An Imperfect Trial
Le Monde evaluates the trial and pending execution of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806G.shtml
The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein
The New York Times writes: "Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won't either."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906K.shtml
Saddam Hussein Executed at US Base in Baghdad
Hussein was hung around 6 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EST) in the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad. Hussein was executed before a small group of observers.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906Z.shtml
A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America
Robert Fisk revisits the circumstances that resulted in Saddam Hussein's rise to power, and asks, "Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006Z.shtml
An Execution Will Not Quell Iraq Violence
The Independent UK writes: "Saddam Hussein awaited his imminent end last night, sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity. His last hours were punctuated by the necessary rituals: the signature on the death warrant from Iraq's Prime Minister; the leave-taking from his closest relatives; the handover of his last will and testament, the release of a valedictory letter to Iraqis, and, at the last, his transfer from US into Iraqi custody, so that his own people could do the deed. That the US and British invasion of Iraq would entail the death of Saddam Hussein had a grim inevitability."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006B.shtml
On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors"
The final hour of Iraq's former ruler began about 5 a.m., when American troops escorted him from Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, to Camp Justice, another American base at the heart of the city. Two American helicopters flew 14 witnesses from the Green Zone to the execution site - a former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government's much feared military intelligence outfit, now inside the American base.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Z.shtml
History of Bushes and Hussein Is Hard to Ignore
The history of animosity between the Bushes and Hussein is hard to ignore. The relationship actually began as one of pragmatic friendship in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war with the main US enemy in the region, Iran, and George H.W. Bush was vice president in an administration that offered him help. A 1992 New Yorker article suggested that Bush, through Arab intermediaries, advised Hussein to intensify the bombing of Iran. Hussein soon became too much to handle.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Y.shtml
Hussein the Rabbit
"My cell phone has been buzzing with regularity all day, alerting me to the arrival of text messages from my conservative friends. 'Saddam is dead woohoo' reads the latest one, and that pretty much describes all the others. Somehow, a lot of people are finding meaning or gratification in the fact that Hussein met his fate at the end of a rope Saturday morning. I just can't get there," says William Rivers Pitt.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106A.shtml
Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness
"Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the US military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity," writes Robert Parry. "The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be - as the New York Times observed - the 'triumphal bookend' to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106D.shtml
Timing of Saddam Execution Risks Arab Backlash: Analysts
Images of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows on one of Islam's most important feast days risk further alienating public opinion in an Arab world already bristling at perceived Western insensitivity, analysts have warned. Even the West's leading Middle East allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, publicly spoke out against the choice of the first day of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice to put Saddam to death.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106F.shtml
Puppet Kills Puppet
Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash examines the hypocrisy that led the US to prop up Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s, writing that "as long as Saddam obediently protected and facilitated the economic and territorial interests of the American (and European) colonialists who backed him, his ruthlessness was their profit, and clearly tolerable."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010107Y.shtml
Sunni Grief, Anger Flow at Funeral
A video of Saddam Hussein's execution, which appears to have been recorded with a cellphone, showed onlookers taunting Hussein with chants of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" - a reference to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose Al Mahdi militia is accused of hunting down Sunni Arabs and killing them. As the trapdoor snapped open beneath Hussein, some in attendance cheered, "The tyrant has fallen!" The shocking spectacle appeared to deepen the deadly sectarian divide between Sunnis and the Shiite majority that now leads Iraq's government.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207P.shtml
Saddam Video Inquiry Promised
Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shiite officials taunting him on the gallows.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207C.shtml
An Unbelievable Gift
Laurent Joffrin wonders why the US and Iraqi governments gave Saddam the unbelievable gift of martyrdom ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207G.shtml
Saddam Hussein's Execution Is a Mistake
France's interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy - a sort of combined attorney general and head of the Department of Homeland Security and Intelligence - and a clear favorite to win the ruling UMP center-right party's nomination as presidential candidate in the 2007 elections, comments on the Saddam Hussein execution.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010407G.shtml
Egyptian President Mubarak Slams Hussein Execution
Saddam Hussein was made into "a martyr" by the manner of his execution, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned today, saying he had urged Washington not to hang him during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010507F.shtml
Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many
In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe. At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607Y.shtml
The Timely Death of Gerald Ford
"The very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn't always paramount among them," says Frank Rich. "Forty percent of today's American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It's a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of the New Year's weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010707E.shtml
--------
The execution of Saddam Hussein
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/sh-d30_prn.shtml
Informant: SIUHIN
--------
The misguided execution of Saddam Hussein
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061230/58144555.html
Informant: Henry D.
--------
Hanging Saddam
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16011.htm
Informant: Jennifer Van Bergen
Saddam execution insulted 'the entire Muslim community'
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5492/
Comment on Saddam's execution
SADDAM AND THE CELLPHONES
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5490/
Sunni protests 'building' in aftermath of Saddam's
humiliating death
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5505/
EXECUTING SADDAM, PROTECTING THE RACKETS
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5506/
Informant: jensenmk
Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BEL20070101&articleId=4275
Informant: Dave
From: ufpj-news
--------
‘I Saw Fear, He Was Afraid’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16401644/site/newsweek/
Informant: rafeswhiterose
--------
Iraq's Shallow Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1229-24.htm
Saddam Execution Set to Destabilize Iraq Further
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1229-04.htm
Enraged Sunnis Protest Saddam Spectacle
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0102-53.htm
Saddam's Demise, Like His Rule, Was a Travesty of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-53.htm
A Monster of Our Creation
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-60.htm
The Fatal Hazing of a Dictator
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-55.htm
US-Ordered Rush Job
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-56.htm
Blair Fails to Condemn Hanging as Bush Ducks the Question
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0104-03.htm
A Question of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0104-30.htm
Hanging 'Makes Martyr of Saddam'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0105-04.htm
--------
With the hasty exekution Husseins one covers much
http://tinyurl.com/yhhvq8
--------
Bush calls for Saddam execution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3326311.stm
--------
Who's Guilty? The Fatal Handshake in Baghdad
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2895642/
--------
Hang Times: A Whitewash of White House Complicity
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd51.html
US Buries Truth
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis62.html
CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd52.html
--------
Execution 'should not have happened on our holy day'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2116901.ece
--------
Ein zweites Video zeigt die ganze Hinrichtung Saddams
"See how Saddam Hussein was executed. He is peeing in his pants."
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24344/1.html
Saddams Exekution und das Video
Die inszenierte Exekution oder: Wollen wir Wirklichkeit oder eine gesäuberte Simulation?
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24352/1.html
Victor's revenge at last
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24348/1.html
-------
Saddam: The death of a dictator
Salon
by Juan Cole
12/30/06
The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/
"Gruesome" ... "Barbaric" ... "Politicized" ... "Farcical"
The Nation
by John Nichols
12/31/06
While much of U.S. media coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution has strained to echo the Bush administration's suggestion that 'justice' was done, the international reaction to the hurried hanging of the former dictator has recognized what one of the world's top experts on the Middle East refers to as the 'gruesome, occasionally farcical' nature of the process that led to the execution. 'It's tawdry,' Rosemary Hollis, the director of research at Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London, said of the execution. 'It's not going to achieve anything because of the way the trial was conducted and the way the occupation was conducted. Life in Iraq has become so precarious that many people are saying it was safer under Saddam Hussein -- it makes the whole thing look like a poke in the eye as opposed to closure or some kind of contribution to the future of Iraq...
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15
Appetite for destruction
CounterPunch
by John Stanton
01/02/07
The two images from the Vietnam War and the photos and video of the hanging of Hussein capture in vivid detail the end results of strategies and tactics designed and executed by incompetent American leaders. Failure is everywhere in the stills and video. Failure to manage risk, failure to anticipate, failure to understand, failure to have compassion for human life, failure to accept change, failure to realize that perception is often not reality. Title, rank or advanced degree have never been a barrier to poor decision making or the maniacal drive for power to ensure a lasting place in world history. On what basis can one make such an outrageous claim?
http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton01022007.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
--------
Saddam Hussein was lynched by one of the sectarian death squads that rule Iraq
Saddam's Death Squad Hanging
http://ga3.org/ct/n720pgF1bRkt/
--------
Saddam Execution: More Staged Propaganda
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/040107Saddam_execution.htm
--------
Saddam Hussein's Execution and the Iraq War
http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/299/86/
Informant: Cort Greene
--------
SADDAM LAWYERS CLAIM HIS BODY WAS ABUSED
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3349346,00.html
Behind The Scenes Of Saddam Hussein's Execution
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07ticktock.html
Informant: NHNE
--------
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Saddam+Hussein
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executed
rudkla - 28. Dez, 11:40
