What a total disaster
January 2nd, 2007 |Josh Marshall regarding the execution of Saddam Hussein:
It’s a sorry picture. US Army officers trying to force some adherence to the rule of law in the execution of the former head of state. The current head of government — Maliki — demanding an immediate execution, then finding a series of ‘workarounds’ to sidestep to apparently clear laws blocking an immediate execution. And then getting final go-ahead from a group of clerics. Is that what 3,000 Americans died for?
To make matters even worse, Hussein’s hanging appears to have turned into a Shia “free-for-all” including verbal taunting and harassing of Hussein on the gallows and the celebration of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Tom Brokaw on the Don Imus radio show this morning:
…we portray ourselves around the world as the champions of democracy and the rule of law — first of all, that began to unravel in the eyes of a lot of people in that part of world with Abu Ghraib and the great cruelties and indignities that were imposed on people there. The debate goes on here about Guantanamo and about access to people’s private records. And then to say that we are going to install in Iraq a judicial system and a democratic form of government and have something that resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West. Not much dignity. He was, he was a god awful man and he did have a trial, but not have control of the execution, and to have it really just fuel more sectarian violence at a time when we are trying to dampen that is not helpful, which is an understatement…
Saddam Hussein who had disappeared, in effect, as some kind of a symbol over there, suddenly becomes a martyr. He was a terrible tyrant who was responsible for an untold number of deaths, you know, waged his own jihad against the Shiite in that country, especially in the south following Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, and now he’s able to stand up there with the hood off and invoke prayer and even invoke the Palestinians, and go out in the eyes of his people at least as a martyr.
What a perfect example of Bush policy in Iraq. A Slapdash, half ass effort with the end result most likely being the opposite of what was originally intended.
