Sunday - November 05, 2006

Hang ‘Em High

A long rope and a short drop. It couldn’t happen to a more-deserving fellow. I only regret that we couldn’t draw-and-quarter the bastard too. Maybe stick his head on a pike at the center of Baghdad. Tar and feathers would be a nice touch also. I’m dreaming - I know. The Wussies In Charge would never stand for it.

It is a sad statement for our times that one of the most brutal dictators and mass murderers in recent history gets a team of lawyers (including a former Secretary Of State of the US), a year-long trial in which he gets to pontificate and throw fits in the courtroom and now gets to appeal the ruling before finally being strung up like the ratbag he is.

You know, back in the good old days (when men were men and women liked them that way), as soon as he was captured he would have been summarily marched out and stood up in front of a wall and filled with lead. No fuss, no mess, no bother. It would have gone a long way to pacifying the country had it been done.

For now though, this farce continues - all in an effort to please the bleeding heart liberals around the world who with their insistence on this namby-pamby treatment of war criminals only play into the hands of the enemy. It’s past time to take off the gloves, use them to slap the crap out of every mealy-mouthed liberal appeaser and get just as damn brutal and vicious as we need to be. After all, no war has ever been won by a pacifist ...

Saddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death
_{BAGHDAD (NY TIMES) - November 5, 2006}

An Iraqi tribunal today convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging for the brutal repression of a Shiite town in the 1980s.

As the chief judge read aloud the verdict, a defiant Mr. Hussein shouted, “Long live the people! Long live the Arab nation! Down with the spies!” He thrust his finger emphatically into the air as he spoke, then repeatedly chanted, “God is great!”

The judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdul Rahman, tried to calm Mr. Hussein down. “There’s no point,” Mr. Rahman told him. The verdict, under Iraqi law, will immediately be submitted to an appellate court, which will begin its review within a month, officials said.

Still, today’s verdict represented a moment of triumph and catharsis for many Iraqis after decades of suffering under Mr. Hussein’s tyrannical rule.

Spontaneous celebrations broke out across Iraq in spite of an around-the-clock curfew imposed on the capital and other regions. People fired pistols and assault rifles into the air in a common gesture of jubilation. Residents of Sadr City, a Shiite bastion in northeastern Baghdad, flooded the streets in defiance of a curfew, whooping and dancing and sounding car horns. Even some Shiite police officers joined in the revelry, firing their weapons in the air.

“I feel happy,” said a 31-year-old Shiite shop owner, who was smoking apple-flavored tobacco on the sidewalk in Karrada, an upscale neighborhood in central Baghdad. “I think he got his punishment. There was no Iraqi house that didn’t have damage because of Saddam Hussein.”

But a darker mood settled over predominantly Sunni Arab areas. Immediately following the verdicts, fighting broke out between gunmen and the Iraqi Army in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya in northeastern Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official. American forces swarmed the district, however, suppressing the violence, the official reported.

Clashes erupted between supporters of Mr. Hussein and American troops near Bayji, north of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein’s birthplace and a stronghold of support for the Sunni-led insurgency, according to witnesses there.

Iraqi and American security forces had been bracing for a violent reaction among Mr. Hussein’s armed supporters, who constitute a significant corps within the insurgency. A ban on cars and pedestrians was imposed in the capital and other areas, Iraq’s security forces were put on high alert and American jet fighters circled high above the capital throughout the day.

In a national televised address, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Mr. Hussein’s execution would not compare with “one drop of the blood” of the people who died opposing his rule. “The execution could partially appease the victims,” he continued. “The martyrs of Iraq now have the right to smile.” In recent days, Mr. Maliki publicly expressed his hope that Mr. Hussein would receive the death sentence, saying it would help to dissipate the insurgency.

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, hailed the verdict as “an important milestone in the building of a free society” in Iraq.  “Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future,” he said in a statement.

The long-awaited verdict today came nearly three years after Mr. Hussein was hauled from an underground hideaway by American troops, and more than a year after he and seven co-defendants first appeared in an Iraqi court to face charges of orchestrating what the prosecution called a “widespread and systematic persecution” of the townspeople of Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad.

The case centered on the execution of 148 men and boys from the town after an alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein by men firing from a nearby orchard on July 8, 1982. Mr. Hussein’s lawyers contended at the trial that the would-be assassins were Iranian-backed Shiite militants, and that he was justified in ordering the crackdown on the town because Iraq was at war with Iran at the time.

In the Dujail case, Mr. Hussein faced multiple charges for his involvement in the crimes. He was sentenced to the death penalty for willful killings, 10 years for forcible deportation and 10 years for torture.

- More at the NY TIMES...

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/05/2006 at 01:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Iraq •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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