Yet Another Giant Blunder in Iraq
by Ian Mosley
The neocons are about to top off four years of incredibly incompetent mismanagement of the Iraq war with the most stunningly inept and maladroit move yet. In an act which seems to be motivated by nothing more than petty, malicious vindictiveness, they’re going to hang Saddam Hussein. By doing so, they will ensure Saddam’s place in the pantheon of Islamic martyrs and make his name a rallying cry for all billion or so Muslims from the four corners of the earth, giving him a glory and a respect which he never had in life.
The fallout is already starting even before Saddam swings. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, “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. The statement appeared on a Web site known to represent the Baath, which was disbanded after U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003. The site is believed to be run from Yemen, where a number of exiled members of the party are based.”
A hint of troubles to come followed. The IHT news article tells us “The statement said that if the execution takes place, it would be impossible for the Baath to take part in any prospective negotiations with U.S. and Iraqi officials to reduce the violence in Iraq.” Since a large number of the present Sunni insurgents who are causing all the trouble are former Iraqi army officers and soldiers from the Saddam-era military, this means that the administration’s incompetence will render them completely irreconcilable. It will also mean that the neocons will lose any chance of co-opting any major segment of the previous Iraqi government–the only guys who actually know how to RUN that hellhole and keep a lid on things.
Saddam’s so-called “trial” was a bizarre farce that wouldn’t stand up in any legitimate legal system in the world. The court was stacked with Saddam’s tribal and political enemies. Saddam’s defense lawyers were murdered and terrorized by gangs from the puppet government installed by the Americans. Saddam himself was abused and insulted by the judges, in some cases bound and gagged in the dock, and dragged out of court any time he started to make telling points in his defense. Prosecution witnesses were clearly lying, bribed or terrorized into perjuring themselves in court. Saddam was not allowed to call his own witnesses. Even so, the head judge at one point resigned from the trial because of what he termed “political interference” from the Maliki puppet government. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has pronounced the proceedings to be illegal under international law. Nor should we forget that during the 1980s, Saddam was the CIA’s man in the Middle East and actually fought an eight year war against Iran to try and contain the Khomeini regime at the behest of Washington
This will not be an execution. It is a vengeance killing, pure and simple. Saddam’s real crime was breaking away from CIA tutelage and defying the United States and the Jews and trying to build a modern, secular Muslim state in the Middle East, the very goal which the neocons proclaim to be their own. It’s just that THEY want to control such modernized Arab states, if any, like they do Saudi Arabia and the various little oil sheikdoms around the Persian Gulf.
The minute Saddam Hussein is executed, he becomes a shahid, a Muslim martyr, and his name will go down in history alongside Saladin and Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent and Kemal Ataturk as among the greatest of Muslim rulers. Is it possible that we STILL have no clue at all as to how these people think and believe?