BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled
Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday, Iraqi state-run television reported.
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.
Also hanged were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court.
State-run Iraqiya television news announcer said “criminal Saddam was hanged to death and the execution started with criminal Saddam then Barzan then Awad al-Bandar.”
The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read “with Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history.”
A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam’s execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.
The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq’s highest court rejected Saddam’s appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.
Without digging up the entire story, (actually i really dislike even repeating a url for the event), i have to say my opinion of the hanging is not exactly what i’ve heard anywhere else: First off, probably being a tad suspicious, i would never act out at the hanging of any person including one who had been convicted of such evil actions as Sadam had allowed (or instigated) for several years against so many people. You never can tell what kind of malevolent spirits may be looking on, observing the event, waiting to receive the departed. Let the dead pass to their next realm of experience whatever it may or may not be.
Second, our Troops say that Sadam was always, while in *our* hands after his captivity, a gentleman showing respect towards our soldiers and officers alike. That counts with me for a good measure of the same polite respect back which does not end as the noose is set at his hanging.
The person(s) involved with videoing this event and publishing it in such a distasteful manner to the world probably did not think of all the reasons why they should have not done so. At the very least it was a disservice to common manners.
The observers should have let the dead pass in peace. Justice has been done to the best of human ability.
I am glad that we (Americans) had no part in the carrying out of his death sentence, and that no Americans were present.