End of the Road for Baghdad’s Butcher
Saddam Hussein began his career in 1959 as part of seven-man hit squad to assassinate Iraqi leader Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem. The plot fails, Saddam went into exile…
July 1979 in Iraq, Saddam staged a palace coup and President Bakr resigns. Among Saddam’s first actions after assuming the presidency is purging the Ba’ath Party of any potential enemies. Saddam called a meeting of the Ba’ath Party leadership and insists it be videotaped. He announces there are traitors in their midst and reads out their names. These individuals cried, some begged for their lives, and fear fully overtook the auditorium while Saddam callously smoked a cigar. One by one, the individuals are led out and executed.
This would be representative of Saddam’s reign.
There is no way to describe the horror that Saddam inflicted upon his people. My husband, who served with the 82nd ABN DIV in 2003-04, told me last night a story about a torture building he helped Iraqis reconstruct into a cultural center in Baghdad. He was given a tour of the rooms that previously witnessed the most gruesome of murders and torture at the hands of Saddam at his order. Now the torture prison brings together Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Muslims as they read, learn and explore in a cultural center that defies the efforts of Saddam Hussein. This was a very symbolic turnaround; what Saddam used for evil has been turned into good.
My husband’s unit also, just after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, found a children’s prison where kids as young as 7 were incarcerated as punishment for whatever perceived offense Saddam believed their parents had committed. Some children, 12 and 13, had been jailed for 5 years. The conditions were unspeakable.
With the last mid-term elections and a possibility that Democrats could take the White House in 2008, Iraqis have grown increasingly nervous in the past year about Saddam living in a jail cell as Democrats tout their ambitions for a full and swift withdrawal from Iraq. The fear that Saddam could regain power was a very real one. This execution was necessary in every way; for national unity, for moral equity, for social justice..
Iraqis can be proud that they carried out this execution with as much decorum as possible, affording Saddam the dignity a human being deserves, even if he really doesn’t deserve it. An execution is never a joyous thing, but it is sometimes a necessary thing. This has never been truer but for the case of Saddam Hussein and humanity.
This is another gigantic step toward the healing of Iraq’s past and the brightness of Iraq’s future.
Cross-posted @ Amy’s Blog: Bottom Line Up Front