Premature Ejaculations Of Justice

There have been hundreds of thousands, actually in a sense millions, of victims of Saddam Hussein, ranging from the Shi'ite majority, to the Kurds in the north of Iraq, to not an insignificant amount of the ruling Sunnis, to citizens of the Shi'ite nation of Iran which Saddam initiated a war with in the 1980's, and whom he assaulted with chemical weapons (as he did many of his own citizens) .

Out of all these hundreds of thousands, or more, victims of Saddam Hussein, now justice has been done-

For 148 of them. 148 Shi'ite men and boys of the town of Dujail, in 1982, who were summarrily executed, without benefit of a trial, for an alleged assassination attempt on Hussein not too long after he first came to power in Iraq (though technically Hussein was the actual ruler for about a decade prior to this, though not in name until about 1979).

Finally, these 148 men and boys have had their grievances aired in an Iraqi court, where Saddam and other co-defendants were tried for this assault on human decency.

At the very most, one percent of one percent of the victims of Saddam Hussein have received their days in court, their grievances heard, and now a part of the public record. For this one percent of one percent, justice has been done.

All of the others will now be quickly forgotten, their grievances never to see the light of day, save in possible future trials of some of Saddams co-conspirators, which will not begin to approach the level of public interest, scrutiny, or publicity. It will be nowhere near as compelling to the vast majority of people as, say, the Nuremburg trials without the presence of Adolf Hitler.

Now, how much more interesting would THAT have been, if Hitler had been a defendant. Transpose that to the current situation in Iraq, and you get the idea. Beides the victims themselves, no one will care, given the nature of the general unpopularity of this war on an international level, and in the US itself. No one outside of Iraq will care. No one outside of the survivors and other victims families will care more than a little.

But, oh well, the show is over. A good symbolic end to the old year, as well as start to the New Year, and to the onset of the Muslim holy festival of Eid. And a good way for the new Iraqi government to declare, however tenously, "now we are in charge."

Saddam, in his last few seconds on earth, had one last wish granted, to not wear the hood that would otherwise have covered his face. In his last symbolic act of showmanship, Saddam declared that he was a sacrifice to the Iraqi people. He also stated that Palestine was Arab.

Then he was hanged, though not with two of his co-defendants (his brother-in-law and the judge who ordered the executions of the Dujail victims) as originally planned, but all alone. This was Saddams day to atone for his crimes. His alone.

In an interesting statement prior to this, Saddam urged his friends and followers not to feel harshly toward the people of the invading nations, that they should not be considered on the same level of duplicity as their leaders.


Saddam Hussein is dead. No danger now of the spectacle of Saddams defense attorneys insisting on calling such American luminaries as former two time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Vice-President Dick Cheney to testify as hostile witnesses-or to point out the embarrassment of their status as potential co-conspirators to this former ally that they backed long ago, with financial and military aid, right about the time a good lot of these atrocities occurred.

Did they know what he was doing? Did they really care? Was Saddam given a wink and a nod? Oh well-

Let's just forget all about that old stuff from long ago, and move forward. Who wants to live in the past?