Saddam’s execution
The images of Saddam Hussein’s execution filled the newspapers this morning as they filled the TV news yesterday. Sadly the manner of the trial and execution seem to have transformed a ruthess dictator into a folk hero.
His execution now robs those who have had loved ones die in other mass executions during Saddam’s rule from knowing the truth. And moreover lets those in the West implicated in many of them off the hook.
I recall during the Iran-Iraq war, the reports in that clarion of left wing journalism, the Reader’s Digest, of the use of chemical weapons against civilian Kurds. Everyone knew about it, except the governments of the West for whom Saddam was an ally against Iran and the Kurds an inconvenince – friends of Iran and troublesome in Turkey. No justice for these families.
And why no trial for the massacres in the South following the Gulf War? Perhaps fear that it would bring back to mind the way we encouraged ethnic civil war in the hope it would topple Saddam without dirtying our own hands.
The hypocracy of the ‘diplomacy’ of the late 20th and early 21st century is sickening. In Iraq as in Yugoslavia, we sow the seeds of ethnic strife and then throw up our hands in horror at the results.
“first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye“
[...] Nadeem has written a really detailed analysis of the Saddam trial in “…a tragic assault upon truth and justice“. He describes the US and general western collusion in the Halabja Poison Gas Attack that I refered to briefly in my earlier post on the execution. execution halabja nadeem poison gas attack politics saddam hussein [...]
Pingback by Alan’s blog » Nad’s post on the Saddam execution — January 3, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
[...] The US involvement is well documented, both in terms of miltary presence in the Gulf at the time, officially neutrally, but with minimal pretense acting against Iran who was then the ‘evil power’. Indeed (recalling my own and Nad’s earlier posts about the execution), in looking for this I found George Washington University’s National Security Archive of declaissified documents. In this there is a photograph of Donald Rumsfeld, then a special envoy from President Reagan, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. This is not surprising, diplomatc have to do this all the time. Significantly though this meeting was, as the national secturity archives show, shortly after US intelligence had confirmed Iraq’s use of chemical weapons (Blair’s point 3) and discussed this at a presidential level. The US (in full knowledge) then went on to block UN resolutions deploring Iraq use of chemical weapons … initially with UK support. the ful story of UK support, I’m sure is there, but even harder to find … I seem to recall British warships in the gulf, but it was more than 20 years ago! I an age of instant information, it is amazing that getting the basic facts of ongoing news items is so difficult. I recall a year or so back there was a call for journalists to give more context in theor reporting. However, when interviews a respected journalist insisted that theor job was the news, the changes not the backgrund … but without the background the interpretation of what we hear is different. [...]
Pingback by Alan’s blog » keeping track of history (Blair, Iraq, and all of us) — January 14, 2007 @ 8:35 am