Lynch-murder 2006

What we saw with the execution of Saddam - literally saw, thanks to the miracles of cell-phone photography and the Internet - was a lynching. I was about to say it was under a thin cover of law, but that would be silly. Even a dictatorship should be embarassed about as flimsy a show of a trial as that one was. It's a genuine disgrace to America.

It was a lynching, complete with hooting, hostile enemies carrying out the deeds in the black masks of a death squad. I'm surprised they didn't torture him with an electric drill first. At least we haven't heard of such a thing yet; it really won't surprise me if we do.

Digby writes, "Saddam Hussein is the [one] man I would have thought was least likely to be turned into a martyr, but damned if they didn't manage to do it. Bush's Law."

Glenn Greenwald summarizes the disgrace aptly:

As Chris Floyd notes, many of the "facts" reported by the Times article are almost certainly rank fiction emanating from the White House with the intent of distancing itself from this grotesque affair - hence, all of the oh-so-concerned Bush officials oh-so-worried about the need to adhere to legal constraints, urging the Iraqis to slow down and carry out the execution in a dignified, orderly and legal manner, and consenting only because the Iraqis asserted the prerogatives of their sovereignty.

But as Floyd also correctly observes, Saddam was in U.S. custody until the very last minute, and both the fact and the terms of the execution required the approval of Bush officials, which they gave - implicitly, if not explicitly, by handing over Saddam for his middle-of-the-night noose fitting. Comparisons to the relatively dignified and orderly Nuremburg executions only serve to highlight how far America has tumbled under this administration, on every level that matters.

So this is the grand and noble achievement which the President and his band of bloodthirsty followers are reduced to celebrating - a lawless, thugish hanging, carried out in clear and deliberate violation of the law, by a bunch of homicidal street thugs and militia foot soldiers who themselves will be included among our next kill targets once our glorious "sustained surge" begins.

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