Experts on Iraq react to the execution of Saddam Hussein

To these experts' opinions I will add the macabre spectacle of the Saddam death watch that the cable news networks indulged in tonight.

'It will be taken as an American decision'

Experts on Iraq react to the execution of Saddam Hussein

Saturday December 30, 2006
The Guardian

Rosemary Hollis, director of research at Chatham House, London

It's tawdry. It's not going to achieve anything because of the way the trial was conducted and the way the occupation was conducted. Life in Iraq has become so precarious that many people are saying it was safer under Saddam Hussein - it makes the whole thing look like a poke in the eye as opposed to closure or some kind of contribution to the future of Iraq. The purpose should have been to see justice done in a transparent manner ... the trial was gruesome, occasionally farcical, and failed to fulfill its promise of giving satisfaction.

Mishkat al-Moumin, former environment minister in transitional Iraqi government, now at the Middle East Institute in Washington

Ordinary people who were abused by him will be relieved. His opponents will be relieved when he is finally gone. He abused people severely and his abuses were on a nationwide scale. He killed so many people. At the political level, those who support him might try to take revenge but on the people's side they will feel they have seen justice done.

Kamil Mahdi, Iraqi expatriate, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter university

Quite honestly, I don't think much of it any more, given what's happening in Iraq. It will be taken as an American decision. The worst thing is that it's an issue which, in an ideal situation, should have unified Iraq but the Americans have succeeded in dividing the Iraqis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980271,00.html

Saddam is dead, Iraq still "hates us for our freedoms"

Every opportunity to move the situation in the direction that will enable it to be soft land, the b*sh administration chooses the opposite. Now I am expecting this will ramp up the resistance a whole lot more. In fact I will not be surprised if this drives the situation irretrievably to the demise of Iraq as a nation.