Saddam: From monster to martyr?

Saddam: From monster to martyr?

How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war

By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 04 January 2007

It takes real genius to create a martyr out of Saddam Hussein. Here is a man dyed deep with the blood of his own people who refused to fight for him during the United States-led invasion three-and-a-half years ago. His tomb in his home village of Awja is already becoming a place of pilgrimage for the five million Sunni Arabs of Iraq who are at the core of the uprising.

During his trial, Saddam himself was clearly trying to position himself to be a martyr in the cause of Iraqi independence and unity and Arab nationalism. His manifest failure to do anything effective for these causes during the quarter of a century he misruled Iraq should have made his task difficult. But an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating him to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni - the community to which most Arabs belong - across the Middle East.

The old nostrum of Winston Churchill that "grass may grow on the battlefield but never under the gallows" is likely to prove as true in Iraq as it has done so frequently in the rest of the world. Nor is the US likely to be successful in claiming that the execution was purely an Iraqi affair.

Many Iraqis recall that the announcement of the verdict on Saddam sentencing him to death was conveniently switched last year to 5 November, the last daily news cycle before the US mid-term elections. The US largely orchestrated the trial from behind the scenes. Yesterday the Iraqi government arrested an official who supervised the execution for making the mobile-phone video that has stirred so much controversy.

The Iraqi Shia and Kurds are overwhelmingly delighted that Saddam is in his grave. But the timing of his death at the start of the Eid al-Adha feast makes his killing appear like a deliberate affront to the Sunni community. The execution of his half-brother Barzan in the next few days will confirm it in its sense that it is the target of an assault by the majority Shia.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece

And why are we there? Never an answer. Except for every hummer destroyed our taxes pay for a new hummer with profits to the corporatist globalists. We've been screwed.

With their usual insistence upon personal abuse, the Republicons' little execution circus made Saddam look like a brave man being executed by a bunch of cowardly hoods.
That will resonate strongly with Arabs.

While the shiites were ranting. Not good.

Saddam's sins will be forgotten as he is remembered as a martyr, the president of a sovereign nation invaded by crusaders, Zionists, and the Persians.

On showtime and FAUX. In the most desperate attempt to show he had justification for attacking a soverign nation that never was a threat to us.

© Martin Rowson 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons

"what would Saddam do?" and then follow suit, not only turning Saddam in to a martyr for the Sunnis but denying true justice to the Kurds and marsh Arabs as well.

Too bad W isn't there.

Death was the easy way out for Saddam (and especially for Bush Sr). He was transformed into a matyr. A 25 year trauma being locked in a small room with 1 hour per hour exercise a day ... THAT would have been punishment.

Yes they say that Saddam hanged many ... that is true. He also locked people in lightless cages for years at a time.

He's the only one who could manage to make a martyr out of a punk-ass chump like Saddam.

Who wants to bet that Osama bin Laden has been jacking off to pictures of Saddam's execution?

:evilfrown: