Saddam Hussein's Greatest Legacy:
December 2003 to December 2006
www.daily.pk 24 December 2008
Part One
As we approach the second anniversary of the assassination of Saddam Hussein at the hands of agents from the U.S. and Iran, we must remember the legacy Saddam left after he was kidnapped. His steadfastness and integrity equaled these same traits he possessed while he was the president of the country. This is part one of a three-part series. It is an excerpt from my recently-published book The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War.
Saddam Hussein was Iraq’s leader from 1973 (officially becoming Iraq’s president in 1979) to April 2003. His legacy is two-fold. On the one hand, he and the Ba’ath Party were the impetus behind turning Iraq from an Arab nation indistinguishable from its Arab neighbors to the most advanced Arab country in history. From 1973 to 1990, the literacy rate in Iraq rose from 35% to over 90%. Thousands of miles of roads were built and the country was completely electrified. Excellent universal health care and education from primary school to university were available at no cost. Foreign scholars and writers were invited to visit Iraq and write about the country, as well as the Arab world. The Iraqi government gave them housing and paid their salaries so they could gain and disseminate information. In 1987, the New York Times called Baghdad "The Paris of the Middle East." (See Appendix V: Interview with Salah al-Mukhtar, the former Iraqi ambassador to India and Vietnam. He goes into detail about the history of Iraq’s transformation in the 1970s.)
On the other hand, after the U.S. attack on Iraq in 1991 that destroyed much of the country, and a 12-year devastating embargo, Saddam Hussein’s critics blamed him for the demise of the country that once was the jewel of the Arab world: the country his leadership produced.
Saddam Hussein’s name was used by mainstream Western media to depict a barbaric and sadistic person. The scribes conveniently forgot, or did not take the time to learn about, the years in which Iraq was the premier Arab state that offered more human rights to its public than other Arab nations, especially in the area of freedom of religion and the liberation of women.
This section is not a history of his regime, but a view of him and his steadfastness after April 9, 2003, the date to which many people refer as "The Fall of Baghdad."
On April 9, 2003, Saddam Hussein made his last public appearance. He was surrounded by tens of thousands of supporters in Baghdad who raised him up to the roof of his car so he could wave to them all. Then, the car sped away.
Speculation was rampant for the next few months. Was Saddam alive or dead? Was he involved with the quickly-growing resistance? Nobody seemed to know.
Then, in December 2003, we all saw the photos of a disheveled Saddam Hussein after he was pulled out of a "spider hole" in a town near Tikrit. The administration laughed and the U.S. public made jokes about him and his hiding place.
The room was dirty. There was an empty can of Spam. The story was that he was holed up there and was totally irrelevant to Iraq. His day was done and he was now in the hands of Iraq’s liberators. What you saw wasn’t real. Nothing of this scenario was true.
On March 8, 2005, United Press International (UPI) ran a short press release titled "Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction." It received little publicity in the U.S., but some foreign news agencies did run the story
The UPI press release consisted of quotes from an ex-U.S. Marine of Lebanese descent, Nadim Rabeh. In addition to the U.S. version of the capture date being off by two days, during an interview in Lebanon, Rabeh stated:
I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced. We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed.
Rabeh recounted how Saddam fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then, the Marines shouted at him in Arabic, "You have to surrender. There is no point in resisting."
How did we come to see the pictures of the hole and a scruffy-looking Saddam Hussein? According to Rabeh, "Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam’s capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well."
The former Marine’s account mixes with the rendition Saddam Hussein gave his lawyer when they had their first meeting. Saddam told him that he was captured in a friend’s house and that he was drugged and tortured for two days, hence the pictures of Saddam looking bedraggled.
All the major news networks and publications showed pictures of the hole and a beleaguered Saddam: Time Magazine, CNN News, magazines, daily newspapers, etc. You name it and they published it. But, they were all wrong. Not one publication took the time to research the story. They ran the pictures supplied by the U.S. military and parroted the lines they were given.
This was not the first time something similar has occurred. After the 1989 invasion of Panama, the U.S. allowed the press to enter Manuel Noriega’s office. He was portrayed as a sexual pervert. In the office were pictures of young boys, a picture of Hitler, red underpants and pornographic magazines.
A few months later, the first Marine to enter Noriega’s office was released from the Corps. He eventually talked to a reporter and gave his story of the encounter. He maintained that the contents of the office included only a desk, a telephone, a chair, and a typewriter.
With Saddam, the props were changed. They were made to make Saddam look like a caged animal on the run who only had the basic elements to survive. No one asked questions of what should have been obvious. For instance, how did Saddam Hussein come into possession of a can of Spam? There was absolutely no place in Iraq where Spam was sold. It contains pork, a food forbidden from a Moslem’s diet.
A few months after his capture, a picture was widely distributed that gained much publicity. It showed a bunch of U.S. soldiers standing next to an Iraqi building on which a painted illustration depicted the blowing up of the World Trade Center. The inference was that Iraqis took glee in the acts of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11-2001.
If one looked close, it was evident that the soldiers were standing on the base path of a disused baseball field. There were no baseball fields in Iraq. Upon closer scrutinizing, the trees were typical southeastern U.S. types that are not indigenous to Iraq.
The photo was bogus. It was filmed in the U.S., but, the harm had been done. Many news agencies had distributed the picture. Its contents inflamed U.S. citizens even more about the Iraqi people.
When Saddam was captured, U.S. authorities said he was a spent force and he had no say in the ever-growing resistance. This was another propaganda exercise because subsequent information shows he was heading the resistance and called many shots. For instance, on Paul Wolfowitz’ first visit to Baghdad, he stayed at the Hotel al-Rashid. A rocket fired at the building killed a U.S. colonel on the floor just above Wolfowitz, who was visibly shaken by the incident. Saddam Hussein personally ordered that strike.
Many Iraqis challenged the scenario of Saddam’s capture. The U.S. administration thought that by humiliating him, the Iraqi public would discount his presence. Just the opposite occurred. On the evening of the announcement of Saddam’s capture, pro-Saddam Hussein rallies sprung up. His supporters, who, instead of looking at him as a humiliated ex-leader, showed their admiration for him because they knew the U.S. story of his capture was fabricated. Students in schools brought pictures of Saddam to class. In one instance, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school and apprehended a few dozen 14-year-old students, whom they tortured for a few hours.
The image of a cowardly Saddam giving up without a fight did not set well with Iraqis. A retired colonel in the Iraqi army sent me the following responses to the capture:
Saddam’s inside wear was very clean, which gives the impression he was not in a hole.
At the time they said the captured him, no dates were available, but the trees they showed in the films had fresh dates on the palm trees and this was not possible.
My house is in the Adhamiya and I can say that I saw Saddam after they announced the fall of Baghdad. I saw him myself. He was standing on the bonnet of a car. He was giving smiles to the people around him who were encouraging him by their loyalty, which they always had.
As I know, Saddam was on top of the battle at the airport.
What I heard was that he was on top of many assaults against the Americans.
Iraq Screen published an article shortly before Saddam Hussein’s assassination. The author interviewed an Iraqi officer of the Republican Guard who participated in the battle for the airport in Baghdad in April 2003. The officer recalled:
While I was busy shooting with my colleagues, all of a sudden, we found Saddam Hussein with a number of his assistants inside the airport, we were really surprised because we did not expect such a thing, but Saddam went forward and took an RPG and put it on his shoulder and began to shoot by himself. We gathered around him and begged him to stay aside and leave us fighting because if we would be killed, we are common officers, but if he is killed, we would lose our leader. Saddam turned to us and said, "Look, I am no better than any one of you and this is the high time to defend our great Iraq and it would be a great honor to be killed as a martyr for the sake of Iraq."
From various sources, we now have a totally different story from the one force-fed to us by the U.S. administration. Instead of Saddam Hussein being a coward who fled and was caught in a hole in the ground, he was now the president, who, under siege, met publicly with his people on April 9, 2003 (video of this was shown on U.S. television) after personally being involved with several battles against the invaders, and who created a network of resistance while tens of thousands of U.S. military people were looking for him.
Shortly before his hanging, Saddam spoke of his days on the run with his lawyers. For nine months, he openly conducted the resistance, many times right under the noses of his would-be captors. He told of swimming in the Tigris River or using a small boat if he needed to maneuver in the area.
Most 66-year-old men would be contemplating retirement. But, Saddam Hussein lived off his wits, the land, and with comrades for nine months, all the time coordinating a resistance against illegal invaders of his country. Most men half his age would not be able to withstand the physical challenges of such a routine. It is hard to conceive how a man of his age endured more than a lifetime of hardship, torture and personal bereavement in just three-and-a –half years without losing his mental faculties or selling out to his opponents.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government is in possession of all of Iraq’s records prior to April 2003. Not one word will be mentioned that will contradict the U.S. rewriting of Iraq’s history. At best, we will have to rely on anecdotal accounts and eye witnesses. It is neither the best nor the most accurate form of history, but it’s all we have now.
On November 5, 2006, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging. The verdict came after what could possibly be called the worst travesty of justice ever seen in a courtroom.
For his first few months in captivity, he was not allowed to see a lawyer. In that time, he was tortured and questioned. He also was offered deals by the U.S. that would have obtained him a "get out of jail free" pass if he cooperated and gave the captors information about the resistance. He never capitulated.
Saddam Hussein was not allowed to see his family. Most of his correspondence to them was either not delivered, or highly censored. By now, most human beings would be willing to say anything their kidnappers desired.
In 2004, Frank Morrow, producer of one of the finest political shows ever seen on U.S. TV screens, Alternative Views, was asked about Saddam’s plight in comparison to that of another president kidnapped by the U.S., Manuel Noriega. He discussed how Noriega collapsed after a few days of U.S. incarceration. Morrow then stated, "Saddam is made of sterner stuff."
On his first day in court, Saddam was a few minutes late. The judge asked him why he was not on time and Saddam told him that the elevators of the building were not working. The judge then said he would ask the Americans to try to fix the faulty lifts. Saddam looked the judge in the eye and said, "Don’t ask them. You tell them. You are an Iraqi." The judge was silent. The accused gave him a lesson in citizenship.
This was Saddam Hussein’s first court appearance and it was televised. The U.S.-appointed collaborators thought televising the trial would humiliate Saddam in the eyes of the Iraqi public. The ploy backfired. Saddam’s chastising of the judge intrigued the viewers. In future sessions, the sound of the broadcasts were cut if the judge did not want the public to hear what Saddam had to say. The first judge must be given credit for fairness. It appeared that he was giving both sides time to present their cases. Then, he resigned. He publicly stated that the Iraqi government had pressured him and given him instructions not to be fair with Saddam. The next judge was a travesty and he made it be known from his first day that there would not be a fair trial for Saddam Hussein.
We have read page-after-page of the illegality of Saddam’s trial in various media. The anomalies are for too many to address here. However, with each preposterous turn, Saddam kept his ground and never capitulated to the court. (See Appendixes X and XI for an interview with Curtis Doebbler, a member of Saddam Hussein’s legal team, and the U.N. report that vilified the U.S. and Iraqi governments concerning the fairness of the trial.)
For months, every conceivable scenario emerged: Saddam was dragged out of court; his lawyers were kicked out of court; defense witnesses were tortured by the court; the judge destroyed a videotape that clearly showed the head prosecutor was lying; and Saddam and a few of his comrades went on hunger strikes.
Still, he showed up in court with the wit and physical appearance of a man decades younger. All the atrocities committed against him never made him appear to be desperate and he never showed signs of caving in.
Several times, Saddam was approached by U.S. officials to make a deal. The Iraqi resistance had grown to a formidable foe and the U.S. knew that Saddam still held enough power to persuade a major portion of the resistance to lay down its weapons. Instead of accepting an offer for his freedom on some small island in the Pacific, Saddam retained his dignity. Other Ba’ath Party members who were imprisoned were given chances to be freed and made wealthy if they testified against Saddam. They refused to sell out.
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Part Two
When the verdict of death for Saddam was announced on November 5, 2006, many groups, individuals and governments were outraged. They tried to get the U.N. to intervene, but to no avail.
Many quotes came forth from foe and friend of Saddam. The most preposterous came from Nouri al-Maliki, the so-called Iraqi prime minister:
This ruler has committed the most horrible crimes. He executed the best scientists, academics and thinkers.
That statement was outrageous, but many people will believe it. For the preceding year, hundreds, if not thousands, of professors, scientists and doctors were killed in Iraq by agents of the Maliki government. During Saddam’s time, those professionals flourished and were the pride of Iraq. Maliki added them to the long list of fictitious victims of Saddam Hussein’s rule.
The announcement of the verdict backfired. The U.S. thought it would further erode Saddam’s importance to the Iraqi public, but just the opposite occurred. The website www.al-moharer.net posted this message shortly after the announcement:
We learned that demonstrators are all over Iraq in protest of the sentence. In Baghdad, American soldiers are busy painting over the slogans that people wrote on the walls and in intersections.
The U.S. media failed to show photos of these incidents, yet the international press displayed many. Within a few more hours, the demonstrations escalated and U.S. vehicles were targeted by the crowds.
The only hope that Saddam Hussein had to stop his date with the gallows was an appeal from his defense team to an appeals court. The defense had a time limit in which to file the appeal, yet the court that tried Saddam did not give his defense the necessary information. Weeks went by without the court even giving the defense team a summary of the charges. When Saddam’s team received the necessary information, it only had a few days to file an appeal. The defenders had to create an appeal in a few days that normally would take a month or two to construct. Every obstacle was put in place to keep justice from seeing even a ray of daylight.
The appeals court took two days to read 1,500 pages of documents presented by the defense and then issued a denial for the appeal on December 26, 2006.. No court in the world can decipher this number of pages in such a short time.
Despite there being no time limit for the appeals court to reach a decision, it made one in two days. The next step was to affix a date for the execution. It had to be within 30 days of the announcement of December 26th.
No one was surprised by the verdict against Saddam Hussein because of the knowledge this was a foregone conclusion. However, the appeals court outdid itself by ruling on the Iraqi vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan. He was sentenced to life in prison by the court that convicted Saddam, but the appeals court took it upon itself to change the sentence to death, even though the case was not on the docket.
From the first day Saddam Hussein stepped foot in court until the day he was hanged, the entire system was stacked against him. Many of the laws the court made for itself were illegal in the eyes of international law and the court even breached some of its own illegal laws. Dr. Curtis Doebbler, a noted international human rights attorney, was on Saddam’s legal team from the start. Shortly after the announcement of the appeals court, he stated:
We’re trying to point out that if an execution takes place, it will be an ex-judicial, arbitrary execution outside the law in violation of the law. It’s somewhat ironic that this individual who will be executed has proven to have much more integrity than the individuals who are executing him, including the U.S. president who exhibits more evidence that he has committed crimes against the Iraqi people than there was against the president of Iraq in the first trial in which he was brought before the U.S.-created court and there still has been no investigation of the U.S. president.
As you’ve seen, the Iraqi president has maintained his dignity and also maintained his peace of mind in belief that he personifies the will of the Iraqi people to continue to fight against this occupation, which they believe, and the majority of the international community believes, is illegal and the consequence of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
It’s quite a sad day, I think, for international justice and, unfortunately, an another example of how the United States is unwilling to conform with international law; to show respect for international law. What hurts me the most, as an American, is that we’re the ones who benefit the most from respecting that law. When we set this example, we essentially tell people that the law cannot be used to try to get the United States to respect their rights. They have to use other means. That’s what got us into many of the problems that we’re in today.
After the appeals verdict, almost everybody in the U.S. was in the lynching mood. Pundits were frothing at the mouth when they discussed the upcoming execution. There was a collective air of jubilation and even anti-war activists cheered on the impending hanging. Many politicians of the Democratic party who jumped on the anti-war and anti-Bush wagon said that Saddam "deserved it." Not one discussed the legality or fairness of his trial, Leftist journalists were trying to outdo each other in demeaning Saddam. Not only were they reporting the standard fare of Saddam Hussein myths, they made up new fables of atrocities.
Many people have stated that George Bush lied about everything to do with Iraq: weapons of mass destruction; the Bin-Laden/Saddam Hussein link; Iraqi involvement with 9-11; fictitious biological weapons trailers; the Iraqi imprisonment of a U.S. pilot since 1991, etc. Yet, the same people who question Bush’s lies about Iraq broadcast the myths about Saddam Hussein and his regime. If Bush had lied about everything else, why should one believe his statements about the Ba’ath Party and Iraq’s president? Logic would argue that he lied about Saddam as well.
The scenario did not make sense. The people who consistently made the most absurd and untrue statements about Iraq (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Bremer, Powell, Rumsfeld, et al) and who stole tens of billions of dollars that belonged to the country of Iraq, proudly spoke of creating a new Middle East based on U.S. aggression or were conducting book-signing tours for their memoirs. The results of their lies led to the killing of more than a million Iraqis; a cost of about a trillion dollars to the U.S. public; and the destruction of a country’s culture and infrastructure. Even the history of Iraq was re-written by people in Washington D.C.
On the other hand, the guy with the moustache who told the truth about all the lies and adhered to the U.N. request for inspections, as well as supplied a 12,000-page report that documented in detail every aspect of Iraq’s former WMD programs, sat in a jail cell awaiting execution.
On December 14, 2006, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS) released the results of a poll it conducted for several weeks. The ICRSS is an independent organization based in Baghdad and run by Sadoun Dulaimi, an Iraqi expatriate until 2003. Using a base of more than 2,000 Iraqis, the majority of whom were Shi’ite Moslems, 90% stated that the country was far better off under Saddam Hussein than it was in 2006.
The ICRSS is definitely not a shill for the Ba’ath Party. U.S. government agencies as well as many media outlets referenced its results over the years. The conclusions showed a dramatic difference between the opinions of the Iraqi people and those put forth by the U.S. administration and media.
From the announcement of the guilty verdict on November 5, 2006 until 6:00am on December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was the freest man in Iraq although he was behind bars. His mind was clear and he awaited death with dignity. Not once did he crack under torture or pressure.
.Saddam Hussein was not a slave, although his incarceration kept him imprisoned. He was not allowed to see his family, unless, like his sons and grandson, they were shot to death with hundreds of bullets.
At 6:00 a.m. Baghdad time, on December 30, 2006, a mere four days after the appeals court ruling, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Until the lever was pulled, he displayed courage and integrity. The U.S. had waited since 1990 for Saddam to admit defeat or show any sign of capitulation or fear. He never did.
The hanging was the last chance for the U.S. to attain its goal. Administration members hoped he would cringe or break down. Just the opposite occurred. Saddam went to the gallows and refused to wear a hood over his head, although his hangmen were hooded.
A sanitized version of the execution was broadcast to the world. It showed the executioners putting a noose around Saddam’s neck and then the hanging. There was no sound. Shortly after, a real view of the execution came forth. Someone in the room recorded the event on a cell phone.
In the crowd were hecklers. They taunted Saddam Hussein, yet he never allowed himself to be degraded. When one of the executioners shouted, "Long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Saddam mocked the Shi’ite upstart, then he began to recite an Islamic verse and the hangman pulled the plug.
The final act in the U.S. vendetta against Saddam Hussein backfired. The western media reported it as an accomplishment, but people worldwide took to the streets in protest. Millions in India and Brazil demonstrated. Most of the Arab world was laden with protestors. National days of mourning were announced and even Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, not exactly a close comrade of Saddam, announced that his country would erect a statue in his commemoration.
The last 15 minutes of his life made Saddam Hussein the ultimate resister of imperialism to hundreds of millions of people on the Earth. The word "martyr" was now common in describing him.
In the U.S., a few video clips of people celebrating in Sadr City were shown on television. However, no clips of the massive pro-Saddam demonstrations made it past the cutting room floor. Most Americans do not realize that Saddam Hussein was not perceived in much of the world as a ghastly perpetrator of genocide and a brutal sadist.
Saddam Hussein held a 90% approval rating almost four years after his country was destroyed by an illegal invasion but he was hanged, while the U.S. president who was obsessed with the Iraqi president’s demise, and who at the time had an approval rating of 28% of his own country-people, was still alive and ordering the murder of many more Iraqis.
There are various reasons for these macabre and illogical turn of events. Vilified by Western analysts, politicians and journalists for years, it is nothing short of miraculous that Saddam lasted as long as he did. Many of the left are just as responsible for his death as are the neocons they lambaste. Scribe-after-scribe demeaned Saddam Hussein since 1990, most of the time relaying lies and myths about the man and his Ba’ath Party. No lie was too big if it was sensational enough to acquire headlines. Even when some of the lies were uncovered, such as those of the human shredding machine, or the mobile biological weapons labs, or the aluminum tubes for Iraq’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, the press did not acknowledge the truth. They went along making up new allegations. Because it normally took months to investigate the falsehoods, when the truth emerged, the public read little. To them, the original story stuck in their minds. Many people should be considered murderers for Saddam Hussein’s hanging: not just the hangman, but everyone who fueled the fire of hatred against him, including members of the "progressive" press who helped pass on the lies.
The events leading up to Saddam’s execution are preposterous, almost surreal. A bunch of one-time Iraqis, who had not lived in the country for decades, were flown into Iraq by the U.S. to run the country. A bible-toting, combat-boot-wearing administrator with no knowledge of any Arab country or culture (Paul Bremer), changed the country’s laws and constitution, as well as took away state-ownership of crucial industries.
When the Ba’athist agenda took hold in the 1970s, the government introduced many revolutionary aspects to Iraqi life: the equality of women; universal education; universal healthcare; much-improved public transportation; emphasis on science, etc. By the 1980s, Iraq was thriving and the crown jewel of the Middle East. But, along with the improvements came jealousy and greed. The U.S., because of its no-questions-asked affinity to Israel, had to take Iraq back a few notches. Oil was quickly becoming a symbol of world power, not just something to keep a country’s energy requirements in place.
In other words, Iraq was now worth fighting for. It no longer was the antiquated nation of a few decades ago. Saddam Hussein was the driving force behind the transformation of Iraq. Gradually, the U.S., with other Western powers, wanted some of Iraq’s black gold. Little-by-little, the country was degraded, beginning on January 17, 1991. Twelve years of an embargo weakened it further, but it did not kill Iraq. It took a massive invasion in 2003 and a ruthless occupation to finish the country off.
Iraq has been totally destroyed, not just physically, but emotionally. All of Saddam Hussein’s enemies hold equal responsibility in the destruction. They not only murdered Saddam, but Iraq as well. Shortly after March 2003, some people and institutions, such as Ahmed Chalabi and Haliburton, made a quick financial killing. Those days are gone. Today’s thieves in the stooge government can only count on small change to steal. The Iraqi people had everything they own, physically and emotionally, stolen.
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Part Three
After Saddam’s execution, the press had a field day in analyzing and editorializing the incident as well as Saddam himself. Most were writing well out of their league and their ignorance of history showed. Because most U.S. readers do not know the history of Iraq, the scribes’ words were taken as true.
The theme of many articles was that justice was not achieved because Saddam was hanged for a lesser crime than the major ones assessed against him. The "progressive" writers wanted to see him tried for gassing incidents so they could tie together U.S. involvement with the "misdeeds" of Saddam Hussein. Article-after-article mentioned Rumsfeld’s visit to Iraq in the 1980s and said the U.S. gave Iraq the technology for Iraq’s WMD programs during the Iran-Iraq War, however, not one questioned the reason for the war. They all blamed it on Saddam and wrote as if Iran was a benign and aggrieved country. Also, not one writer mentioned that Saddam was quickly hanged before the gassing incidents could come to court. Many people accuse Iran, not Iraq of gassing the Kurds at Halabjah. If Saddam was dead, these items could not be addressed, so the truth behind the myth of "gassing his own people" went to the grave with Saddam. Further, not one mentioned that Saddam’s Iraqi attorney, Khalil al-Dulaimi, the only defense lawyer able to speak in the courtroom, had been approached twice in the previous year by Iranian agents who tried to persuade him not to mention Halabjah at the trial. On his first encounter, in Jordan, he was offered $10 million to keep the subject off the agenda. Later, in Paris, the Iranians upped the ante by offering him $100 million. The only way to keep the subject away from public scrutiny was to kill Saddam on bogus charges. Shortly after he died, the court dropped the genocide charges against Saddam Hussein.
But, in most of the reporting, a visible part of history was missing. At the same time Saddam Hussein and Rumsfeld met, Iran was killing Iraqi soldiers and civilians with missiles supplied by the U.S. The U.S. had already made the deal with Iran to sell them missiles and other military material, with Israel getting the obligatory 10% for being the middleman. Iraq and Iran were both supplied by the U.S.
After Saddam’s execution, some writers mocked him and again, re-wrote history. In "So Long to ‘Our Tyrant,’" Andrew Cockburn stated in Common Dreams on December 30, 2006:
Though he was expelled from Kuwait and his economy wrecked by sanctions, Hussein was allowed to survive because Washington for a time continued to believe that he was useful as a bulwark against Iran abroad and militant Shiism at home in Iraq. When that policy was discarded by the neoconservatives after the 9/11 attacks, the dictator’s days were numbered.
Cockburn, of all people, should know that after Desert Storm, many plots to get rid of Saddam emerged.. For instance, even Scott Ritter, once head of the U.N. inspection team, stated that the goal of the U.S. personnel on the inspection contingent was to overthrow Saddam. He admits that he was part of the scheme.
John Simpson of the Sunday Times relayed more historical revision in his piece "Tyrant Met His End with Fortitude:"
Every important step he took was a disaster, from the attack on Iran in 1980 which started a hugely debilitating war that lasted for eight years, to the foolish invasion of Kuwait, which brought him into open conflict with his former friends, the Americans. Yet he knew how to appeal to ordinary people across the world. He was hated by most of his own people, but loved by the poor and disinherited of the rest of the Arab world.
He ruled Iraq by relying on the Sunni minority. His ministers were mostly Sunnis and so were most senior officers in his army and police force. Tens of thousands of Sunnis died as a result of his repression and the wars, but since his overthrow by the British and Americans in 2003, Sunnis have tended to identify more closely with him.
The glaring mis-representation in this piece is the depiction that his ministers, the officers in his army and police force consisted mostly of Sunnis. In fact, 60% of the Republican Guard officers were Shi’ite. As were two-thirds of the Iraqi ambassadors assigned to the U.N. during Saddam’s tenure. Iraq’s mouthpiece to the world in March and April 2003, Mohamed Sahaff (the Iraq Information Minister) was Shi’ite. In the infamous deck of 55 playing cards created by the U.S., 35 individuals were Shi’ite. Plus, Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, was a Christian. Justice could have been better portrayed if Simpson took a few minutes to research facts before he made such erroneous allegations.
In the article, "Rule of Noose," in The Nation of December 31, 2006, Bruce Shapiro wrote:
If Iraqi executioners have a particular expertise with the gallows, it is because Saddam gave his country so much practice. Hanging, shooting, gassing, beating, Saddam and his agents were masters of them all. Saddam, depraved and sadistic, was the polar opposite of the banal bureaucrat evil Hannah Arendt famously saw in Adolph Eichmann.
Shapiro packed much rancor into such a short span of words. "Depraved and sadistic" stick out. I doubt that Shapiro has an education and background in psychology, but he tries to dissect Saddam Hussein’s brain. On December 30, 2006, the only "depraved and sadistic" Iraqis we saw were the ones who taunted Saddam and those who pulled the lever for his hanging.
On the other hand, some articles contained realistic information. According to Robert Dreyfuss, in his article, "The Consequences of Killing Saddam," in The Nation, December 31, 2006:
An overwhelming majority of the Sunni Arab population of Iraq now supports the resistance, and its intensity is likely to grow significantly in the wake of Saddam’s death. Earlier this year, 300 Sunni tribal leaders met in Anbar to issue a demand that Saddam Hussein be released from prison, just one indication that support for the former president of Iraq was widespread. "The execution of Saddam means that the flame of vengeance will be ignited and it will hurt the body of Iraq with unrecoverable wounds," a Sunni tribal leader told the New York Times.
Michael Boldin spoke of the lies and deceit of the U.S. administration in his piece "Saddam Was Right and Bush Was Wrong," published online by www.populistamerica.com on December 30, 2006:
The non-existent weapons of mass destruction weren’t the only falsehood. There were the phony uranium purchases, lies about al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq, mobile weapons labs, and drones that were going to attack the East Coast of the U.S.
Remember the lies about babies being thrown out of incubators? The propaganda started years ago. Even the claims of Saddam’s brutality are suspect. Why? Because most of these claims come from the same people that have already discredited themselves.
Boldin is one of the few writers who went right to the core of the problem of the demonizing of Saddam Hussein. If those who accused Saddam of myriad atrocities had been exposed as liars about virtually every aspect on Iraq, how could they transform themselves into purveyors of truth in describing Saddam Hussein and his regime?
Al-Quds of al-Arabi assessed the situation in a logical manner. Its editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, told Aljazeera News:
Arab public opinion wonders who deserves to be tried and executed: Saddam Hussein, who preserved the unity of Iraq, its Arab and Islamic entity and the coexistence of its different communities such as Shi’ites and Sunnis … or those who engulfed the country in this bloody civil war?
The pundits had a great time writing about Saddam Hussein’s execution. Many work for huge publications with limitless resources for research, yet they chose to re-hash old discredited information and add a few new untruths as well.
These represent only a few statements made in the Western press. But, in newspapers from Brazil to Russia, from India to Indonesia, from Pakistan to Venezuela, and many other nations, the media were much kinder to Saddam Hussein and the barbaric end he experienced.
Many Western observers are not aware that Saddam Hussein was well-regarded in much of the world. Brazilians remembered that thousands of their countrymen were recruited by Saddam to build the advanced highway and bridge systems that once crisscrossed Iraq. Egyptians did not forget that more than two million of their countrymen owned and worked land in Iraq prior to January 1991. Indians did not forget the reciprocal dealings with Iraq and how the Ba’athists gave support to Indian causes. The Lebanese remembered the dozens of Iraqi trucks that showed up daily at the Lebanese border during that country’s civil war. They were laden with food and clothing for any Lebanese person in need. The convoys’ recipients included all Lebanese, not a certain faction of those battling in the civil war. Most Palestinians display a picture of Saddam Hussein on their walls. Over the years, many nations have temporarily supported the Palestinian cause, only to withdraw aid once threatened by the U.S. Saddam Hussein, even during the embargo years, supported the Palestinians with no exception, while other Arab regimes did not want to get involved because they did not want to upset their puppeteers in Washington and Tel Aviv.
It didn’t take long for the world to see how quickly the bogus court that tried Saddam became unraveled. On March 9, 2007, the headlines for Al-Jazeera News read, "Saddam Judge Flees Iraq." Raouf Abdel-Rahman was the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein, Barzan al-Tikriti (Iraq’s former intelligence minister) and Awad Hamed (former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court) to death. All were hanged.
Abdel-Rahman was the second judge on the trial in which the defendants were accused of crimes against humanity for the execution of 148 people from the city of Dujail in 1985. The first judge, Rizgar Amin, resigned. He accused the U.S.-allied Iraqi officials of scripting the trial for him. When Abdel-Rahman came on board, the so-called trial turned into a fiasco. He constantly kicked the defendants and their lawyers out of the court room. He made public statements before the end of the trial in which he stated that Saddam was guilty. When a defense witness came forth with a video tape showing how the head prosecutor, Jaafar al-Musawi and a prosecution witness, Ali al-Haidari had lied, Abdel-Rahman confiscated the video tape and had the witness, along with three other defense witnesses, arrested and tortured.
When the appeals court turned down the request of Saddam’s defense team about the death verdict, Abdel-Rahman had to set an execution date within 30 days of the appeal verdict. Saddam was hanged within four days, on the date of the beginning of a Moslem holiday.
For a few months, Abdel-Rahman relished in his image as a no-nonsense, tough judge. The truth differs. He stood against everything a judge is supposed to represent: to find the truth. He lied and he was a fraud. He was brave while he was protected by the U.S. Army in the Green Zone, but once the hangings were conducted, it appears that Abdel-Rahman must have lost some of his protection. He fled to Great Britain.
There is one aspect of this mockery that is confusing. Abdel-Rahman asked for "political asylum" in Great Britain. Political asylum is usually requested by citizens of countries in which they are not allowed political, social or religious rights that other citizens enjoy. Abdel-Rahman was a product of the quisling Iraqi government. He was right in the middle of all the shenanigans and violence the pretenders thrust on Iraq. Why did he ask for "political asylum" when he was a mainstream player in the sordid politics of Iraq?
It is probable that there were many Iraqis who were offended by Saddam Hussein’s show trial and hanging and some were probably picking up the stench of Abdel-Rahman’s scent. Even the U.S. and the Iraqi stooges would have been unable to give him enough security to ensure that he would be alive at retirement age.
Abdel-Rahman may have been the temporary victor because of his actions in an unfair Iraqi courthouse that led to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But, in death, Saddam Hussein won the battle against him as Abdel-Rahman made a secret and cowardly exit from Iraq.
At the time of the writing of this book, a very ill Tariq Aziz is being tried on false charges. Out of nowhere, Abdel-Rahman reappeared in Baghdad. It appears that no one wanted to be the judge who orders the hanging of Aziz, so the quisling Iraqi government made a deal with the person who handed down Saddam Hussein’s death sentence. It will be interesting to see Abdel-Rahman’s actions after the trial. He may well return to England for his extended vacation.
Saddam Hussein knew how his life would end, but he was well aware that his legacy would be part of the equation that will resurrect Iraq. He never sold out, not even at the end when he was offered chances to be freed from prison. He knew that if he sold out, he would have sold out Iraq.
Long after his execution, Saddam Hussein still gained ludicrous press coverage. On the first anniversary of the hanging, two British newspapers ran stories about the one-year anniversary.
On December 31, 2007, the British daily newspaper, The Telegraph, ran an article called "Few Gather to Remember at Saddam’s Tomb." It was written by Akeel Hussein and Colin Freeman. Here are a few statements:
On the first anniversary of his death, however, the final resting place of the man whose last words were "Iraq is nothing without me" shows little sign of becoming the shrine many feared it would …
… Yet the supporters who gathered to commemorate by laying flowers and reading the Koran numbered only in the dozens, not the hundreds of thousands that Saddam’s deluded ego might have expected …
This pieces is a horrible example of journalism, especially coming from such an established newspaper as The Telegraph. The tone of mockery is normally never seen in a feature article. Plus, the inaccuracies are glaring. Even from Saddam’s naysayers I have never seen the last words attributed to him that this stooge tag-team wrote. However, the facts are true: only a few dozen people showed up at Saddam’s grave.
Now, let’s go a few miles across London and see how The Times handled the same story. Deborah Haynes and Ali Hamdani collaborated on the article "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution" that was published on December 30, 2007.
Let’s take a look at a sampling of this article:
A handful of Saddam Hussein supporters wept at his graveside in a village north of Baghdad today on the first anniversary of the toppled dictator’s execution, while thousands more were prevented from visiting the tomb because of heightened security …
… "The anniversary of the execution of the martyred President Saddam Hussein is a sad one and hurts all honorable Iraqis," said Um Marwan, age 40, who was leading a delegation of women to the burial site.
"You cannot compare Saddam to Maliki or Talabani who are hiding in the Green Zone," she said.
In the nearby village of al-Dawr thousands of people had planned a demonstration to condemn the execution followed by a march to Saddam’s graveside, but their movement was restricted by an indefinite curfew imposed from Saturday, said Selam al-Abid, a former guard to Saddam.
Two stories used basic facts (and some fiction on the part of The Telegraph) in depicting the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s murder. However, only one stated why there were so few people at Saddam’s grave.
If Saddam Hussein is a spent force in Iraq, why does the U.S. and its quisling allies keep people from visiting his grave? They are cowards with absolutely no integrity and can only function surrounded by tanks and enough military hardware to incinerate the entire country of Iraq. So much for "bringing democracy to Iraq."
See also
Compare bloodshed. - Saddam is then the moral victor, not Bush
Creating monsters
The row over Saddams execution
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