BillCosby

By Robert Fisk, The Independent UK
Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies?

Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalized and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds?

We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, groveling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth.

His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla.

One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails.

"Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Ba'athist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

eagleclaw

Who is the criminal?

Saddam challenged the judge on the invasion of Kuwait, saying: "How could you say that? I did that for the Iraqi people ... how could you defend these dogs," he said, referring to the Kuwaitis.

The judge reprimanded him for his language.

Saddam said Kuwait had been trying to bring down the price of oil and turn Iraqis into paupers and Iraqi women into prostitutes.

"This is all a theater" designed by President Bush, whom he called a criminal, to win re-election, said Saddam, looking around the court with a half-smile during one outburst.

Bush on Thursday had no reaction to that comment, according to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. The president is pleased that "justice is being served to Saddam Hussein and his band of oppressors by the Iraqi people in an Iraqi court," McClellan said

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/01/iraq.saddam/

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All the time, always

eagleclaw

Some more reasons why Saddam had to be eliminated from the scene. The bush family could not let him run his mouth much longer.

CounterPunch

September 19, 2002

Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
by Kurt Nimmo

In an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn, former president George Bush spoke recently of his "hatred" of Saddam Hussein. "I hate Saddam Hussein," said Bush."I don't hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily, but I think he's, as I say, his word is no good and he's a brute. He's used poison gas on his own people. So, there's nothing redeeming about this man."

The former president claims to hate Saddam simply because he is "no good" and a "brute." Zahn does not bother to probe deeper. Paula Zahn's ratings are dismal these days. Her former boss over at FOX News said, "a dead raccoon could get higher ratings." The Bush interview, obviously, is good for Zahn's floundering career. As such, we shouldn't expect Zahn to push Bush Senior on the particulars of his hatred. Not these days, anyway, when the corporate media essentially plays second fiddle for the government.

Hatred in the wake of the Gulf War is not unique. For instance, Wasli el-Ghazali, most assuredly hated Bush and America. Ghazali was convicted back in 1994 for his role in a plot to murder George Bush the Elder during a visit to Kuwait. "Every Arab child is worth all of America," Ghazali told Robert Fisk of the Independent. "I am an Iraqi citizen. Bush killed 16 members of my family."

In response to the failed--and some would say bogus--plot to kill Bush, Clinton fired 23 Tomahawk missiles into Baghdad on June 26, 1993 (more than a year before the conviction of Ghazali and his co-conspirators). Seven of these "precision guided" missiles missed their target (or did they?) and hit civilian housing, killing eight people, including the renowned artist Leila al-Attar. Clinton later told the American people they could "feel good" about the attack. No word if Clinton, like Bush, hates Saddam Hussein--or, for that matter, innocent Iraqi civilians, including artists.

Bush did not tell CNN's Zahn if the assassination plot was the particular incident that stoked his hatred of the Iraqi dictator, nor did the anchor ask. It is fair to conclude Bush has not always hated Saddam. Or if he has hated Saddam all these years, he put that hatred aside in the name of statecraft. Reagan, Bush, the Iraqi dictator, and American corporations have worked together over the years. War and death make for good business. It also makes for lies and deception--and possibly for less than truthful interviews.

Former Reagan official and National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher has described a less than hateful relationship between the Reagan administration and Saddam Hussein. In 1995, Teicher offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case, a legal sideshow to a larger scandal known as "Iraqgate." According to Teicher, he and Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq to make sure the Iraqi dictator received what he needed in order to win the Iran-Iraq war--or if not win at least make sure there was a draw. "CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles," Teicher swore in the affidavit.

Teicher claims the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Reagan also sent a secret message to Saddam, which then vice president Bush delivered to Egyptian President Mubarak, and Mubarak passed on to Saddam, "telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran." Reagan CIA director Casey wanted to give Saddam cluster bombs, which "were a perfect 'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend against the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers," explained the former NSC staffer. He recorded Casey's comments in meeting minutes, which are now in the Ronald Reagan presidential archives in Simi Valley, California.

In 1982, Reagan "legalized" direct military assistance to Iraq. This resulted in more than a billion dollars in military related exports. According to Kenneth R. Timmerman (author of The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq) the US government under Reagan and Bush sold Iraq 60 Hughes MD 500 "Defender" helicopters, eight Bell Textron AB 212 military helicopters equipped for anti-submarine warfare, 48 Bell Textron 214 ST utility helicopters (sold for "recreational" purposes), and US military infra-red sensors and thermal imaging scanners (sold illegally to Iraq through a Dutch company). After the Gulf War, the International Atomic Energy Agency found the following US equipment in Iraq: spectrometers, oscilloscopes, neutron initiators, high-speed switches for nuclear detonation, and other tools used to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons.

"One entire facility, a tungsten-carbide manufacturing plant that was part of the Al Atheer complex," Timmerman told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, "was blown up by the IAEA in April 1992 because it lay at the heart of the Iraqi clandestine nuclear weapons program, PC-3. Equipment for this plant appears to have been supplied by the Latrobe, Pennsylvania manufacturer, Kennametal, and by a large number of other American companies, with financing provided by the Atlanta branch of the BNL bank."

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo0919.html

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All the time, always