Saddam murder: A Criminal act of Cowardice

The murder of ex-President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was perhaps the worst example of political blindness shown by the inept, incompetent and incapacitated Bush regime.

From the beginning, the war in Iraq lacked one fundamental precept: legality. From the beginning, the kangaroo court hurriedly set up to try Saddam Hussein and other members of the Ba’athist Party lacked one fundamental precept: legality, as expressed by numerous international experts.

From the very beginning, the foreign policy launched by the Bush regime (the lies of Colin Powell at the UNO, the lies of George Bush, who knew not only that Iraq had WMD but even knew exactly where they were, the shock and awe campaign which was no more than a criminal act of butchery) proved to be wholly out of tune with the rest of Humankind, a sort of Hitlerian spasm which humanity appears to suffer from every so many years.

The criminal act of invading a sovereign nation outside the UN auspices, of targeting civilian structures with military hardware, of removing a State so irresponsibly, has sent Iraqi society back three centuries in three years. Women, for instance, have lost any rights they gained under Saddam, and now are unable to venture out without a veil and religion is no longer a private matter, but a cause to be killed for, while the Kurds fight to keep Saria law out of their constitution. This is the Iraq of George Bush.

Sectarian violence is rife and increasing and civilian casualties are reaching shocking proportions of tens of thousands a year. So what did the Bush regime wish to achieve with the murder of Saddam Hussein?

Does George Bush believe that two wrongs make a right? He should know, after all Saddam Hussein was hanged for signing 148 death warrants for high treason, while George Bush signed 152 as Governor of Texas, for lesser crimes.

With the Sunni community deploring this wanton act of cruelty and the Shiite community celebrating, how much nearer to open civil war does the Bush regime wish to push Iraq?

The hurried way in which Saddam Hussein was dispatched raises the suspicion that there was something to hide. After all, why were we not shown the footage of the trial? Why did 99 per cent of the proceedings take place in secrecy? What did Saddam Hussein say in his defence? Who sold him the weapons? Who sold him the gas? Upon whose orders? Did Iraq gas the Kurds or was it some other neighbouring state with a Kurdish question to solve at a moment when it would be easy to blame someone else?

These are questions to which we will never know the answer because the Government of the United States of America was unable or unwilling to face the truth. The murder of Saddam Hussein was therefore a criminal act of cowardice which created a martyr out of a man who could easily have been portrayed as a monster and which underlines the criminal, murderous traits of George Bush the man and the Presidency of the USA today. The monster, after all, sits in the Oval Office, Washington, the scene of many lurid acts in recent years.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Russia


Saddam Mid East US murder