Evidence and witnesses in our imagined war crimes prosecution of the Moron and the Cabal

Iraq's Kafkaesque legal absurdities continue driven by puppermasters

Saddam's daughter wanted by police

Jordanian authorities last year refused to hand over Raghad Hussein, centre, to Iraq [File: EPA] A wanted notice for Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter has been issued by the international police organisation Interpol. The Red Notice issued on Saturday is not an arrest warrant but is a request for police forces to co-operate in tracking down Raghad Hussein and extraditing her to Iraq, where she is wanted on suspicion of terrorism. She is known to have been living in Jordan and last year was placed on a list of 41 people associated with her father's rule that the Iraqi government is seeking to prosecute for allegedly inciting violence. Raghdad's whereabouts at the time the notice was issued were not immediately clear. The wanted notice posted on Interpol's website said an Iraqi arrest warrant had been issued under which she is accused of inciting "crimes against life and health" and of "terrorism". It gave her full name with the spelling Raghad Saddam Husayn al-Majid and said she was believed to have both Iraqi and Jordanian nationality. Extradition refused The agency urged anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts to contact their local police force or Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, France. "Nobody can force Jordan to extradite Raghad" Issam al-Ghazzawi, lawyer "Raghad is a guest of his majesty the king. Iraq asked Jordan to extradite her last year, but the kingdom refused," Issam al-Ghazzawi, a lawyer and member of Saddam's former defence team, told AFP news agency in the Jordanian capital Amman. "Nobody can force Jordan to extradite Raghad," he said. Raghad and her sister left their homes in Syria to seek refuge in Jordan in July 2003 after US troops in Iraq killed their brothers Uday and Qusay. Known to some as "Little Saddam" because of her aggressive temperament, Raghad has taken a more public role in defending her father than her sister Rana or her mother Sajida. Raghad was an unlikely defender of her father - who was executed on December 30 last year - as her relationship with him had broken down after her husband and Rana's husband were killed in 1996 after returning from five years in exile. Sajida is also subject to an Iraqi arrest warrant. Original article posted here.

A Symphony of Lies

Just take one less reason off the list of why Iraq should have been invaded

Saddam Has the Last Laugh

By Robert Scheer

Yep, you did it, George—mission impossible accomplished. Unbelievably, four years of a bungled occupation have managed to make Saddam Hussein’s tyranny look good in comparison with “liberated Iraq.”

At least, that is the view of the Iraqi weightlifter made famous through a video of him taking a sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein’s statue. “I really regret bringing down the statue,” Kadhim al-Jubouri said on British television this week. “The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”

That’s the judgment of a man who spent nine years in Hussein’s jails, and, unfortunately, it is one shared by a majority of his countrymen, according to an authoritative poll sponsored jointly by ABC, BBC and USA Today: Only 38 percent of Iraqis believe that the country is better off today than under Hussein, while nearly four out of five oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.

Even more disturbing is that 51 percent of Iraqis think it is OK to attack coalition troops—triple the number that thought that way in a 2004 survey. Square that with our president’s assurances, offered since the first month of this unnecessary adventure, that the insurgency represents a small handful of terrorists. While most of the antipathy is registered among Sunnis, 94 percent of whom favor attacks on coalition forces, and by only 7 percent of Kurds, a surprising 35 percent of Shiites endorse that sort of violence.

Given the number of Kurds and Shiites who originally welcomed the invasion, it is also startling that 53 percent of all Iraqis polled agreed that “from today’s perspective, and all things considered,” it was “wrong that U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in spring 2003.”

The poll, part of a series conducted each of the past three years at great risk to 150 pollsters, reveals a sharp rise in anti-American feeling and disapproval of the 2003 invasion.

When Bush didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction or ties between Saddam and 9/11, the fallback justification for the taking of tens of thousands of lives and the expenditure of over $400 billion in American taxpayer money was that Iraq would become a model for the democratic, free-market way of life. Many assumed the richest, most powerful and most technologically competent country in the world could improve life for Iraqis compared with that afforded by a vicious dictator hemmed in by international boycotts. But it didn’t happen.

What Bush has managed to do is to place the United States in a no-win position as the most likely target for failed Iraqi expectations, which he did so much to raise. He is asking Iraqis to take his word for it that the invasion was not post-9/11 posturing or a grab for oil or a blow undertaken on behalf of Israel, yet he has nothing tangible to show as proof of his sincerity.

Almost four in five of those Iraqis polled called the availability of jobs “bad,” 88 percent had the same negative judgment of the supply of electricity, and 69 percent said the same about the availability of clean water and medical care. In this nation, gifted with the world’s second-largest oil reserves, 88 percent termed the availability of fuel for cooking and driving as quite bad.

Of course, the coffers of a handful of American mercenary, construction and energy corporations have swelled, despite this lack of credible achievement. More than $20 billion in “reconstruction” contracts were given to Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, alone.

The easy answer provided by Bush apologists for this dismal performance is to place blame on the insurgency. That, however, is not the verdict of the Iraqi people. Asked to judge how the United States and other coalition forces have carried out their responsibilities in Iraq, 76 percent say they have done “a bad job.” And while a modest majority don’t want the Americans to leave “immediately,” they don’t see the increase in the U.S. troop numbers, defended stoutly by Bush on Monday, as helpful. Truly, this is a lose-lose situation.

Asked the source of violence that had occurred near the polled individual’s neighborhood, the largest group, more than 44 percent, cited “unnecessary violence against citizens by U.S. or coalition forces,” while four out of 10 said they blame the coalition forces or Bush for “the most for the violence that is occurring in the country”—and only 18 percent cited “al-Qaida and foreign jihads.” So much for Bush’s claim that U.S. troops are needed in Iraq to protect its citizens from foreign terrorists.

Surprisingly, while 82 percent lacked confidence in coalition troops, two-thirds of those polled expressed confidence in their own army and police forces—yet more indication that Iraqis could do a better job of policing themselves than we can. Our continued presence there, ostensibly in the name of fixing the place, will only continue to exacerbate anti-U.S. sentiment among the people we claim to be saving.

Original article posted here.

Bad Apples falling not far from the Bushes

Saddam, Prisoner #38699-079 and George Bush

Sunday, 11 March 2007 Written by Garrett Johnson

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website currently gives Inmate #38699-079 a projected release date of September 9, 2007.
Why should that matter to you? Because Inmate #38699-079 is no average prisoner. This inmate was trained by the CIA, took part in a coup d'etat, orchestrated the "disappearances" of political opponents, became rich on the CIA payroll while George Bush The Elder ran it, took part in the assassination of the president of his country, became the de facto ruler of his nation, and eventually his nation was invaded by American troops in which thousands were killed just so he could be overthrown.

Does this story sound familiar? It should, because the story can be told about two different men.

Inmate #38699-079 is Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, and his current residence is Miami, Florida.

The other man I speak of, who's story is so similar is Saddam Hussein, who currently resides somewhere in Hell.
These two men have someone in common: George H. W. Bush. To tell this story properly we need to start in 1959.

1959: Fighting the Cold War

In 1959 Elvis Presley was serving in the Army in Germany. Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, and Richie Valens had died in a Iowa cornfield.
And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was part of a six-man assassination team that the CIA had organized to kill a popular new national leader named Abdul Karim Qassim. On April 10, 2003 investigative report by UPI Intelligence Correspondent Richard Sale wrote:

...In the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years. His first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abdul Karim Qasim...In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with...Ba'th Party...In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party `as its instrument.'
"According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
"Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon", said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
"Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
"The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was...botched...Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.
"Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said...
"...During this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Miles Copeland was an interesting character of his own. He was a professional jazz musician and was one of the original members of the OSS (which later became the CIA). He was part of Operation Ajax, the CIA coup that overthew the democratic Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953.
After retirement from the CIA, he wrote an article in 1988 called "Old spooks for Bush" which asserted that the intelligence community overwhelmingly supported George H. W. Bush for President.

Meanwhile in Panama, Manuel Noriega was a student in school. Noriega would later graduate from Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone (renamed in 1963 to the School of the Americas), but in 1959 he was a student at the Peruvian Military School of Chorrillos. While there Noriega was more than willing to spy for the CIA "informing on colleagues in his socialist party, and on leftist students". [New York Times, 9/28/88]

George Bush was one of the founders of Zapata Oil that was created in 1953. His partner was a man named Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer and covert officer. Prescott Bush was a close personal friend of Allen Dulles, the CIA Director in the 1950's and early 1960's.

Bush on a oil rig

1968: Coup D'Etat

In 1968 there were riots in Chicago. MLK and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.
And in both Iraq and Panama our boys were involved in their own coup d'etat. It was a great year for future dictators.

On July 30, 1968, acting president Colonel 'Abd ar-Razzaq an-Nayif was invited to lunch at the presidential palace. After the meal, Saddam Hussein entered with a group of armed officers and told an-Nayif he was under arrest. An agreement was reached in which an-Nayif's life was spared in exchange for him leaving the country. This coup had been encouraged by the CIA.
Saddam Hussein didn't become dictator right then. Instead he was the right-hand man for Colonel Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. But al-Bakr was getting old and sick. Hussein would slowly gain more and more power in Iraq. I have no evidence that Saddam was actually on the CIA payroll during this period of his life, but there was evidence of CIA connections.

Saddam sharing a laugh with Bakr

Meanwhile in Panama, Noriega was moving up the ladder. After graduating from the School of the Americas, he became a member of the National Guard and was promoted to lieutenant in 1968.

In October of 1968 Arnulfo Arias Madrid won the presidential election of Panama. This was the third time he served as president of Panama, yet he had never managed to serve a single full term.
In 1931 Arias led a coup that deposed President Florencio Harmodio Arosemena. In 1940 he was elected president, but was so sympathetic to Hitler's Germany that America sponsored a coup against him in October 1941. In 1949 he ran for president and lost, but was awarded the presidency the following year. He immediately set up a secret police force and suspended the constitution. Arias was overthrown in another coup in 1951.
Now he was president again, and immediately set out to restructure the command of the National Guard. After just 11 days Arias was ousted in a coup by the National Guard that forced him to flee to Miami, Florida.
Noreiga wasn't a major player in this coup, but he was involved in the power struggle the following year. Noreiga backed eventually winner Omar Torrijos and Noreiga received a promotion to lieutenant colonel and was appointed chief of military intelligence by Torrijos. It was a critical position to have at the time because Panama had a guerrilla problem at the time. These guerrillas guerrillas backed deposed-Arnulfo Arias. Noreiga was ruthless and the guerrillas were crushed. Meanwhile, Hussein had to deal with a long, crushing rebellion by the Kurds that finally ended in 1970.
Being in the position of chief of military intelligence, Noreiga came into more direct contact with the CIA. This is when he went on the CIA payroll, reportedly receiving more than $110,000 per year [Newsweek, 1/15/90]. Former CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner said Noriega became a CIA "asset" in the early 1970s.

Meanwhile, George H.W. Bush ran unopposed in the general election for House seat of the 7th District of Texas in 1968. But in 1970 he ran for Senate and lost. After a stint as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Bush became Chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate Scandal.

1976: Making friends

In 1976 the band Boston released their debut album. Jimmy Carter won the presidential election.

In Washington, George H.W. Bush became Director of Central Intelligence. He was only Director for a single year, but it was a rough year. The Church Committee had just released a 14-part report detailing countless acts of immoral, illegal, and disgusting actions by the CIA all over the world. Bush's job was to guide the CIA through these rough waters without any serious reform.
It was a tough job, but being Director of the CIA also had its rewards. For instance, meeting interesting new people - like Manuel Noriega, for instance.

"We all know that Bush met with Noriega, even though he was there only 11 months. And I will affirm that Bush had him on the payroll."
- Admiral Stansfield Turner

Bush met Noreiga over lunch in December 8, 1976, at the residence of the Panamanian Ambassador to Washington.

"During this meeting there were discussions concerning the unrest in the canal zone. But at no time did Mr. Bush suggest that the Panamanian government was in any way responsible for the bombing" that had occured in the Canal Zone when Ford, worried about attacks from Reagan demanding that the canal remain in US hands, had cut off the talks on the future of the canal. Noriega's proffer adds that "when Bush left office he sent a letter to Noriega thanking Noriega for his assistance. Bush said that he was going to inform his successor of Noriega's cooperation."
- from Noriega's defense documents at his 1991 trial

It was revealed that year that Noriega was also working for the Cubans, but somehow remained in the CIA payroll anyway. They would meet again in 1983, and there are rumours of a third meeting.
Also that year, the Carter Administration and Gen. Omar Torrijos were involved in negotiations over handing the Panama Canal Zone back to Panama.

During the treaty negotiations between Torrijos and the Carter Administration, the US National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency are alleged to have conducted eletronic eavesdropping against Panamanian officials involved in the negotiations. This bugging had reportedly been discovered by Noriega, who had allegedly proceeded to bribe members of the US Army's 470th Military Intelligence Group, who furnished him with tapes of all the bugged conversations, which Noriega then submitted to Torrijos. According to published accounts, the US Army had investigated this situation under a probe code-named Operation Canton Song, and identified a group of "singing sergeants" on Noriega's payroll. Lew Allen, Jr., the head of the NSA, supposedly wanted a public indictment of the sergeants for treason and espionage, but Bush is alleged to have demurred, saying that the matter had to be left to the Army, which had decided to cover up the matter.

Bush left the CIA with the Republican Presidency. 1977 was also the year that President Carter had Noriega removed from the CIA payroll [New York Times, 10/2/88].

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein became an official general in the Iraqi Army in 1976 as elderly al-Bakr became increasingly unable to fulfill his duties as president.

1983: Everything coming up roses

In 1983 America defeated the awesome communist threat of Grenada, the Police had a hit with "Every Breath You Take", and Return of the Jedi was the top grossing film.

Meanwhile all three of our boys were living it up. Bush was vice-president of America, and one of the first things he did was to put Noreiga back on the CIA payroll.
Noreiga had a string of good luck as well. It seems his boss, Omar Torrijos, died in a plane crash. How did it happen? Noreiga's defense attorney, Frank Rubino, was quoted as saying "General Noriega has in his possession documents showing attempts to assassinate General Noriega and Mr. Torrijos by agencies of the United States.". These documents were never allowed as evidence in trial, because the presiding judge agreed with the U.S. government's claim that their public mention would violate the Classified Information Procedures Act. In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, writer John Perkins claims that an American-provided bomb was the cause of the airplane crash.
OTOH, Colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera, a former associate of Noriega, claims that Noriega planted the bomb.
There were two curious coincidences involving Torrijos' death.
a) his death came only six months after Bush because vice-president
b) his death came only three months after Ecuadorian President and reformer Jaime Roldós Aguilera died in almost exactly the same circumstances

No matter who killed Torrijos, Noriega and the CIA benefited. Torrijos instituted land reform and was actually regarded by the poor of Panama as a friend. To the CIA that meant he was a communist and needed to be killed.
Noriega began consolidating his control over Panama, leaving only Rubén Darío Paredes as a political rival. By August of 1983, even that wasn't an issue, when Noriega promoted himself to general and became the de facto ruler of Panama.
Noriega was a valuable allie of the American intelligence community, as he allowed the free flow of money and weapons to the Contras through his country. But he also committed one sin - he refused Oliver North's demands to provide military assistance to the Contras. Noriega believes that this more than anything else led to his falling out with Bush.
But that was later. In 1983 Noriega was meeting his old buddy George Bush. Noriega visited the White House, State Department, Pentagon, and even CIA Director William Casey [Newsweek, 1/15/90]. What was discussed? We'll never know.

Judge William Hoeveler blocked testimony about arms shipments to the contras. Also, he rejected as irrelevant use of classified records from the 1983 meeting between Noriega and Vice President George Bush. "There's more than meets the eye in the Noriega case," says Dick & Gregorie, one of the former assistant U.S. Attorneys who developed the case against Noriega. "But nobody wanted to push certain buttons."
- from Time article concerning Noriega trial

Noriega retained CIA support and money through most of the 1980's (just like the 1970's), but relations slowly got more chilly.

On the other side of the world the story was much the same. Saddam consolidated his control over Iraq on July 22, 1979, when he gave a very Stalinistic speech in front of the Iraqi Assembly. He read off 68 names of deputies who were "guilty of being disloyal" and they were led out of the room under arrest. 22 were later executed.
Saddam wasted little time starting a disastrous war with Iran. Quick early victories turned into horrific defeats, and then into bloody, grinding, trench warfare. However for the Reagan/Bush Administration, this wasn't a bad thing. They didn't exactly trust Saddam, but they hated Iran, so it was only natural to support Saddam.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980's, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]" And "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted -- and frequently encouraged -- the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."
- Ted Koppel on Nightline, June 9, 1992

I don't have any record of an official meeting between Saddam and Bush, but there is the famous picture of Rumsfeld and Saddam on December 20, 1983.

Don't they look like Best Buds? This was less than a month after Noriega and his good buddy Bush had their meeting.
Like Noriega, Bush made certain that the military and financial aid kept flowing to Saddam through most of the 1980's. But as the decade ended things went sour between Bush and his good friends.

1989: A falling out

In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, the Exxon Valdez has a little accident near the Alaskan coast, and one of Our Boys makes it big, George H. W. Bush becomes President of the United States.


However, by this time Bush's friendship with Noriega had hit a rough times. In 1988 the DEA indicted Noriega on drug trafficking charges. The Bush Administration was looking to undermine his old friend's dictatorship at every turn with the CIA giving $10 million to political opponents.

A further ingredient in the dangerous dissatisfaction in Wall Street and environs was that Bush had botched and bungled a US-sponsored coup d'etat against the Panamanian government loyal to Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. ...On October 3, 1989, several officers of the Panamanian Defense Forces under the leadership of Major Moises Giroldi attempted to oust General Noriega and seize power. The pro-golpe forces appear to have had Noriega in their physical control for a certain period of time, and they were in contact with the US Southern Command in Panama City through various channels. But they neither executed Noriega nor turned him over to the US forces, and Noriega used the delay to rally the support of loyal troops in other parts of Panama. The US forces mobilized, and blocked two roads leading towards the PDF headquarters, just as they golpe leaders had requested. But the golpistas also wanted US combat air support and would have required US ground forces to provide active assistance. Bush stalled on these requests, and the golpe collapsed before Bush could make up his mind what to do.

It's time to pull out the military. Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989, was initiated to "defend democracy". Of course the fact that we put the dictatorship in place in the first place was never questioned by the MSM. How many people died to capture Noriega? Some say hundreds. Some say thousands. The fact that after all these years and no one knows suggests that few really want to know.
The US confiscates thousands of boxes of Noriega government documents and refuses to hand over any of them to Panamanian investigators. "The United States is protecting robbers and thieves and obstructing justice. We are the owners of the documents. If I am to complete my work, I have to see the documents," Panama's chief prosecutor. [Los Angeles Times, 6/23/90]

During the preparation of his 1991 trial in Miamai, Florida, Noriega's defense attorneys submitted a document to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in which they specified matters they intended to use in Noriega's defense which might involve information considered claissified by the US government. Before being released to the public, this document was heavily censored. No part of this filing is more heavily censored, however, than the section entitled "General Noriega's Relationship with George Bush," which has been whited out on approximately 6 of 15 pages, allegedly to protect US national security.

I won't bog down this diary with details of the trial (I'll leave that to others), but I will ask the question "if Tony Blair was guilty of trafficking drugs, would we invade England?"

Meanwhile, in Iraq things were just about to go from bad to worse. No one knows exactly when the Bush Administration decided they wanted to attack Iraq, but it wasn't in the fall of 1990.

Sometime in late 1989 or early 1990, the Pentagon's war plan for destroying Iraq and stealing Persian Gulf oil fields was put into motion. At that time, Defendant Schwarzkopf was named the Commander of the so-called U.S. Central Command - which was the renamed version of the Rapid Deployment Force - for the purpose of carrying out the war plan that he had personally developed and supervised. During January of 1990, massive quantities of United States weapons, equipment, and supplies were sent to Saudi Arabia in order to prepare for the war against Iraq.

I have a friend who left the Marines in 1989. He told me that his squad was working on the Kuwait border preparing for war even then. Of course that is all hearsay and no one is going to believe that George Bush would intentionally plot a war against a nation who wasn't a threat to us, right? Especially against a good buddy he had supplied with weapons and financial aid for a decade.

What do you think?

Original article posted here.

Saddam: The Maa

The Lost Mystery of 'Iraq-gate'

By Peter Dyer

Now that Saddam Hussein has been executed for the 1982 massacre at Dujail, the trial for a larger-scale slaughter involving poison gas in 1988 has all but disappeared from public view.

With Saddam’s death the opportunity for a full account of the tens of thousands of deaths in the so-called Anfal case appears to be lost, along with the opportunity for a frank public discussion of its historical context.

Such a discussion inevitably would have led to how Saddam Hussein’s development of dangerous weapons was enabled by Western powers, including the United States. Between 1985 and 1990, the Reagan and Bush I administrations facilitated Saddam Hussein’s massive and ambitious military industrialization effort.

Billions of dollars of financial assistance and sophisticated technology flowed from the United States to Iraq. The Reagan and Bush I administrations were aware that Saddam Hussein was using this aid to research, develop and/or manufacture chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

These were the conclusions of U.S. Rep. Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, in a statement published July 27, 1992: “Bush Administration Had Acute Knowledge of Iraq’s Military Industrialization Plans.”

This statement was reprinted in an Oct. 27, 1992, U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Report. The committee chair was Sen. Donald W. Riegle, D-Michigan. Riegle later revisited this subject in another report published on May 25, 1994.

Gonzalez’ conclusion was supported in Riegle’s 1992 report by a series of expert witnesses and government officials. They provided long lists of American technology and material licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department for export to Iraq and used by Iraq in the development of long-range missiles as well as weapons of mass destruction.

The expert witnesses – David Kay, Kenneth R. Timmerman and Gary Milhollin – agreed that while the United States was not Iraq’s principal supplier of arms or advanced production technology, the U.S. made a significant contribution to Iraq’s military buildup.

Also provided were the names of front companies that Saddam Hussein used to obtain nuclear technology as well as accounts of massive bank and other financial fraud which funded the Iraqi military buildup. Much of this activity continued until a week before Saddam invaded Kuwait in August of 1990.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said even though the evidence was clear that Saddam Hussein was spending so much on weapons he could not repay his debts, President George H.W. Bush and his administration continued U.S. economic aid to Iraq. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Iraq defaulted on $1.9 billion in U.S. guaranteed loans.

Back Story

The story of U.S. aid to Iraq goes back at least to February 1982 when, 17 months after Iraq invaded Iran, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from its list of terrorist states.

According to Howard Teicher, an official on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff, the reclassification had mostly to do with the goal of preventing Iraq’s defeat in the war with Iran.

While this policy change opened the way for American corporations to sell Iraq “dual-use” (military/civilian) material and technology, the United States formally maintained an official policy of neutrality by avoiding direct sales of weapons.

“One of the reasons that the United States refused to license or sell U.S. origin weapons to Iraq was that the supply of non-U.S. origin weapons to Iraq was sufficient to meet Iraq's needs,” Teicher explained in a January 1995 sworn federal court declaration.

“Under CIA Director [William J.] Casey and Deputy Director [Robert M.] Gates, the CIA made sure that non-U.S. manufacturers manufactured and sold to Iraq the weapons needed by Iraq. In certain instances where a key component in a weapon was not readily available, the highest levels of the United States government decided to make the component available, directly or indirectly, to Iraq.”

This history is relevant to the Anfal trial, the second of several trials originally planned for Saddam and other former Iraqi leaders.

However, just days before the Anfal trial was to resume with tape recordings of Saddam discussing chemical weapons, Saddam was rushed to the gallows and hanged for his conviction in the killing of 148 men and boys in Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982.

Saddam’s execution on Dec. 30, 2006, meant that the former Iraqi dictator would not have the chance in court to explain how his regime obtained the poison gases that were deployed against the victims of Anfal, which means “spoils” or “spoils of war” in Arabic. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Saddam's Well-Timed Execution."]

Six of Saddam’s lieutenants remain to be tried for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the Anfal campaign, a series of massacres estimated to have killed 50,000 to 150,000 Kurds, involving widespread use of mustard gas and peaking in 1988.

In one of the most notorious attacks, mustard gas and nerve agents allegedly were used to massacre 5,000 people on March 16-17, 1988, in the Kurdish town of Halabja.

As horrendous and unprecedented in modern times as Anfal was, there has been very little media interest in it since the trial reopened after Saddam’s execution. With virtually no public discussion of Anfal, the chances are slim that light will be shed on the U.S. role in Saddam’s quest for WMDs in the 1980s.

However, Riegle's 1994 report lists materials licensed by the Commerce Department and shipped to Iraq from the United States between 1985 and 1990, leaving little doubt about U.S. assistance to Saddam.

On May 2, 1986 a shipment of several forms each of Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) and Clostridium botulinum (botulinum toxin) went to the Iraq Ministry of Higher Education.

Shipped on Aug. 31, 1987 to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission were two batches of Escherichia coli (E. coli).

A 1992 Defense Department report quoted by Senator Riegle said Iraq’s biological warfare program probably began in the late 1970s and concentrated on the development of two agents: botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria. Large-scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities in Baghdad.

Biological Weapons

Another destination for American biological toxins was al-Muthanna, Iraq's primary chemical weapons research, development, and production facility, according to Global Security.org.

Thousands of tons of precursors, nerve agents and mustard gas were produced there. Al-Muthanna was also the initial location for Iraq's biological weapons program in 1985-86.

Al-Muthanna researchers investigated anthrax, botulinim toxin and others.

“Muthanna also conducted small-scale production of botulinim toxin [and] provided weaponization expertise to the biological weapons program, primarily chemical weapons munition technology and testing.” [See, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/muthanna.htm.]

On March 10 and April 21, 1986, two vials of botulinum toxoid from the Center for Disease Control were sent to al-Muthanna. Al-Muthanna received advanced U.S. technology and materials, either directly or through front companies.

In November 1989, the CIA provided the Bush I administration a list of bad end users known to be working on nuclear, ballistic missile and biological weapons projects.

This list, in Rep. Gonzalez’ words, “included most of the State Establishments and procurement fronts to which Commerce habitually granted licenses.”

Despite this, according to Gonzalez, the Bush I administration actually expanded trade with Iraq. In fact, Gonzalez said, out of a total of 771 export licenses granted between 1985 and 1990, 239 were granted by the Bush I administration during the 19 months between George H.W. Bush’s inauguration and Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

The most effective means of ensuring that exported sensitive dual-use technology did not end up in weapons projects would have been post-installation checks, i.e. on-site inspections.

But Gonzalez said the Reagan and Bush I administrations seemed unconcerned about ultimate uses and destinations.

“Out of the total 771 export licenses approved for Iraq between 1985 and 1990, only one post-installation check was conducted. Even then Iraq was warned well in advance of the visit,” Gonzalez said. And, he added, the inspectors neither spoke nor read Arabic.

In his July 1992 statement, Gonzalez asserted, ”Any claim that the U.S. may have ‘inadvertently’ helped to arm Iraq is a smokescreen to obscure the massive blunder that occurred during the coddling of Hussein.”

He added, “Once you understand the context of the decision to provide financial assistance and technology to Iraq, you will understand that it was U.S. policy to accommodate Saddam Hussein’s military ambitions.”

But the full story of how the Reagan and Bush I administrations fed Saddam’s appetite for weapons of mass destruction may never be known, since Saddam was sent to the gallows before he could say too much.

Original article posted here.

He wasn't so dumb after all, so he must be killed

The speech that made the U.S hate Saddam

This speech was delivered by Saddam Hussein to the Amman Summitt meeting on Feb. 24, 1990. Present were the heads of state of the key Arab allies of the United States: the president of Egypt and the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The president of Syria was also present. In its sweeping proposals for Arab unity against U.S.-Israeli domination, it was a blunt challenge to imperialism. It is this speech that was the flash point of the U.S.-U.N. aggression, not the Kuwait crisis which was engineered in response.

Since it is difficult in a meeting such as this to deal with all that is negative or positive in international developments during 1989 and prior to then, and during the period from the beginning of 1990, you might share my opinion that discussions should deal with the most urgent and important of these issues and within the limits of time allowed us.

Among the most important developments since the international conflict in World War II has been the fact that some countries which used to enjoy broad international influence, such as France and Britain, have declined, while the influence and impact of two countries expanded until they became the two superpowers among the countries of the world--I mean the United States and the Soviet Union. Of course, with these results, two axes have developed: the Western axis under the leadership of the United States, with its known capitalist approach and its imperialist policy; and the East bloc under the leadership of the Soviet Union and its communist philosophy.

Among the results of World War II: The Zionist state has become a reality, and the original owners of the land, the Palestinians, have become refugees. While the imperialist Western world helped the expansionist scheme and aggression of the Zionist entity in 1967, the communist bloc sided with the Arabs in the concept of balance of interests in the context of the global competition between the two blocs, and sought to secure footholds for the East Bloc against the Western interests in the Arab homeland. The East bloc, led by the USSR, supported the Arabs' basic rights, including their rights in the Arab-Zionist conflict. The global policy continued on the basis of the existence of two poles that were balanced in term of force. They are the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR.

And suddenly, the situation changed in a dramatic way. The USSR turned to tackle its domestic problems after relinquishing the process of continuous conflict and its slogans. The USSR shifted from the balanced position with the United States in a practical manner, although it has not acknowledged this officially so far. The USSR went to nurse the wounds that were inflicted on it as a result of the principles and mistaken policy it followed for such a long time, and as a result of the wave of change it embarked on, which began to depart from the charted course. It has become clear to everyone that the United States has emerged in a superior position in international politics. This superiority will be demonstrated in the United States readiness to play such a role more than in the predicted guarantees for its continuation.

We believe that the world can fill the vacuum resulting from the recent changes and find a new balance in the global arena by developing new perspectives and reducing or adding to this or that force. The forces that laid the ground for filling the vacuum and for the emergence of the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, after World War II at the expense of France, Britain, and Germany can develop new forces, which we expect will be in Europe or Japan. America will lose its power just as quickly as it gained it by frightening Europe, Japan, and other countries through the continuous hinting at the danger of the USSR and communism. The United States will lose its power as the fierce competition for gaining the upper hand between the two superpowers and their allies recedes.

However, we believe that the United States will continue to depart from the restrictions that govern the rest of [the] world throughout the next five years until new forces of balance are formed. Moreover, the undisciplined and irresponsible behavior will engender hostility and grudges if it embarks on rejected stupidities....

We all remember, as does the whole world, the circumstances under which the United States deployed and bolstered its fleets in the Gulf. Most important of these circumstances: The war that was raging between Iraq and Iran; Iranian aggression had extended to other Arabian Gulf countries, most notably the sisterly state of Kuwait. At the time, beyond the conflicting views regarding the presence of foreign fleets in Arab territorial waters and foreign bases on their territory and their repercussions for pan-Arab security, that excessive deployment was somehow comprehensible. But now, and against the background of the recent world developments and the cessation of hostilities between Iraq and Iran, and with Kuwait no longer being the target of Iranian aggression, the Arabian Gulf states, including Iraq, and even the entire Arabs would have liked the Americans to state their intention to withdraw their fleets.

Had they said that under the same circumstances and causes they would have returned to the Gulf, it might have been understandable also. But U.S. officials are making such statements as if to show that their immediate and longer-term presence in Gulf waters and, maybe, on some of its territory, is not bound to a time frame. These suspect policies give Arabs reason to feel suspicious of U.S. policies and intentions as to whether it is officially and actually interested in a termination of the Iraq-lran war and thus in contributing to much needed regional stability.

The other side is the immigration of Soviet Jews to the occupied Palestinian land. How can we explain the Americans' support and backing for Jewish immigration to the occupied Arab territories, except that the United States does not want peace as it claims and declares. If it really and actually wants peace, the United States would not have encouraged Israel and the aggressive trends in it to adopt such policies, which enhance Israel's capability to commit aggression and carry out expansion.

We the Arabs, proceeding from a long-standing friendship with the Soviet Union, did not expect that the Soviets would give in to this U.S. pressure in such a way that it would lead to these grave consequences for the Arabs and their pan-Arab security. As we tackle these challenges, it would be just as compromising to the destiny and cause of the Arabs to feel fear as it would be to be lax in our evaluating and working out a reaction to them. Therefore, there is no place among the ranks of good Arabs for the fainthearted who would argue that as a superpower, the United States will be the decisive factor, and others have no choice but to submit. At the same time, there is no place in our midst for those who fail to take note of recent developments that have added to U.S. strength, thus prompting it to the possible commission of follies against the interests and national security of the Arabs--either directly or by fanning and encouraging conflicts detrimental to the Arabs, irrespective of their source. We are only making the point that the Arabs seek peace and justice throughout the world and want to forge relations of friendship with those who show respect to what friendship is all about--be it the United States or any other nation. It is only natural that the Arabs take a realistic approach to the new posture and power of the United States that has led the Soviet Union to abandon its erstwhile position of influence. However, America must respect the Arabs and respect their rights, and should not interfere in their internal affairs under any cover....

Against the backdrop of the vital issue related to the substance of national Arab security, the question arises as to what we the Arabs have to do.... It has been proven that Arabs are capable of being influential when they make a decision and set their minds to it for actual application purposes. We have much evidence of how effective they can be; for example, the joint Iraqi-Saudi resolution of August 6,1980, and the warning the two countries issued together that embassies must not be moved to Jerusalem, one of whose direct results in less than a month--the duration of the warning--was not only that the concerned countries did not transfer their embassies to Jerusalem, but also that embassies that had already long been transferred to the city returned to Tel Aviv.

The reason the United States stays in the Gulf is that the Gulf has become the most important spot in the region and perhaps the whole world due to developments in international policy, the oil market, and increasing demands from the United States, Europe, Japan, Eastern Europe, and perhaps the Soviet Union, for this product. The country that will have the greatest influence in the region through the Arab Gulf and its oil will maintain its superiority as a superpower without an equal to compete with it. This means that if the Gulf people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arab Gulf region will be governed by the United States's will. If the Arabs are not alerted and the weakness persists, the situation could develop to the extent desired by the United States; that is, it would fix the amount of oil and gas produced in each country and sold to this or that country in the world. Prices would also be fixed in line with a special perspective benefitting U.S. interests and ignoring the interests of others.

If this possibility is there and it is convincing, those who are convinced by it must conclude that peace in the Middle East is remote from the United States point of view because U.S. strategy, according to this analysis, needs an aggressive Israel, not a peaceful one. Peace between Iraq and Iran could be far off as long as Iran does not react favorably from an aware and responsible position and with the peace initiatives proposed by Iraq. The region could witness inter-Arab wars or controlled wars between the Arabs and some of their neighbors, if tangible results are not achieved on the basis of the principles of noninterference in others' internal affairs and nonuse of military force in inter-Arab relations.

Agreement should be reached over clear and widespread pan-Arab cooperation programs among Arab countries in the economic, political, and educational fields, as well as other fields. Love and peace of mind will take the place of suspicion, doubt, mistrust, and giving in to information and speculation propagated by rumor-mongers, such as prejudiced Westerners and some rootless Arabs.

Brothers, the weakness of a big body lies in its bulkiness. All strong men have their Achilles' hell. Therefore, irrespective of our known stand on terror and terrorists, we saw that the United States as a superpower departed Lebanon immediately when some Marines were killed, the very men who are considered to be the most prominent symbol of its arrogance. The whole U.S. administration would have been called into question had the forces that conquered Panama continued to be engaged by the Panamanian armed forces. The United States has been defeated in some combat arenas for all the forces it possesses, and it has displayed signs of fatigue, frustration, and hesitation when committing aggression on other peoples' rights and acting from motives of arrogance and hegemony. This is a natural outcome for those who commit aggression on other peoples' rights. Israel, once dubbed the invincible country, has been defeated by some of the Arabs. The resistance put up by Palestinian and Lebanese militia against Israeli invasion forces in 1982 and before that the heroic Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 have had a more telling psychological and actual impact than all Arab threats. Further, the threat to use Arab oil in 1973 during the October war proved more effective than all political attempts to protest or to beg at the gates of American decision-making centers. The stones in occupied Palestine now turn into a virtual and potentially fatal bullet if additional requirements are made available. It is the best proof of what is possible and indeed gives us cause to hold our heads high.

Just as Israel controls interests to put pressure on the United States administration, hundreds of billions invested by Arabs in the United States and the West may be similarly deployed. Indeed, for instance, some of these investments may be diverted to the USSR and East European countries. It may prove even more profitable than investment in the West, which has grown saturated with its national resources. Such a course of action may yield inestimable benefits for the Arabs and their national causes. Our purported weakness does not lie in our ideological and hereditary characteristics. Contemporary experience has shown our nation to be distinguished and excellent, just as our nation's history over the centuries has shown this to be the case. Our purported weakness lies in a lack of mutual trust among ourselves, our failure to concentrate on the components of our strength, and our failure to focus on our weaknesses with a view to righting them. Let our motto be: All of us are strong as long as we are united, and all of us are weak as long as we are divided.

Original article posted here.

Teaching Death and Destruction to Children

Collateral damage—Texas child hangs himself after viewing Saddam Hussein lynching

A 10-year-old boy in Texas hanged himself from his bunk bed in an apparent accident after having seen the execution of Saddam Hussein on television. The child of Guatemalan immigrants, Sergio Pelico was found dead on New Year’s Eve by a relative who was watching the children while their mother Sara Pelico DeLeon was at work. He had pulled a slip-knotted rope around his neck, mimicking what he had seen on TV.

Essentially the same tragic scenario was played out in at least three other countries in the wake of the televised broadcast from the Iraqi execution chamber. Also on New Year’s Eve, a 9-year-old Pakistani boy, Mubashar Ali, hanged himself with the help of his 10-year-old sister. Three days later, 15-year-old Moon Moon Karmarkar hanged herself from a ceiling fan in the suburbs of Kolkata, India. And in Saudi Arabia, a 12-year-old boy in Hafr al-Baten, near the Kuwaiti border, climbed on a chair and hung himself with metal wire from a door frame in his family’s home. Security officials said that the child had watched coverage of Saddam Hussein’s hanging.

Few details of the Pelico family’s circumstances have been reported, but those that are available are typical of working class immigrants from Central America and other countries, who live in Houston and cities across the US. Reliance on an extended family network, a father who lives apart from the family in New Jersey, no resources for childcare—while the mother works on a Sunday—other than neighboring relatives looking in, tragically in this instance, not often enough. Nor does Pelico’s family have enough money for a funeral; the family is trying to raise money to bury the boy in Guatemala.

Family members have connected Sergio’s tragic death with the TV news coverage of Saddam Hussein’s execution, aired intensively in the days following the Iraqi ex-leader’s state killing. One of the boy’s uncles, Julio Gustavo said that Sergio was upset by what he saw and had to be reassured that the killing was “OK,” because Saddam was “real bad.”

“I don’t think he thought it was real,” Gustavo said. “They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?”

Indeed, this was apparently a question that the television executives themselves debated in the wake of the lynching, attempting to determine whether and how much of the video to show. In the end, prurient sensationalism won out, and the footage of Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck was broadcast, together with incessant references to the “butcher of Baghdad.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter/Reuters, the networks ABC and CBS said they wouldn’t air the full execution if the video became available. “We’re very aware that we’re coming into people’s living rooms and that there could be children watching,” CBS News senior vice-president Linda Mason said.

Be that as it may, the gruesome footage was still shown. If anything, the impact of the somewhat abbreviated version is more ghastly—for what it attempts to hide. And the spectacle of the hanging was supplemented by images of sections of the Shia Iraqi population rejoicing.

However, the effort to turn Hussein’s execution into a triumph for the American occupation has backfired. After limiting itself to showing excerpts from the official video, the television networks were upstaged by an unedited video taken by an Iraqi official with a cell phone and circulated over the Internet.

In this version, ski-masked guards can be heard taunting Hussein, shouting the name of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, making it obvious that this was a sectarian lynching. Hussein’s relative dignity under the circumstances has made him into a martyr across the Arab world, even where he had been previously been viewed with hostility.

No doubt another viewer in Texas was watching the video of Hussein’s execution over New Year’s weekend. While reportedly asleep on his ranch in Crawford Texas at the time of the execution, President Bush knew it would be going forward even though his administration has since tried to distance itself from the timing of the botched event. His official comment was that Hussein’s show trial had been fair, and that he had received “the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.”

In celebrating the lynching of Hussein as justice, the administration, as in so many other things, stands in sharp contradiction to the broad sentiments of the American people. This one more grisly spectacle produced by the US occupation of Iraq was viewed in the US, as around the world, with revulsion and shame.

And, in the case of Sergio Pelico, the crimes carried out by US imperialism in Iraq have produced a tragic echo in the US itself in the death of a young boy.

Original article posted here.

Saudi child hangs himself imitating Saddam's execution

Riyadh, Jan 9: In a third incident of its kind, a 12-year-old Saudi boy accidentally hanged himself while imitating the way former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was executed, media reports said Monday.

Sultan Abdulla al-Shammari hanged himself Sunday in an annexe at his home in Hafr al-Baten, close to the Iraqi border, Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper reported.

Sultan's brother came back from the mosque to find him hanging from a rope that he had fixed on an iron door. Two of his younger brothers were sitting helpless beside the dead body.

The older brother unhooked Sultan and took him to the hospital but the child was already dead.

A police investigation into the case is underway.

Two similar cases occurred last week when a 10-year-old boy in Texas and another nine-year-old in Pakistan hanged themselves the same way.

Saddam's execution on Dec 30, 2006 was broadcast on several Arab and Western satellite TV channels.

Original article posted here.

For Murderer to Martyr: Look what we've done! (But where'd Saddam get those chemical weapons from, Donald?)

Saddam and cousin discussed killing thousands: tapes

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein and his cousin "Chemical Ali" discussed how chemical weapons would exterminate thousands before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.

"I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all and damn anyone who is going to say anything," a voice identified by prosecutors as "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majeed is heard saying.

"Yes it's effective, especially on those who don't wear a mask immediately, as we understand," a voice identified as Saddam is heard saying on another tape.

"Sir, does it exterminate thousands?" a voice asks back.

"Yes, it exterminates thousands and forces them not to eat or drink and they will have to evacuate their homes without taking anything with them, until we can finally purge them," the voice identified as Saddam answers.

With Saddam's chair empty, Majeed and five other Baath party officials were being tried for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign in northern Kurdistan.

Prosecutors said 180,000 people were killed, many of them gassed. Many Kurds regret the chief suspect can no longer face justice for his role in the campaign against them, but they hope others share his fate on the gallows.

Saddam was hanged on December 30 after being convicted in an earlier trial for his role in killing 148 Shi'ites in the 1980s.

Majeed, who faces charges of genocide, is considered the main enforcer of the Anfal campaign.

Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi, in his first order of business, formally dropped charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Saddam. He cut off the microphones when Majeed stood up and started to read the Koran in tribute to his former chief.

"In virtue of the confirmation of the death of defendant Saddam Hussein, the court decided to finally stop legal procedures against defendant Saddam Hussein according to the Iraqi Penal Procedures Law," Ureybi told the court.

Looking tired and sporting an uncharacteristic white stubble, Majeed refused to take his chair and insisted on reading a line from the Koran as he stood behind Saddam's empty chair.

"Make him sit down, make him sit down," Ureybi ordered the bailiffs.

Saddam's hanging has turned him into a martyr in much of the Arab world, overshadowing memories of his often brutal rule.

Original article posted here.

More of our disgrace

Hey, weaz has an idea! Let's hang Saddam Hussein after a kangaroo court by puppet installed judges, film his hanging, let his enemies take his body, slit his throat, record it and post in on google video to show how perverted and distorted WE and our PUPPET LACKIES are!

And we expect to win this war and show our moral superiority? Right.

Yes, he was broken, but not bowed

Robert Fisk: The whole bloody thing was obscene
Butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn execution

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq.

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, "The whole bloody thing was obscene." Quite so. On this occasion, I'll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.

Of course, Saddam gave his victims no trial; his enemies had no opportunity to hear the evidence against them; they were mown down into mass graves, not handed a black scarf to prevent the hangman's noose from burning their neck as it broke their spine. Justice was "done", even if a trifle cruelly. But this is not the point. Regime change was done in our name and Saddam's execution was a direct result of our crusade for a "new" Middle East. To watch a uniformed American general - despite the indiscipline of more and more US troops in Iraq - wheedling and whining at a press conference that his men were very courteous to Saddam until the very moment of handover to Muqtada al-Sadr's killers could only be appreciated with the blackest of humour.

Note how the best "our" Iraqi government's officials could do by way of reply was to order an "enquiry" to find out how mobile phones were taken into the execution room - not to identify the creatures who bawled abuse at Saddam Hussein in his last moments. How very Blairite of the al-Maliki government to search for the snitches rather than the criminals who abused their power. And somehow, they got away with it; acres of agency copy from the Green Zone reporters were expended on the Iraqi government's consternation, as if al- Maliki did not know what had transpired in the execution chamber. His own officials were present - and did nothing.

That's why the "official" videotape of the hanging was silent - and discreetly faded out - before Saddam was abused. It was cut at this point, not for reasons of good taste but because that democratically elected Iraqi government - whose election was such "great news for the people of Iraq" in the words of Lord Blair - knew all too well what the world would make of the terrible seconds that followed. Like the lies of Bush and Blair - that everything in Iraq was getting better when in fact it was getting worse - butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn judicial execution.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that the hanging of Saddam mimicked, in ghostly, miniature form, the manner of his own regime's bestial executions. Saddam's own hangman at Abu Ghraib, a certain Abu Widad, would also taunt his victims before pulling the trap door lever, a last cruelty before extinction. Is this where Saddam's hangmen learned their job? And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki's militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam's trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?

I would not ask this question were it not for the sense of profound shock I experienced when touring the Abu Ghraib prison after "Iraq's liberation" and meeting the US-appointed senior Iraqi medical officer at the jail. When his minders were distracted, he admitted to me he had also been the senior "medical officer" at Abu Ghraib when Saddam's prisoners were tortured to death there. No wonder our enemies-become-friends are turning into our enemies again.

But this is not just about Iraq. More than 35 years ago, I was being driven home from school by my Dad when his new-fangled car radio broadcast a report of the dawn hanging of a man at - I think - Wormwood Scrubs. I remember the unpleasant look of sanctity that came over my father's face when I asked him if this was right. "It's the law, Old Boy," he said, as if such cruelties were immutable to the human race. Yet this was the same father who, as a young soldier in the First World War, was threatened with court martial because he refused to command the firing party to execute an equally young Australian soldier.

Maybe only older men, sensing their failing powers, enjoy the prerogatives of execution. More than 10 years ago, the now-dead President Hrawi of Lebanon and the since-murdered prime minister Rafiq Hariri signed the death warrants of two young Muslim men. One of them had panicked during a domestic robbery north of Beirut and shot a Christian man and his sister. Hrawi - in the words of one of his top security officers at the time - "wanted to show he could hang Muslims in a Christian area". He got his way. The two men - one of whom had not even been present in the house during the robbery - were taken to their public execution beside the main Beirut-Jounieh highway, swooning with fear at the sight of their white-hooded executioners, while the Christian glitterati, heading home from night-clubs with their mini-skirted girlfriends, pulled up to watch the fun.

I suggested at the time, much to Hrawi's disgust, that this should become a permanent feature of Beirut's nightlife, that regular public hangings on the Mediterranean Corniche would bring in tens of thousands more tourists, especially from Saudi Arabia where you could catch the odd beheading only at Friday prayers.

No, it's not about the wickedness of the hanged man. Unlike the Thane of Cawdor, Saddam did not "set forth a deep repentance" on the scaffold. We merely shamed ourselves in an utterly predictable way. Either you support the death penalty - whatever the nastiness or innocence of the condemned. Or you don't. C'est tout.

Original article posted here.

One Last Hurrah for weazl's dead horse (and petty tyrant)

'Illegal' Execution Enrages Arabs

By Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

01/02/07 -- - BAGHDAD, Jan 2 (IPS) - The execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein carried out at the start of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha has angered Iraqis and others across the Middle East.*

Saddam Hussein was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, who was sacrificed by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God.

Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the Kurdish judge who had first presided over Saddam Hussein's trial told reporters that the execution at the beginning of Eid was illegal under Iraqi law, besides violating the customs of Islam.

Amin said that under Iraqi law "no verdict should be implemented during the official holidays or religious festivals."

While Iraqi Shias, particularly those in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, view the execution as a sign that Allah supports them, many Sunnis across Iraq and the Middle East now see Saddam Hussein as a great martyr.

"Saddam Hussein is the greatest martyr of the century," Ahmed Hanousy, a student in Amman in Jordan told IPS. A 50 year-old man in Baghdad said "the Americans and Iranians meant to insult all Arabs by this execution."

Others see the execution in all sorts of ways. Sabriya Salih, a
55-year-old man from Baghdad who was evicted from his home by Shia death squads told IPS "I am happy for this end. I have too much to worry about now, but look what a holy death Saddam received."

Salih paused and added: "He died at the holiest moments of the year with pilgrims just finishing their pilgrimage ceremonies hailing "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) as if God meant to give him that glory."

In official expression of anger, Libya denounced the timing of the execution and announced three days of official mourning. Eid celebrations were cancelled. The government of Saudi Arabia also condemned the timing of the execution.

Many Iraqis said they were disturbed by the footage just before the execution. "They surprised us by showing the video," 40-year-old Um Sammy told IPS in Baghdad. "I was busy preparing sweets for my guests when I heard my little kids crying in terror. All the children were terrified."

A nine-year-old girl from Fallujah who is a refugee in Baghdad said she cried when she saw the footage on television. "Why did they do it in Eid? Why did they put it on TV to scare us?"

Later, shots of the execution taken by a witness from a mobile phone showed Saddam being taunted by his executioners in his final moments. The video has exacerbated tensions between Sunnis and Shias, who follow Islam in different ways.

First broadcast by al-Jazeera Sunday, the shots recorded someone praising Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr. Al-Sadr, founder of the Shia Dawa party and an uncle of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was executed by Saddam in 1980.

This, coupled with images of Saddam smiling at those taunting him from below the gallows, has evidently drawn widespread sympathy for Saddam. The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars issued a statement condemning the execution. The Association said this was an execution carried out by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "for the Americans."

The fact that those hanging Saddam praised al-Sadr is evidence that the Mehdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr controls at least a large portion of Iraq's security forces. This underscores Sunni views that the security forces have been deeply infiltrated by Shia militias.

A member of Saddam's defence team, Najib al-Nuaimi, told reporters the day after the execution that no Sunni lawyer was allowed among the witnesses at the execution. "This is not within normal procedures," al-Nuaimi said. He added that the execution was an act of revenge and carried out for political purposes.

"It is rather stupid of those in government and their American allies," a Sunni cleric in Ramadi told IPS. "They gifted Saddam the best death at the best moment of the year and enlisted him a hero by all measures."

Others were deeply offended by the move. A garbage collector who gave his name as Ali said he wept when he heard the news. "How could there be killing on such a day," he said. "He was 69 years old, and they could have just left him to die in his jail for God's sake."

Some Shias objected to the timing for their own reason. "They spoiled my pleasure of his execution by killing him like that," Ilwiya, a
35-year-old Shia woman from Washash village west of Baghdad told IPS. "Now he will be called a martyr because of the bad timing."

Thus far, violence continues unabated across Iraq following the execution. The U.S. military has been placed on high alert in anticipation of retaliatory attacks.

More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, and according to the Pentagon, the U.S. military is facing more than 100 attacks a day.

Original article posted here.

The apt analogy of the Bush Crime Family

Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness

Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity.

By Robert Parry

The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be – as the New York Times observed – the “triumphal bookend” to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of “major combat,” posing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1, 2003.

But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.

Still, Bush has done his family’s legacy a great service while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials.

He has silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.

Hussein now won’t be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used to produce the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can’t give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals.

Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush’s ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American “green light” or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?

Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie “Casino” in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush has now guaranteed that there will be no public tribunal where Hussein gives testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals, which could threaten the Bush Family legacy.

That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at the Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia’s late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.

Hussein's hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein's death effectively moots other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role.

[For details on what Hussein might have revealed, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com’s “Missing U.S.-Iraq History” or “The Secret World of Robert Gates.”]

Thrill of the Kill

Some observers think that Bush simply wanted the personal satisfaction of seeing Hussein hanged, which would not have happened if he had been sent to the Hague. As Texas governor, Bush sometimes took what appeared to be perverse pleasure at his power to execute prisoners.

In a 1999 interview with conservative writer Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine, Bush ridiculed convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker and her unsuccessful plea to Bush to spare her life.

Asked about Karla Faye Tucker’s clemency appeal, Bush mimicked what he claimed was the condemned woman’s message to him. “With pursed lips in mock desperation, [Bush said]: ‘Please don’t kill me.’”

But a more powerful motive was always Hussein’s potential threat to the Bush Family legacy if he ever had a forum where he could offer detailed testimony about the historic events of the past several decades.

Since stepping into the White House on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush has made it a top priority to conceal the history of his father’s 12 years as Vice President and President and to wrap his own presidency in a thick cloak of secrecy.

One of Bush’s first acts as President was to sign an executive order that blocked the scheduled release of historic records from his father’s years. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush expanded his secrecy mandate to grant his family the power to withhold those documents from the American public in perpetuity, passing down the authority to keep the secrets to future Bush generations.

So, even after George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are dead, those noted historians Jenna and Barbara Bush will control key government documents covering a 20-year swath of U.S. history.

Already, every document at the George H.W. Bush presidential library must not only be cleared for release by specialists at the National Archives and – if classified – by the affected agencies, but also by the personal representatives of both the senior and junior George Bush.

With their backgrounds in secret societies like Skull and Bones – and with George H.W. Bush’s work at the CIA – the Bushes are keenly aware of the power that comes from controlling information. By keeping crucial facts from the American people, the Bushes feel they can turn the voters into easily manipulated children.

When there is a potential rupture of valuable information, the Bushes intervene, turning to influential friends to discredit some witness or relying on the U.S. military to make the threat go away. The Bushes have been helped immeasurably, too, by the credulity and cowardice of the modern U.S. news media and the Democratic Party.

What Can Be Done

Still, even with Hussein’s execution, there are actions that the American people can take to finally recover the lost history of the 1980s.

The U.S. military is now sitting on a treasure trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration exploited these documents to discredit the United Nations over the “oil for food” scandal of the 1990s, ironically when Hussein wasn’t building weapons of mass destruction. But the Bush administration has withheld the records from the 1980s when Hussein was producing chemical and biological weapons.

In 2004, for instance the CIA released the so-called Duelfer report, which acknowledged that the administration’s pre-invasion assertions about Hussein hiding WMD stockpiles were “almost all wrong.” But a curious feature of the report was that it included a long section about Hussein’s abuse of the U.N.’s “oil for food” program, although the report acknowledged that the diverted funds had not gone to build illegal weapons.

Meanwhile, the report noted the existence of a robust WMD program in the 1980s but offered no documentary perspective on how that operation had occurred and who was responsible for the delivery of crucial equipment and precursor chemicals. In other words, the CIA’s WMD report didn’t identify the non-Iraqis who made Iraq’s WMD arsenal possible.

One source who has seen the evidence told me that it contains information about the role of Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who has been identified as a key link between the CIA and Iraq for the procurement of dangerous weapons in the 1980s. But that evidence has remained locked away.

With the Democrats taking control of Congress on Jan. 4, 2007, there could finally be an opportunity to force out more of the full story, assuming the Democrats don’t opt for their usual course of putting “bipartisanship” ahead of oversight and truth.

The American people also could demand that the surviving members of Hussein’s regime be fully debriefed on their historical knowledge before their voices also fall silent either from natural causes or additional executions.

But the singular figure who could have put the era in its fullest perspective – and provided the most damning evidence about the Bush Family’s role – has been silenced for good, dropped through a trap door of a gallows and made to twitch at the end of a noose fashioned from hemp.

The White House announced that George W. Bush didn’t wait up for the happy news of Hussein’s hanging. After the U.S. military turned Hussein over to his Iraqi executioners, Bush went to bed at his Crawford, Texas, ranch and slept through the night.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Original article posted here.

The Truth from Ahmedinejad about Saddam

Ahmadinejad: Saddam's execution shows true nature of US policies

Tehran (dpa) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein showed the true nature of the United States policies.

"The execution showed that the final destiny of relying on the US is not suitable," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Ahvaz, southern Iran, broadcast live on the news network Khabar.

While referring to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the president said that the US fully supported and encouraged Saddam as long as he was standing against Iran's Islamic revolution but later dropped him "after he was no longer of any use."

He said that also the late Iranian king Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi had the same destiny and "eventually perished in humiliating exile."

"The regional states should learn a lesson and like Iran, solely rely on the will of its people rather on corrupt powers," Ahmadinejad said.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam-Hossein Hadad-Adel on Tuesday welcomed the execution of Saddam but said the former dictator "was killed to save the US."

Tehran believes that Saddam's swift execution was aimed at not allowing him to disclose the alleged US role or even approval of some of the late Iraqi leader's crimes in the 1980s. // © 2006 DPA

Back to Reality: More on the Damned Saddam Lynch Mob

Sectarian Saddam Insults Rile Middle East
Sound on Video of Shiites Mocking Saddam Hussein Before His Hanging Likely to Fuel Sunni Anger

TERRY McCARTHY

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31, 2006 — The latest video of Saddam's execution, with a soundtrack that shows that his guards were taunting him up to the last moment before the lever was pulled and he fell to his death, has been burning through cyberspace in Iraq and across the Middle East.

It is not only the bad taste of mocking a man about to die that has been getting angry reactions here: The worst aspect is the sectarian nature of the insults.

The guards shout "Moqtada, Moqtada," as Saddam is reciting a prayer with the noose around his neck: They are referring to Moqtada al Sadr, the extremist Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army is the most feared militia in Iraq, widely thought to operate death squads targeting Sunnis.

When Saddam responds angrily to them, saying that such behavior "has torn Iraq apart," he is voicing an opinion that most Sunnis — but also many moderate Shiites — would agree with.

Saddam is dead and buried now, but the sectarian divide in Iraq yawns ever wider. For months, the United States has been leaning on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to do more to crack down on the abuses of the Mahdi army and other militias. By allowing their representatives to seemingly turn the execution of a former president — however reviled — into a crude exercise in sectarian vengeance, Maliki's government may only further alienate Sunnis.

That is the reason there has been strong reaction from across the Arab world, and not just in Iraq. The majority of Arabs are Sunnis, and they see the apparently unstoppable rise of Shiites in Iraq, along with the growing strength of Iran, which is majority Shiite, as a serious threat.

It is almost four years since the United States deposed Saddam Hussein and his minority Sunni government, and then went on to alienate the Sunni ruling class by dismissing many of them from their posts in government and the army. The consequences of those moves are still working their way out — and not only in a bloody sectarian conflict in Iraq.

Fear is now spreading rapidly across the entire Middle East at the specter of rising Shiite triumphalism — of which, to many, Saddam's execution was a graphic example.

Original article posted here.

Martyred and Memorialized: the Galvanizing Effect of the Death Penalty

Hundreds Flock to See Saddam's Gravesite

By STEVEN R. HURS

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Hundreds of Iraqis flocked to the village where Saddam Hussein was born on Sunday to see the deposed leader buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his execution.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for Saddam's hanging, and the bloodshed on Saturday was not far off the daily average - 92 from bombings and death squads. Also Saturday, a roadside bomb killed one American soldier and wounded two in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday. At least 2,999 U.S. service members have been killed since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

At Saddam's funeral, dozens of relatives and others, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn in Ouja. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.

``I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime,'' said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen who attended the interment in the village just outside Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Some 2,000 Iraqis traveled to the village as well.

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said ``the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood.''

``God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end,'' Natiq said.

Police on Saturday blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Saddam was captured in an underground hide-out near Ouja on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops.

His burial place is about two miles from the graves of his sons, Odai and Qusai, in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

The head of Saddam's Albu-Nassir's clan said the body showed no signs of mistreatment.

``We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications. There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office's director,'' the clan chief, Sheik al-Nidaa, told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. ``We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn't see any unnatural signs on his body.''

On Saturday, Iraqis watched television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

``He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians,'' Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: ``You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.''

``I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans,'' Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

``God damn you,'' the guard said.

``God damn you,'' responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the ``Shahada,'' a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.

Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

The floor dropped out of the gallows.

``The tyrant has fallen,'' someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.

Then came another voice: ``Let him swing for three minutes.''

The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr.

While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.

Some Arab governments denounced the timing the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid.

Haider Hamed, a 34-year-old candy store owner in east Baghdad, wondered what would really change after Saddam's execution.

``He's gone, but our problems continue,'' said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges. ``We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite.''

Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged.

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster - and therefore didn't make much difference.
``Nothing really changes,'' said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30. ``The militias run everything now, not Saddam.''

Original article published here.