From his letter of Jan 5 it appears that Mr. Rafi Aamer is under the impression that all those who have written on Saddam’s hanging did not want to see him hanged. On the contrary, there is no love lost on that account. People, all over the world are simply feeling frustrated to see that the bigger thugs are once again free to do more of the same after hanging the smaller thug in a hurry on Eid day. It would be equivalent to hanging Bush or Cheney on Christmas day after going through a quick and dirty half baked case in a kangaroo court run by a few puppets. I think, Mr. Aamer missed the point totally and completely. 

Mr. Aamer has further commented on the comparison of Abu Gharaib with Pakistani prisons. He is quite correct in saying what he has stated. But, he has ignored the fact that Pakistan is not a country that claims to be the leader of the world in setting the standards of morality – but the US is. Let us not forget for a moment that the US administration, using the high tech weapons has killed more Iraqis just in 4 years than what Saddam could in 24. That is not including all those killed during 15 years of sanctions, some say, the death toll is as high as 1.4 million. I don’t blame Mr. Aamer  for not giving any Brownie points to Saddam, I hope he is not saving them for Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi and Wolfie.

Anarticles from Kerala, India, appeared on CounterCurrents, had this heading:

Saddam Becomes A Martyr Of Imperialist Resistance by Karthika Thampan

. A short excerpt from this articles is as follows:

At death, Saddam became a unifier here in Kerala, thousands of miles away from Iraq. What was that unified the people of Kerala, in their grief and anger? Was that because Saddam was a Muslim? No, muslim population is just 20%. Was that because Saddam was a great leader? No, thousands of expatriate Keralites working in Kuwait lost their belongings and fled in panic in Saddam's Kuwait misadventure. Were they ignorant of Saddam's genocide of Shias and Kurds? No, Kerala has a very vigilant media and much has been written and read about Saddam's atrocities. Still thousands of miles away from Iraq a people grieved and shouted angry slogans against American imperialism.
All the television channels described Saddam's death as martyrdom. It wont be any different in the morning papers as they come out tomorrow morning. People of Kerala, took the execution of Saddam as martyrdom. It wont be surprising if Saddam is described as a martyr of Arab Nationalism. 

Here are excerpts from what Haroon Siddiqui wrote in the Toronto star, a few days ago on the lynch mob: 

There is even criticism, from both the right and the left, of the Indian government's muted response to the execution, New Delhi's stance dictated by the increasingly close relations with the U.S., exemplified by the controversial nuclear co-operation agreement. If India is a key barometer of the non-Western world, and it often is, Saddam's hanging will come to haunt George W. Bush.

Far from being "an important milestone in Iraq becoming a democracy," as he so brazenly put it, the hanging is widely seen as an occupying power's jungle justice against a tyrant whose worst crimes were committed when he was an American ally but who was condemned only after he went against his benefactors.

Eric Margolis, In his latest article says:

U.S. buries truth

Saddam's execution eliminates main witness against accomplices

A few excerpts from this article:

Saddam's biggest crime was not killing rebellious Kurds or Shia. As ruler of the unnatural, British-created Frankenstein state Iraq, Saddam was forced to keep putting down rebellions.

Saintly Winston Churchill authorized the RAF to bomb Iraq's rebellious Kurdish tribesmen with poison gas -- exactly as Saddam later did. Saddam's most brutal repression of Kurds and Shia occurred when they revolted during Iraq's wars with Iran and the U.S.

Paul Wolf, a lawyer from Washington, who has worked on Saddam’s case, has this to say:

Details of the 1982 proceedings are sketchy and were not permitted into evidence in Saddam's own trial. This is the irony of the trial of Saddam Hussein - he was executed for approving the executions of others, 24 years before, without affording them fair trials, yet was not able to use transcripts of those trials in his own defense.

It seems more likely, however, that the timing was actually set by U.S. President George Bush, who'd expressed his hope that the Iraqi President would be executed by the end of the year. Bush reportedly keeps Saddam's own pistol, recovered when he was captured in an underground hideout in 2003, in the oval office, no doubt violating DC gun laws. It's doubtful George Bush has ever even heard of the Eid festivals. As we know, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

And, Tariq Ali from Britain had this to say:

That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who now occupy the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington (and the poison gas supplied by West Germany) that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. He deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this. The double standards applied by the West never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto who presided over a mountain of corpses (At least a million to accept the lowest figure) was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.

And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Fallujah; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad, the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantanamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And Aznar, currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University in Washington, DC , where the language of instruction is English of which he doesn't speak a word. His reward is a punishment for the students.

Saddam's hanging might send a shiver through the collective, if artificial, spine of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can Mubarak, or the Hashemite joker in Amman or the Saudi royals, as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with Washington.

Javed I. Chaudry

Jan 7, 07