Blogs of War

This isn’t surprising even with all the conflicting news we’ve seen in the past 48 hours.

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. The time was agreed upon during a meeting between U.S. and Iraqi officials, said the adviser, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“The time has been agreed upon. It will be done by six o’clock in the morning,” the adviser said. “The agreement was reached during a meeting between Iraqi and American officials. Saddam will be handed over shortly before the execution.”

Now would be a good time to review Saddam’s many accomplishments:

Saddam Hussein’s regime has carried out frequent summary executions, including:

* 4,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 1984;
* 3,000 prisoners at the Mahjar prison from 1993-1998;
* 2,500 prisoners were executed between 1997-1999 in a “prison cleansing campaign;”
* 122 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/March 2000;
* 23 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2001; and
* At least 130 Iraqi women were beheaded between June 2000 and April 2001.

There’s more. Much more:

Saddam has had approximately 40 of his own relatives murdered. Allegations of prostitution are used to intimidate opponents of the regime and have been used by the regime to justify the barbaric beheading of women. There have been documented chemical attacks by the regime, from 1983 to 1988, resulting in some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths.

Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam’s 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths. o 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.

But facts won’t convince Romesh Ratnesar at Time magazine who believes that Americans and Iraqis should feel ashamed in the face of Saddam Hussein’s nobility:

Ultimately, the U.S. may be right to allow the Iraqis to decide Saddam’s fate for themselves. But this is no time for triumphalism. It should shame both Americans and Iraqis to hear a man as repugnant as Saddam presenting himself as a uniter and imploring Iraqis “not to hate.” Executing Saddam won’t extinguish those fires of hatred any more than it will relieve the pain of his victims. Only when Iraqis build a decent, humane society at peace with itself will they be able to erase the memory of the crimes for which Saddam died.

It takes an odd combination of naivete and guts to elevate a transparent propaganda attempt like Saddam’s last letter to that level. Why is the left always so eager to cede the moral high ground to these monsters? Some of us know better:

In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf called Saddam’s execution “God’s gift to Iraqis.”

“Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves,” said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI, a dominant party in al-Maliki’s coalition. “Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam.”

I prefer to think of it as justice rather than revenge but whatever you call it Iraq’s Path to Democracy is about to get another key date.

Related:
Halabja: Bloody Friday
Michelle Malkin: Saddam goes court-shopping; the clock ticks

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