Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

[cal04]

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

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

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

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

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece

[az chela]

1. This makes me so sick!!!!!!!!!!

How dare bushco judge anyone or order anyone killed.
He is evil incarnate and should be imprisoned for the rest of his life,along with all his evil cohorts including cheney,rumsfield,rice,and anyone associated with them.
You will all get yours,hopefully sooner than later,you freaking bunch of murderers

[Benhurst]

2. Recommended #1

[IndianaGreen]

3. Robert Fisk is the premier Western correspondent in the Middle East

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

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece

Bush got his jollies from another execution under his aegis. Perhaps he mocked Saddam as he mocked Karla Faye Tucker. The only thing is that Bush won't have Saddam to parade or execute anymore. The great bogeyman of Iraq is dead, a butcher in life, he has become a martyr in death.

Meanwhile, the deaths and destruction will continue on unabated in Iraq until such day as we withdraw our troops, or are driven out.

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Good read.!b n/t