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Saddam Hussein is still dead.
It ain't the fall that gets you, it's that sudden stop at the end. Ain't that right, Saddam. ... Saddam?
Hang down your head Mad Saddam
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head you madman
Poor boy you got to die.
Unfortunately the best video I've located so far stops short of showing the actual moment the floor drops away. If I can get my hands on the whole thing I'll post it and if I find a link to it I'll post that.
[Update 5:07P: Curt has the whole thing here.]
[Update 6:03P: Allahpundit has a better copy of the video here.]
It may be a good day for doing more linking than writing or excerpting, especially since I put off errands I was supposed to run yesterday in Saddam's honor. He'll still be dead when I get back from running them today.
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Don't even think about not reading Jeff Goldstein's post here. (Hat tip: Michelle)
See-Dubya has a good "thoughtful" post here as well.
Lest there be any doubt: I'm not "thoughtful." The son of a bitch needed killin' and I'm glad it's been done.
*** Woodward Releases Embargoed Chat with Saddam
Scott Ott
(2006-12-30) -- Reporter Bob Woodward said today he would soon allow his Washington Post editors to publish a secret interview he did in 2005 with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in which the dictator questioned U.S. President George Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq.
Mr. Woodward, who recently permitted his employer to publish a similar covert interview with the late former President Gerald Ford, said Mr. Hussein agreed to the no-holds-barred chat on the condition that the transcript be embargoed until after he “retired from public life,” which he did earlier today. ...
Read the whole thing, people. It's "fake but accurate."
*** Shake a Tree and You Can See How Many Nuts Fall Out
Joe Noory
Remaking the agnostic Saddam as a martyr, a citizen of a non-democracy decries his execution: This is something which can’t b accepted by the world. It’s against the democracy. It’s so brutal, coz bush & his dogs choose this day for the execution. This is an action is not against Saddam but against the entire Muslims, this will divide the world again.
Sanju, Dubai, UAE
For the record, the Iraqis tried and executed Saddam Hussein, not the US, and not an “International Court.” For the millionth time, sparky: a muslim can be guilty of a crime without you hanging in around the neck of every Muslim in the world.
The Guardian defers to Saddam's lawyers: The world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles. He did not lie when he declared his trial null.
NYT “blog” commenter Martha can’t wait to see a “leaked” video that implicates America in this: ...
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Gateway Pundit has a good roundup started here. I suspect he's not done with it.
*** WMD found hanging from rope in Iraq.
(2006-12-30) — The Pentagon announced this morning that a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) was found today in Baghdad, hanging from a rope on a platform.
“This particular WMD,” a Pentagon spokesman said, “is known to have killed thousands of Iraqis, as well as Iranians, Kuwaitis and some U.S. troops.” ...
*** Saddam’s Last Words: Three Different Versions (Plus Video)
Patterico
In updates at the end of this post, Hot Air has video of Saddam being prepared for execution. As a bonus, there are three different stories about what Saddam’s last words were. He said “Allahu Akbar,” or something about Palestine being Arab, or a sarcastic “Muqtada.” Take your pick.
It just goes to show: you can’t get a consistent story about anything out of Iraq — even when the event is videotaped. ...
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Two good posts, and worthy discussion in the comments, at Winds of Change. Click here and here.
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Heidi has some good quotes here.
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Two good ones from Captain Ed:
*** Bad Eagle Speaks about a bad man
Contributed by George Mellinger
Bad Eagle, aka David Yeagley has no tears for Saddam, none at all. The Left is myopic. It cannot, or will not see the larger picture. For all it's claims to promote the good of society, indeed a "well-ordered" society, the Left makes it's decisions on animalistic emotionalism. The immediate reactions. The gut level responses. Almost a Pavlov Dog reaction. Leftists are programmed, "trained" if you please, to respond to any sense of prepared, identified wrong, like the dog was trained to respond to the bell. The executed criminal is put to death without a chance to defend himself, physically. Therefore, it looks like a willing sacrifice, a cruel act of the executioners. Ah, but it's not the executioners. It's the law. The people made the law.
The people decided that certain individuals are not worthy of life amongst the people, even among other prisoners. The criminal is only getting exactly what he dealt out to others. ...
*** Post Mortem
John Hinderaker
Most reporters covering the execution of Saddam Hussein pay lip service to the fact that he was a "brutal dictator," but John Burns of the New York Times spent time in Iraq over the years, and did serious reporting from there. He observed first-hand the terror that Saddam imposed throughout his reign, and that experience shines through in his excellent article in today's Times: Feared and Pitiless; Fearful and Pitiable. It begins: NOBODY who experienced Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein could imagine, at the height of the terror he imposed on his countrymen, ever pitying him. Pitiless himself, he sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to miserable deaths, in the wars he started against Iran and Kuwait, in the torture chambers of his secret police, or on the gallows that became an industry at Abu Ghraib and other charnel houses across Iraq. Iraqis who were caught in his spider’s web of evil, and survived, tell of countless tortures, of the psychopathic pleasure the former dictator appeared to take from inflicting suffering and death. ...
*** Justice Executed
NRO Editors
Death on a scaffold is the fitting ending for Saddam Hussein. His was a carefully conceived career of mass murder and terror, and an Iraqi court, with Iraqi judges and Iraqi lawyers, has sat in judgment on it. True, they passed sentence on only a small portion of his crimes, and much of the evidence was still to be heard of the genocide he ordered for the Shiites and the Kurds. However, legalistic quibbles or conscientious objections are particularly misplaced. Iraq has long been a failed state, its true condition concealed by a run of dictators, each more brutal than the last.
Nothing can be said for Saddam except that he knew no better than the rule of the gun under which he had always lived. He was to make the most of the opportunities for crime open in the circumstances to anyone of vicious character like him. He was barely adult when revolutionary nationalists staged a coup, and killed virtually all the members of the family hitherto ruling Iraq. At that same time, Saddam declared himself a revolutionary nationalist, but in reality he too was a glorified hit man like the others. In due course, purposefully, he murdered his way to absolute power. As he went to his death, he may have recalled the 22 colleagues and rivals whom he accused of conspiracy with “U.S. imperialism” and whose hanging he one day personally supervised. ...
*** A few thoughts on Saddam’s execution
Austin Bay
A few “morning after” thoughts on Saddam’s execution.
The next to last thing Saddam ever expected was a hangman’s noose. The last thing he expected, of course, was a fair trial.
Saddam got both, and yes, despite Ramsey Clark’s clucks and howls, Saddam’s trial was fair. The toppled tyrant got to pose and parade and accuse. He took several pages from the Milosevic book of courtroom antics and dock theatrics, then added a few of his own. Saddam certainly got more than his fair share of global air time.
With Saddam’s execution the myth of the Strong Man takes another major hit. We should all be thankful. The Arab Strong Man, the Serb Strong Man, the Albanian Strong Man, the Somalia Strong Man, the Soviet Strong Man, the fill-in-the-blank Strong Man — the thugs in charge claim that obedience and submission lead to ideological or ethnic or nationalist or tribal or fill-in-the-blank victory. It’s a scam, of course, a scam to obtain and maintain their own power. Ultimately, the tyrant’s show is narcissicism empowered by ruthlessness and the secret police. Saddam’s comment on his way to the gallows is indicative: “On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, “Saddam said, ‘Iraq without me is nothing.’” (From Newsweek’s article which interviewed the videographer who filmed Saddam’s execution.)
The Strong Man expects to die in one of two ways — with a nine millimeter ballot (ie, assassination) — or old age. That has certainly been the case in the Middle East. A public, legal trial followed by court-sentenced execution? That isn’t going to happen unless…unless a democracy replaces a tyranny. This is astonishing news — history altering news. For centuries the terrible yin-yang of tyrant and terrorist has trapped the Middle East. In 2003 the US-led coalition began the difficult but worthy effort of breaking that tyrant’s and terrorist’s trap, and offering another choice in the politically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East.
Saddam’s demise serves as object lesson and example. In late 2003 every Middle Eastern autocrat saw the haggard Saddam pulled from the hole; now they’ve seen him hung. The larger message: To avoid Saddams fate means political liberalization. The message extends beyond the Arab Muslim Middle East. Iran’s mullahs see it. At some reptilian level, destructive despots like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe also understand it. ...
*** MSM warms to brave, courageous Saddam
See-Dubya
Oooh, he was so courageous and brave, the way he faced his execution.
And he made the trains run on time: Those developments, so unwelcome to the Americans who so easily conquered this nation, showed that Mr. Hussein was also a unifying force whose painful grip held together Iraq’s many ethnicities and sects. Now, three years after his fall, Iraq has descended further into chaos.
*** Saddam Is Dead - Why That Matters
By: DJ Drummond
Within a few hours of receiving custody of Saddam Hussein from American authorities, the Iraqi government put him to death. Doubtless this will cause howls of protest from leftists everywhere, that a man proven to be a mass murderer on a most gruesome scale would himself be executed without years of delay and double-talking meant to subvert justice itself or at least deny the victims' families the chance to believe that such men as Saddam would ever be treated as they deserve. But the execution of Saddam Hussein served a compelling notice, one the Left will deny but which is true for all their bitterness; the Rule of Law has come to Iraq.
The Left has tried very hard to deny that truth. The mainstream media revels in showing video of bombings and reporting kidnappings, never noting the stability and economic growth in many parts of Iraq. Kevin McCullough has written a compelling article to show that Iraq is, by any reasonable standard, a clear success. The notion that Iraq is becoming a foothold for democratic republicanism is terrifying for the Left. Enough so that they will denounce even its possibility, much less the growing evidence for it. ...
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