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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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January 01, 2007
Saddam Hussein - Hing, hang, hung
If you see somebody hanging around, don't get uptight
In all the world today, Saddam Hussein would have to have been considered one of the top ten sonsabitches most desperately in need of being properly hung as an act of public hygiene. His death doesn't bring back any of his victims, but it sure puts closure on a terrible era. NOW Iraqis who've known nothing but Saddam know that's done.
Plus, there's a broader important point of being willing to take the responsibility to goddam properly put down a rabid dog like Hussein. I'm sympathetic to general qualms about the death penalty, possibilities for errors in regular criminal situations or victor's justice in a war crimes trial. But those considerations just really don't apply here. Saddam Hussein was a cut and dried case of genocide. Indeed, he was multiple cut and dried cases of genocide.
At some point, it's important for people to have reason to believe that monsters can be defeated and destroyed. It's also most useful for other monsters to see what can happen to them. Perhaps making an example of Saddam Hussein will put the fear of God into some jerks in Iran and North Korea, for example. That could potentially save a lot of killing.
These pictures of Saddam Hussein's humiliation and demise seem more likely to motivate a truly recalcitrant sumbitch to repentance than the threat of a lifetime retirement villa at Gitmo.
The handling of Saddam Hussein looks particularly good to me. I might have preferred a US soldier rolling a grenade into his spidey hole three years ago rather than capturing him. I feared that he would end up cheating the hangman like Milosevic. But in fact, the emerging legal system of the new Iraq gave him a careful year long public trial, and then an independent judicial review.
It's been a lot of expense and heartache, but the payoff is a significant act of Iraqi self-help. Their courts and their judges did the job, and tried to give him the best due process they could create. The Iraqi people have reason to be proud of the manner in which their new government judiciously handled their former dictator.
Thus, I'm less than impressed with the idiot left wingers carrying on about the Hussein execution being any kind of "rush." This strikes me as dishonest. It's been three YEARS since he was captured, and a year of public trial. If you want to make a general lament about the death penalty, go ahead. That's just going to be a very tough sell in such a case as Hussein. But don't pretend that Hussein was railroaded.
Indeed, the Iraqis should be commended for an excellent effort in the execution of justice against their former dictator. Perfect would be too much to expect, but they didn't just drag the guy out and shoot him. They gave him a careful public trial despite his continual disruptions and the murders of various prosecutors and lawyers. The apparent taunting of Hussein in his last moments by his executioners was somewhat less than professional, but that's merely a minor point of style.
Speaking to the human emotional components of the Hussein execution, there is great wringing of hands over the supposed badness of people celebrating the demise of this tyrant. It's perhaps not good to wish unnecessary pain or torture. Directly enjoying other people's suffering certainly isn't particularly spiritually uplifting. A certain caution there is probably advisable.
But it's perfectly normal and seems appropriate and healthy to feel joy and relief that a vicious predatory enemy has been put down. A lot of Iraqis, Iranians, Americans and others have suffered under his wickedness. Why is it not appropriate to feel joy about that nightmare being thoroughly put away?
I must say I've never enjoyed Lionel Richie so much as New Year's 2007. My thoughts in the last hours of 2006 have gravitated towards the Iraqi people and the execution/exorcism of Saddam Hussein. Noting that Lionel Richie is very popular in Iraq, I speculated to ol' girl New Year's Eve that many Iraqis might likely be celebrating to the strains of "All Night Long."
Being far more evil than me, ol' girl suggests an alternate Lionel Richie/Saddam theme for the occasion: "Dancing on the Ceiling." So I downloaded both songs for the New Year's Eve cruising CD. I don't know how many Iraqis would actually come up with this same point, but Lionel Richie was the featured entertainment in my quadrant.
DANCING ON THE CEILING
by Lionel Richie
What is happening here?
Something is going on
That's not quite clear
Somebody turn on the light
We're gonna have a party
It's starting tonight
Oh, what a feeling!
When we're dancing on the ceiling
The room is hot...that's good
Some of my friends came
By from the neighbourhood
People were starting
To climb the walls
Ooh, it looks like everybody
Is having a ball
Everybody starts to lose control
When the music is right
If you see somebody hanging around
Don't get uptight
The only thing we wanna do tonight
Is go round and round
And turn upside down
Come on, lets get down
So come on, let's get loose
Don't hold back
Because it ain't no use
Hard to keep your feet on the ground
Because when we like to ball it
We only want to get down
What? you say what?
Its love now...
Just get started
Everybody clap your hands, come on
Everybody have sense...
=============
Wonder how Saddam's doing about now? He seemed to want to think that he was going was going to get the reward of martyrs. Hmm, wonder if Hussein is enjoying 72 virgins - or perhaps something more like this:
posted by Al at 1/01/2007 05:25:00 PM
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