Adventures in Sovereignty
Hm. So the US had custody of Saddam Hussein throughout his trial, bound him over to the Iraqis long enough for some Sadrist militia men to hang the bastard, then took custody of the body again to fly it to Tikrit for interment?
With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.
What, we didn’t have any rope or ski masks that we had to pass off the fun part of the job?
Comment by the talking dog —
January 1, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
Happy new year, Jim! And to Mrs. UO and the Little Offerings.
Just replace the name “Maher Arar” or “Al-Masri” for Saddam, and change “execution” to “extraordinary rendition”, and we have just the most amazing extension of Barbara Bush’s personality played out on a geo-political scale we’ve ever seen.
Just like old Barb didn’t dirty her hands actually raising her own children (which it was her sad duty to bear whenever Poppy came home from… wherever it was), but “outsourced” the dirty work of raising them to Third-World retainers, so our nation has “outsourced” prisoner interrogation to Syria, Egypt, Morocco, etc…. lest we get our own hands dirty with torture.
And so, we do it again… we pretend that by having our Third World servants do our dirty work, that somehow it’s their dirty work, and not ours.
Polls show the number of people willing to believe crap like this, however, is declining faster than Polar Bear habitat.
Comment by Alex at Inactivist —
January 1, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
I wouldn’t have executed him. I would have simple dropped him off on a street corner in a Shia neighborhood and then drove away.
Comment by diana —
January 2, 2007 @ 12:33 am
Alex,
1. It’s “driven.”
2. From all the news accounts I read, it seems we pretty much did. He was taunted with shouts of “Moqtada! Moqtada!” as they slipped the noose around his neck.
It’s nice to know what you are fighting for!
Comment by BruceR —
January 2, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
Alex:
I suspect the man’s survival chances in your scenario would be somewhat higher than certain American political leaders in the same circumstance, though.
Comment by Alex at Inactivist —
January 2, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
BruceR-
Yeah, it’s entirely possible that they’d keep him alive to use as a bottom.