http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=7230
Saddam execution gets mixed community reaction
By: Aatif Ali Bokhari / The Arab American News
DETROIT — Dearborn wasn't the only place people were partying this week. Canada's Iraqi-Shi'i community also celebrated the execution of Saddam Hussein.
The Ontario community isn't concentrated in a particular area. That put a damper on the kind of large-scale spontaneous street-side celebrations from taking place in Canada that happened in Dearborn.
Iraqi Shi'is in the U.S.' large northern neighbor made it clear that Saddam's death was to be hailed as the end of a tyrant's life, not just for the Shi'a but for all Iraqis. But feelings were mixed on just what the execution signified or accomplished.
"I feel happy on one hand and sad on another," said Ahmad Al Hashimi, an engineer living in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Al Hashimi is related to many prominent Iraqi religious scholars. His wife is a relative of the legendary Muhammad Baqir As Sadr, one of Iraq's most prominent Shi'i clerics of the last century who was killed by Saddam. Al Hashimi mentioned that a cousin, also a cleric, was executed by Iraq's former president.
Al Hashimi — who opposed Saddam's regime yet was against the U.S. invasion of Iraq — said that he was "happy to see this tyrant brought down. I hope this will be an eye-opener for his likes. Those who suffered under him of course wanted him to be brought to justice.
"The sad feeling comes into play that he was executed under such a fabricated scenario. It was a kangaroo court.
"I would have been happier to have seen a red card given to Donald Rumsfeld who offered Saddam a warm handshake," said Al Hashimi, alluding to the card handed to Saddam indicating he was soon to be a dead man.
"They put Saddam on trial you know, and you're thinking, 'This is a bunch of nonsense'," said Hani Taki, also of Richmond Hill, explaining the feelings that many Canadian Iraqi-Shi'is felt during the legal proceedings. "People thought he was going to escape to some island or be given a chance to appeal. Then all of a sudden he was hanged. I don't know if people are still accepting it."
Taki — a university student and well known member of the Al Fajr Youth, a Shi'i youth group — noted that his two aunts, one 17 and the other 20, had been killed by Saddam for refusing to join the Baath Party while in school.
Taki's family, who had been "very anti-Saddam and open about it," had fled to Iran where he said they faced discrimination for many years. They finally found refuge in Canada in '87.
Taki was unsure what kind of effect Saddam's execution would have on Iraq's political stability. "That is not certain," he said, "but one thing which is sure is that the execution of a person like Saddam means a lot for those people who suffered under him."
But what do Iraqi-Shi'is think about how the execution played out? Some have said that the majority-Shi'i government was insensitive to the smaller Sunni community in allowing unidentified witnesses to make Shi'i religious chants during the hanging, as well as letting the executioners insult Saddam.
"It was terrible and horrible, the witnesses were supposed to sit there quietly," said Sami Al Askari, an Iraqi government minister speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, noting that taping the event had not been allowed either.
"The Arab American News" spoke to two local community leaders who had strong words about how the execution took place. Weighing in were Sam Yono, past president of the Chaldean Federation of America, and Dawud Walid, executive director for the Michigan Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
"I looked at Saddam as being basically a thug as he was ruling Iraq," said Yono. "However, two wrongs don't make a right. The way he was executed was completely uncalled for. If I was in the shoes of the ruling party, I would have reduced his sentence to a life sentence to show that this is a very humble group of leaders," said Yono.
Yono added that a gentle approach "would have been an important part of the healing process so that everyone could believe in the democratic process rather than one group retaliating.
"We are going to see a lot more innocent blood spilled and it could even go into the hundreds of thousands. It seems like this could be a new beginning to terror in Iraq and fighting among factions.
"As Christians, most if not all Chaldeans are against capital punishment. Our faith teaches us to be humble and forgive rather than exact an eye for an eye, quite frankly."
Said Walid: " Undoubtedly Saddam was a tyrant who ruled Iraq through fear and coercion. No one was immune from Saddam's strong-arm measures including the Shi'a, Kurds, Chaldeans or any Arab Sunnis who did not acquiesce to his standards of government.
"The trial to me appeared to be a circus. The trial seemed more ridiculous than the average soap opera on TV. There was a judge dismissed, his defense lawyers were assassinated and then there was his ranting with judges who presided over the case. When I heard that he was going to be tried in Iraq instead of in an international court, I felt at that moment the trial was going to be a circus.
"Why could Saddam not be tried for many of the other crimes that he committed, in particular, the gassing of the Kurds? The other war crimes would have implicated the U.S. government for giving Saddam the weapons to gas thousands of Muslims—Iranians and Iraqi-Kurds.
"Many in the community found it disturbing that he was being executed on a day when many Muslims were celebrating Eid. And the significance of that day as being one commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham, many found the decision to execute him on that day to be a very poor decision. And after seeing that people were chanting Muqtada as Sadr's [a Shi'i-Iraqi leader] name gave the impression that the hanging was an act of revenge."(MORE)
Monday, January 08, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
Ellison and Goode shake hands
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070104/NEWS99/70104066
Muslim Congressman embraces staunch critic
January 4, 2007
By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press Staff Writer
Amid intense scrutiny, Detroit native Keith Ellison became the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Congress and reached out to the Congressman that only weeks ago lambasted him for choosing to use the Quran in his swearing-in ceremony.
On the House floor, a smiling Ellison walked over to U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican who criticized Ellison in a sharp letter last month that warned of Muslims being elected to office, and shook Goode's hand, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which saw the account on a MSNBC video clip posted on www.tpmmuckraker.com.
Meanwhile, local leaders praised Ellison on Thursday. "I would like to extend a warm welcome to Congressman Keith Ellison," U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-Dearborn), whose district has one of the biggest Muslim communities in the U.S., said in a statement. "Being the first Muslim-American to serve is quite a distinction and he will be a good addition to the House membership. The institution will be stronger having him and his voice in the 110th Congress."
Ellison, who converted to Islam while in college, swore today on a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson in an individual ceremony. He had been criticized by some for that.
But Jewish leaders in Michigan defended Ellison's religious rights.In a news release issued Thursday, the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit said it "strongly condemns the criticism of congressman-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Koran as he takes his oath to become a United States Representative." The group said that "ours is a nation founded on the principle of religious freedom. The U.S. Constitution prohibits religious tests for office, and the First Amendment adds both a freedom from religious establishment and a freedom of religious exercise... Denying Mr. Ellison his right to choose which scripture to use would not only affront Muslims, but undermine the rights of all Americans."
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised Ellison for reaching out to Goode. "We hope that through their handshake, there can be greater sensitivity to different races and religions within Congress ," Walid said.
Muslim Congressman embraces staunch critic
January 4, 2007
By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press Staff Writer
Amid intense scrutiny, Detroit native Keith Ellison became the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Congress and reached out to the Congressman that only weeks ago lambasted him for choosing to use the Quran in his swearing-in ceremony.
On the House floor, a smiling Ellison walked over to U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican who criticized Ellison in a sharp letter last month that warned of Muslims being elected to office, and shook Goode's hand, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which saw the account on a MSNBC video clip posted on www.tpmmuckraker.com.
Meanwhile, local leaders praised Ellison on Thursday. "I would like to extend a warm welcome to Congressman Keith Ellison," U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-Dearborn), whose district has one of the biggest Muslim communities in the U.S., said in a statement. "Being the first Muslim-American to serve is quite a distinction and he will be a good addition to the House membership. The institution will be stronger having him and his voice in the 110th Congress."
Ellison, who converted to Islam while in college, swore today on a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson in an individual ceremony. He had been criticized by some for that.
But Jewish leaders in Michigan defended Ellison's religious rights.In a news release issued Thursday, the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit said it "strongly condemns the criticism of congressman-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Koran as he takes his oath to become a United States Representative." The group said that "ours is a nation founded on the principle of religious freedom. The U.S. Constitution prohibits religious tests for office, and the First Amendment adds both a freedom from religious establishment and a freedom of religious exercise... Denying Mr. Ellison his right to choose which scripture to use would not only affront Muslims, but undermine the rights of all Americans."
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised Ellison for reaching out to Goode. "We hope that through their handshake, there can be greater sensitivity to different races and religions within Congress ," Walid said.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Message for Friday - Reconciliation is better than revenge
G'd says in The Qur'an (5:45):
And We prescribed for them therein: The life for the life, and the eye for the eye, and the nose for the nose, and the ear for the ear, and the tooth for the tooth, and for wounds retaliation. But whoso forgoes it (in the way of charity) it shall be expiation for him. Whoso judges not by that which G'dh has revealed: such are wrong-doers.
If the fiasco of the Saddam Hussein execution still fresh in the minds of the world's people, it is obvious why many view his execution as an emotion based, sectarian execution, especially when the greater crimes that he committed such as gasing the Kurds never went to trial.
One sect is inflamed as has sought retribution triggering another sect to seek it as well - the culture of revenge is puffing up bigger and bigger by the hour.
In order to have peace between a person or a group of people, someone has to swallow their pride and think of the long term injury of their venegful actions.
ولا يجزي بالسيئة السيئة ولكن يعفو
Ayesha stated that the Prophet Muhammad did not reward an evil act with an evil act, but he pardoned.
Pardoning does not mean not persuing justice. Justice, however, is an idea that has the objective of producing equality. Peace cannot be obtained without equality in society. Hence when one is treated wrongly, an act of retaliation may satisfy an emotional feeling, yet may produce more harm in the long term.
And surely G'd knows best.
1st Muslim congressman uses Thomas Jefferson's personal copy of the Qur'an for private swearing in
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770104005
Ellison to swear in with Thomas Jefferson’s Quran
January 4, 2007
Free Press Staff Writer
The first Muslim elected to Congress said he will use a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson during his swearing-in ceremony today.
Keith Ellison, a Detroit native and Minnesota Democrat, told a group of metro Detroit leaders last week that he asked the Library of Congress for a copy of the Muslim holy book that Jefferson had purchased. An official with the library, Matt Raymond, confirmed on Wednesday that it would lend the book to Ellison for his oath of office during an individual ceremony today with new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Ellison ignited a national controversy after some commentators slammed him for saying he would take the oath of office on the Quran. And U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican, warned that the election of Ellison could be the start of a dangerous trend of Muslims being elected to office.
Ellison was asked about the Quran controversy during a meeting in Detroit on Dec. 27 with immigration, Catholic, Arab-American and Muslim leaders.
“I need to really study why it’s such an important and explosive cultural phenomenon because it still kind of eludes me a little bit,” Ellison said. “I’m sort of looking at it like, you know, my faith is my business, and you can trust that I will be as honest as I can be.”
He added, “I never thought it was a big deal. Still, I’m a little incredulous about why anyone would care what I’m going to swear on.”
Ellison, born and raised in Detroit as a Catholic, converted to Islam while in college and has received support from Muslims across Michigan and the United States. He said he would not impose Islam on anyone, but “in terms of political agenda items, my faith informs these things.” Ellison said that his decision to swear on the Quran came about after someone asked him about it before his election primary. “
These members of the Somali (Muslim) community were just wildly excited about the prospect of somebody from their community winning,” Ellison said. “So they just wanted to ask every question.” Regarding the controversy, Ellison said, “People feel extremely threatened by it.”These days, Ellison added, “so many people in the Muslim community are feeling this tremendous vulnerability.”
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised Ellison's decision to use Jefferson's Quran, saying that it was an example of how Islam helped influence the founding fathers of the United States.
Ellison to swear in with Thomas Jefferson’s Quran
January 4, 2007
Free Press Staff Writer
The first Muslim elected to Congress said he will use a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson during his swearing-in ceremony today.
Keith Ellison, a Detroit native and Minnesota Democrat, told a group of metro Detroit leaders last week that he asked the Library of Congress for a copy of the Muslim holy book that Jefferson had purchased. An official with the library, Matt Raymond, confirmed on Wednesday that it would lend the book to Ellison for his oath of office during an individual ceremony today with new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Ellison ignited a national controversy after some commentators slammed him for saying he would take the oath of office on the Quran. And U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican, warned that the election of Ellison could be the start of a dangerous trend of Muslims being elected to office.
Ellison was asked about the Quran controversy during a meeting in Detroit on Dec. 27 with immigration, Catholic, Arab-American and Muslim leaders.
“I need to really study why it’s such an important and explosive cultural phenomenon because it still kind of eludes me a little bit,” Ellison said. “I’m sort of looking at it like, you know, my faith is my business, and you can trust that I will be as honest as I can be.”
He added, “I never thought it was a big deal. Still, I’m a little incredulous about why anyone would care what I’m going to swear on.”
Ellison, born and raised in Detroit as a Catholic, converted to Islam while in college and has received support from Muslims across Michigan and the United States. He said he would not impose Islam on anyone, but “in terms of political agenda items, my faith informs these things.” Ellison said that his decision to swear on the Quran came about after someone asked him about it before his election primary. “
These members of the Somali (Muslim) community were just wildly excited about the prospect of somebody from their community winning,” Ellison said. “So they just wanted to ask every question.” Regarding the controversy, Ellison said, “People feel extremely threatened by it.”These days, Ellison added, “so many people in the Muslim community are feeling this tremendous vulnerability.”
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised Ellison's decision to use Jefferson's Quran, saying that it was an example of how Islam helped influence the founding fathers of the United States.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Robert Fisk: A dictator created, then destroyed by America
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece
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.
Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.
And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.
Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.
"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.
I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.
I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.
It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.
But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his 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".
When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.
But we will have got away with it.
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.
Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.
And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.
Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.
"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.
I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.
I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.
It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.
But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his 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".
When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.
But we will have got away with it.
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