Saddam Is Our Frankenstein

Technorati Tags: Saddam Hussein, execution, hanging, Pres. Bush, Iraq, democracy

Somebody has to say it, and Robert Scheer does:

... The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush’s claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."

Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam's own evil propaganda ever did.

The above is the second piece Scheer wrote about Saddam's execution. An earlier piece, posted on Dec. 29, suggests that one significant motivation for the U.S. to want Saddam's execution at the earliest date possible was the fact that Saddam knew so much about American enabling of Iraqi human rights violations, most of which occurred while Saddam was still our ally.

Scheer also points out, as he does in his more recent piece, that fair trials were viewed as essential for Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg -- so if the argument is that it doesn't matter whether Saddam received due process because he was a monster, then we must conclude that men like Eichmann were less monstrous.