The execution of Saddam

January 2, 2007 at 8:58 pm (Uncategorized)

It cannot escape one’s notice that one of Saddam Hussein’s executioners invoked the name of Moqtada al-Sadr before snapping his neck. This is surely an embarrassment for us. Sadr’s supporters are bent on killing American and British troops. It would have been more politically correct of the guards to taunt the dictator — be taunting acceptable — with cries of “Jack Straw” or “Condi Rice”.

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We’re told that Iraq is a sovereign state. When it comes to meting out barbaric executions yes. Control of oil, however, is another story.

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Tony Blair, who is supposed to oppose capital punishment, failed to speak out against the execution. When another of his foes died in 2005, the former UK foreign secretary Robin Cook — no mass murderer — he failed to attend the funeral (Cook resigned from Blair’s cabinet over the Iraq war). Blair, after all, owes his Labour party premiership to a death: that of his predecessor, John Smith. Perhaps that is why he is not too perturbed by it.

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Under house arrest in the UK in 2000, Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s own Saddam who also died in December — with the privilege of a natural death — was offered tea at the Wentworth Estate in Surrey, chez Margaret Thatcher. The then home secretary, Jack “wetholution 1441” Straw, decided not to extradite him to Spain to face torture charges. No tears for Saddam, but our double standards in administering justice are damn sad.