Let us not take everything to be at the face value. What we saw on TV an internet (execution videos of Saddam Husseing) was the result of a "well-oiled propaganda machine."
The US government used the trial and execution of Saddam as one final attempt at justifying the invasion of Iraq. The US government just wanted to show the entire world that how bad of a guy Saddam was. To sweeten the deal they spent millions of dollars of US-taxpayer dollars to arrange the sham trial of Saddam Hussein to give an impression of a changed Iraq that is a beacon of democracy and rule of law in the bad-lands of the middle-east.
But, Americans are not to be taken for suckers this time. There is a general opinion in America that even though Saddam got his just fate, the verdict was known the day Paul Bremer (then Governor or Iraq) put images of a captured Saddam Hussein on the television screens of the world. Whether Saddam lived or died, most Americans want an end to this war accoridng to just any poll.
The neo-conservatives and their cheerleaders at Fox News (Newscorp) are not missing any opportunity to tell this country how evil Saddam was. Even the so called liberal media is running reams of reports about how mercilessly Saddam killed his own people along with others in Iran and Iraq. The History Channel will be running a special documentary on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons, this weak.
But, no one in the media is talking about the now infamous Saddam-Rumsfeld handshake of 1984. It is not a mystery that Saddam got his bad-toys from the US and the UK. Just anyone who cares to read, know that the US and the UK supplied Saddam with the dirty weapons to kill Iranians. While Saddam followed his then masters' orders, he used the dirty weapons to suppress a Kurdish upsrising in the north. The US and UK turned a blind eye towards those massacres in return for Saddam using the same weapons on the Iranians. Infact, there was no hue and cry about Saddam's bad weapons until after the first Gulf War.
Even though the US won the fiest Gulf war, it created a couple of new problems for the west. First, Saddam turned his weapons on Israel during the war. Now, Israel was under threat from the very weapons that the US and UK had so gleefully supplied to their lapdog. Second, the world's second largest oil reserves were locked out for the major western oil companies after the first set of UN Security Council resolutions.
The UN Security Council resolutions were placed to resolve the first problem, i.e. to create economic crisis in Iraq that would force the removal of Saddam from power. But, the whole attempt backfired as Iraqi's would rather die of starvation than confront a tyrant who would do just anything to stay in power. Where were all these Muqtada Al-Sadr's during the 90's?'
To resolve the second problem, the western countries once again tried to tap Iraq's oil wealth by starting the oil for food program. This backfired too and also added to the first problem. Saddam accumulated insane amounts of wealth by selling oil. His people were still dying of hunger and disease as other UN resolutions prevented any other kind of trade with Iraq while Saddam pocketed all the proceeds from oil sales. This wealth helped Saddam strengthen his grip on Iraq.
Within a span of 10 years, Saddam became the worst nightmare for 3 American presidents. He was an imminent threat for America's favorite ally Israel. All the while the western oil companies wanted a bigger share in Iraq's oil wealth.
In 1998 Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on Iraq for no reason. UN weapons inspectors had to pull out because of the hostilities. The American media told the Americans that the missile strikes were ordered because Saddam was not co-operating with the weapons inspectors. People bought it just like they have been for the past 100 years. Weapons inspections became the thread that the US and the UK pulled to disintegrate the entire fabric.
Even before 9/11 Bush was too keen to get Saddam out of power by hook or by crook. 9/11 just gave him the prestext to do so with force. The fact that Osama who is supposedly responsible for 9/11 is still at large while Saddam who was openly exonerated by the US Government for his connection with 9/11 is six feet under the ground speaks clearly of Bush's priorities.
I think that the US policy in Iraq has been flawed from the day the first bomb fell on Baghdad to the day Saddam walked the sixteen steps to the noose. America is under the impression that Iraq is a majorly Shia country. This may not be the case according to an article i read in Al-Jazeera. Thus, America may be once again wrong to play the "majority-appeasement" game by handing over the keys to iraq to the Shias.
The current rulers of Iraq, the Dawa party are a subsidiary of the Revolutionary party of Iran. After the Islamic take-over of Iran, the Shias tried to expand their sphere of influence over Iran. Saddam Hussein, a supposedly secular leader tried to stop it from happening by checking the Iraqi Shias. This became the reason for the rift between Saddam and Iraq's shiite population. This rift became wider in 1980 when Saddam executed the founder of the Iraqi Dawa party; the Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was executed along with his sister.
Guess who was the most hasty at executing Saddam. None other than the Iraqi PM Nuri Al-Maliki who is also the leader of the present-day Dawa Party. For him, it was revenge for the slaughter of his former boss. PM Maliki has an interesting resume. He was taking refuge in Iran until he became Iraq's PM. Guess who his best friend is. None other than the nutacase Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also happens to be America and Israel's arch-enemy number 1.
Boy! what a mess. Bush gave his enemy number one (Ahmadinejad) the object of his wet dreams: Saddam's head on a silver platter. It was equivalent to giving the nation of Israel to Saddam on a silver platter. Bush did everything for Iran, from getting rid of Saddam to handing over the control of Iraq to Iran which got the whole package without firing a single shot. it was something that Iran had been trying to do from the day of the Islamic revolution.
Either Bush hated Saddam more than he hates Iran, or he really is as stupid as most people assume him to be. As long as Iran is in control of Iraq, America is not going to have a vasal state in Iraq. That means that the Americans will be fighting in Iraq till the day another Saddam is born who is also anti-Iran and may be willing to be Washington and London's lapdog.
I hate Saddam just as much as I hate anyone who has anything to do with the institution of Government. I think that he should have been shot the day he surrendered. And the world should have seen his corpse instead of a US Army medic inspecting his teeth.
But, the whole idea of Saddam being replaced by fanatic Islamists just raises the world's troubles exponentially. the year 2007 just started with the sad milestone of 3000 US military dead in Iraq. I personally know scores of people in the US military including my own brother who have done tours of Iraq or would be doing so in the days to come. Some of them really do believe that they are there for a good cause, while others just curse the day they signed up for the military. But, at the end of the day most of these people with the exception of a few are wonderful human beings. they just have their convictions placed incorrectly. I wish I see them for years to come rather than see them return home in body bags because of a flawed foreign policy.
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_full_story.asp?service_id=12491
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd51.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd51.html
