Hypocrisy

So Saddam Hussein's 'trial' is now over, and he's been sentenced to death by hanging. The Western World rejoices.

Hanging?!? It feels like we're back in the middle ages.

Will this be on Pay-Per-View? Will the DVD be on Amazon.com the next day?

What Hussein did was absolutely horrible, but at the very least he (like everyone) deserved a fair trial. When two organizations that I trust impeccably, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn the process from top to bottom, I don't know why media sources that I more or less respect jump on the propaganda band wagon.

The biting irony is this: Most of the crimes that Hussein was being 'tried' for were committed in the 1980's. At that point, he was the darling of America, for the simple reason that he was the enemy of their enemy, namely Iran. The Americans were arming him and giving him logistics support up until the early nineties, at which point they realized that he had outlived his usefulness, mostly because he was so uncontrollable. If he hadn't tried to conquer oil-rich Kuwait, the Americans never would have made so much as a peep about his human rights violations. Look at their attitude towards Saudi Arabia.

Who was part of the Reagan administration, who was only too happy to turn a blind eye to all of his crimes? Bush Sr. was his vice president. Rumsfield held very influential positions as well. You've probably seen the infamous photo of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam, dated 1985, 3 years AFTER he gassed over 150 Kurds.

For the trial to have had any real meaning, most of the current administration (who either worked under Reagan's crew or were directly trained by them) should be tried as accomplishes to the murder as well.

Plus, it's a shame to say it, but the only leader of a major world power to have the guts to state the obvious, that Saddam's execution will exponentially increase the insurgency [mostly driven by the Sunnis, who still support Saddam] was Russian President Putin, himself guilty of more war crimes than I can count. People say this is a great day for democracy. More likely, it shows how retarded the people who run Iraq are. The violence there is about to get much, much worse.