At approximately 10pm Eastern Standard Time, December the 29th, Saddam Hussein was hung before the 5th Division intelligence office in Qadhimiya. He was said to have been "strangely submissive" and refused to wear a hood over his face.
On December 24th, the US military death toll officially surpassed that of 9/11, hitting the 3000 mark.
"Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing [him] to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror.
"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress." -President G.W. Bush
White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel said President Bush was asleep when the execution took place and was not awakened. The president had been briefed by national security adviser Stephen Hadley before retiring and was aware the hanging was imminent, Stanzel said.
Personally, Im not entirely sure what or how to feel. I dont have a solid stance on corporeal punishment, believing that the universe tends to its own needs and addresses issues of destruction, spiritual or otherwise. Some would argue an execution is the universes way. Survival of the fittest and the such.
What troubles me most in tonights reports isn't as simple as morality, or the consequences of the physical world and its need for retributions. Its the ethics of the whole thing. When on a mission of vengence, masked in stories of honor and vigilance, is it not to be expected that we look into the eyes of our enemy to acknowledge our victories and our shared humanity? Would the world have thought it something out of the dark ages not befitting the dignity of a hanging? Not quite public, but filmed and aired up til the moment of its actualization, when we are forced against our wills to turn away.
But some of us just choose to sleep through such things.
It is astonishing to me that the need exists to report that Hussein was a "broken man", and am not sure how when walking to the gallows it came as any shock that he appeared submissive. What is left in those last moments but reflection, fantasies of absolution in the eyes of personal deities, and surrender to that which is fate? Martyrdom? Leave this plane while looking into the eyes of the universe. No veils or illusions.
Eid Al-Adha -- a holiday period that means Feast of the Sacrifice, celebrated by Muslims around the world at the climax of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The law does not permit executions to be carried out during religious holidays.
Eid began Saturday for Sunnis and begins Sunday for Shiites. It lasts for four days.
I wonder if the violence in Iraq will slow down during these days.
