To the Bitterest End--On Saddam's Hanging--Lenin's Tomb

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"No one is surprised any more that 90% of Iraqis say it was better under Saddam Hussein. It is taken by official ideologists as a reason to escalate the war, as a sign of what kind of shapeshifting evil 'we' are up against. The occupation has: killed hundreds of thousands; destroyed towns and cities and huge portions of the infrastructure; raised for the first time the serious prospect of sectarian civil war; resulted in a drastic rise in rape (by criminals, but also by prison wardens, troops, mercenaries etc) and a huge demotion in the status of women; processed thousands of prisoners through a regime of terror deploying every filthy method of torture from electrocution, to tearing portions of flesh, to 'Palestinian hanging', to sexual humiliation. These are the uncontroversial facts of the occupation, and yet they are somehow to reside within the myth of invading American armies of feminists, democrats and human rights advocates. So, the crimes of the occupiers are awarded to Hussein (whose supporters, after all, are alleged to be behind the resistance), and he is duly tried and punished for them. Hussein died for Western crimes and not his own, taking the burden of all the villainies and tyranny of the occupation, so that yet another 'milestone' could be passed. So that almost four years of matchless brutality could be a 'comma' in Iraqi history, in Bush's pitiless, pious logic. So that American state personnel could speak of a 'surge' in Iraq, to finish off evil, to redeem the martyrdom of 3,000 American troops, to ensure that God's gift to the world thrives first in Iraq.