“Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him”. Nouri al-Maliki, I doff my hat to you — you’ve just invented an oxymoron to stand beside “we had to destroy the village in order to liberate it” as an exemplar of moral corruption and folly.
What goes around, comes around (Charlie Stross)
Saddam has now been hanged. GWB (who as governor executed Texans at a record pace) issued the statement: that this “is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself.”
From the BBC: Insurgency set to outlive Saddam. “If anything,” according to the BBC, “his death will tend to strengthen the hand of Sunni insurgents in recruiting people to their cause.”
Also from the BBC: No Arab euphoria at Saddam death. “Despite the insistence that the trial, verdict and now execution was a purely Iraqi affair, few in the Middle East will believe that.”