Saddam Hussein: hanged by the neck until dead

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Juan Cole has a masterful piece about the hanging of Saddam Hussein in today's Salon, which contextualizes the execution from a very detailed and coherent Iraqi perspective. What is the American context? It seems to me, that as Juan points out, everything about the way Saddam was tried and executed is counterproductive to bringing peace and stability to Iraq. Therefore the rush to hang him appears to have had more to do with silencing Saddam than bringing him to "justice". Saddam and the USA go a long way back and during the Reagan administration, the relationship became especially intense. Certainly it is about time to examine the United State's policies in the Middle East ... (a fat understatement!) and a lengthy, detailed, "Milosevic in the Hague", type trial of Saddam Hussein, could have really peeled back the carpet under which many a creepy, crawly has been hiding all these years. So although he was hanged, in truth Saddam was metaphorically "gunned down from a moving car". A key witness has been silenced. DS