Saddam Hussein's barbaric execution brings to a close another sinister episode in the recent history of Anglo-US affairs. Of course, Saddam in power was a tyrant, whose actions demanded the world's disapproval,cried out for trial before a representative international court, and required punishment under a civilised legal code. But the ex-President of Iraq was not properly tried and his execution was in the end a vindictive and lawless act conducted by Iraqi criminals under American scrutiny. The involvement of the USA in his illicit activity is well known and has never been denied. On the contrary, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others have happily admitted their connivance in the war on Iran, and the supply of arms and contraband equipment, including chemical weapons,that were used against the Kurds.

Saddam, tried and hanged by Iraqis at the instigation of occupying Americans, was never allowed to give evidence in court about that American connivance.He was never examined or cross-examined about his real crime of supporting American political ambitions in the region. He paid the penalty of conducting a vicious war against his neighbours,believing that by so doing he would curry favour in Washington and become the overlord of the Middle East. He could not have guessed that when his job was done, when Iran had been bled almost to its last drop of blood, Kuwait's oilfields  laid to waste and the Kurds rendered harmless in the country's richest oil province, that his sponsors would desert and reject him and in the end turn their guns on him and the Iraqi people.

He was unprepared for America's perfidy. That was his crime, his mindless folly, his contemptible crime. That is why he lost his own life so dismally; so barbarically.The Americans and British both changed their minds about the reason they went to war. They said it was WMD. When that claim proved insupportable, they changed their tune and said it was to be rid of Saddam. Well, what are they waiting for? They have accomplished their objective. Let them now leave the country in which they are the most unwelcome of guests.

HVF Winstone (winblog)