Saddam hanged for peanuts

You've already heard that Saddam Hussein was hanged today. In the Washington Post article this is the paragraph that jumped out at me the most:

Many Kurds were disappointed that Hussein was executed for the Dujail killings, widely viewed as a test case for the larger, and more significant, Anfal genocide trial. That trial, which began in August, was chronicling, often in painful testimonies, the systematic killings of tens of thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons and poison gas. Hussein was scheduled to return to the courtroom Jan. 8.

Word on the street is that the genocide case would have brought up the nasty fact that the U.S. supplied Saddam with the chemical weapons that he gassed the Kurds with. The fact that they rushed Saddam's execution is highly suspicious. Bush's pre-war excuses for invading Iraq included the "gassing of the Kurds", an excuse that the traditional media spread far and wide to justify this costly adventure. I'm not defending Saddam but I feel that we should have tried him for the genocide case first. God forbid we allow the evening news to remind the people of the United States of Amnesia that our government helped arm the same monster we toppled and executed.

Your tax dollars at work folks!



Update: Read this article in Salon.com regarding the big fuck-up that was Saddam's trial and execution.