A kangaroo court (the so-called High Iraqi Tribunal) had sentenced Saddam Hussain, his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, and the former chief justice of Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed Al-Bandar to be hanged within 30 days. Yet the American administration, in a rash decision, pushed Al-Maliki’s government to immediately hang Saddam alone on Saturday 12/30, the first day of Islamic religious Addha holiday, in a blatant violation of the religious belief and law of all Islamic countries banning the execution of any criminal during this holiday. The hanging also violated the Christian spirit of Christmas, and the Iraqi constitution penned down by Bremer. It exhibited only a vengeance spirit. Sparing the life of Ibrahim and Al-Bandar clearly shows that Saddam’s hanging was intent on insulting all Muslims and inciting more sectarian violence in Iraq. Saddam’s death sentence was decided many times long time ago. It was decided in the late 1980’s when he refused to open Iraqi assets to globalist monopolies, when he invaded Kuwait in an attempt to increase his oil assets, and when he converted Iraq’s reserve funds from Dollars to Euros. Few assassination attempts were planned against Saddam, but failed miserably. The failed Dujail assassination attempt was one of such attempts, and resulted in the execution of 148 Shiite assassins. Finally under the lies of alleged possession of WPD, “freeing” the Iraqis, and spreading of the American “democracy” British and American forces invaded Iraq and Saddam was hanged through a kangaroo court. Saddam was originally a CIA man recruited to assassinate the previous Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassem, who started taxing British and American oil companies in a first step to nationalize Iraq’s oil resources. After failing to assassinate Qassem, and being wounded in the process, Saddam ran away to Egypt, where he routinely visited the American consulate in Cairo. Later when CIA was able to topple Qassam’s presidency Saddam was sent back to Iraq to become the chief security officer, and later became the president. Saddam was elevated into power to prevent the nationalization of its oil and to quell the Arab Nationalist Movement in Iraq that was led by Kurdish, Shi’a, as well as Sunni Iraqis. After the Shiite Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saddam was coerced to wage a war against Iran to stop the advancement of the Islamic movement to the rest of the Sunni Gulf States, and to exhaust Iran’s weapons cache. Kissinger’s famous statement “let them kill each other” explained the real nature of this eight years war. The American administration provided Saddam with weapons and intelligence, and through its Israel proxy, provided Iran also with weapons and intelligence. American military industry and logistical Bechtel profited tremendously by selling weapons and building Saddam’s chemical plant to build chemical weapons that were used to bomb Kurdish Halabja. Rumsfeld’s famous hand shake with Saddam provides the proof on that.Arab Gulf rulers supported Saddam and handed him the necessary money to pay for his war against Iran. When the war was over Kuwait refused to forgive Saddam’s dept, opposed to raise the price of oil, as Saddam proposed in OPEC so that he could cover the price of his war, and kept extracting oil from Iraqi land on the border. So Saddam drove his troops to invade Kuwait. The American troops then carpet bombed the Iraqi troops while withdrawing from Kuwait. Although it was possible to topple Saddam’s regime at that time the Americans did not do that for fear of Arab countries breaking the alliance. Yet they instigated the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South, but Saddam was able to quell their uprisings. There is no question that Saddam was a ruthless dictator, like most of the Arab rulers, who were handed their political positions after WWII to keep the Arab World divided and separated, and to subdue their people. Yet with all his ruthlessness and despotic rule he enjoyed support from many Arabs for many good deeds and political positions he took. He built Iraq into the most technologically advanced Arab country. Besides the Palestinians, Iraqis were the highest educated among all Arabs. Elementary education was mandatory for all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic background. Higher education was free to everyone. Women enjoyed a lot of freedom and equality more than the rest of the Arab women in the Arab World beside occupied Palestine. Unlike the rest of the Arab rulers Saddam provided civilized homes rather than dirty refugee camps for the Palestinian refugees. He also sent money to Palestinian fighters resisting the terrorist Israeli occupation. Besides his support to Palestinians Saddam stood defiant towards Israel, US and Iran; he had sent Iraqi tanks to protect Syria from Israeli attacks, gave Jordan monetary and oil grants, objected to the American demands and provided for Iraqis during the economic sanctions, and fought Iran for eight years proxy war to protect Arab Gulf States and American interests. Yet none of these Arab rulers dared to utter any comment about Saddam’s hanging for fear of American reprisal on one hand, and fear of the reactions of their own people on the other.Although Saddam had been ruthless towards any Iraqi opposition, much like most of Arab rulers, whose crimes and tortures have not yet been exposed, he had provided for the average “compliant” Iraqis. He provided security and safety where people could walk the streets without fear of crimes. He provided rations for them while under sanctions. Within few months after the end of the first Gulf War Saddam was able to rebuild all the civilian infrastructures that had been destroyed by the American bombardments. This included roads and bridges, power stations, water desalination facilities, educational centers, and governmental services.Saddam was tried by a kangaroo Iraqi Special Tribunal, whose judges had been specially assigned by the American occupational authority. Its judges had been changed few times, and many of Saddam’s lawyers were assassinated. This Tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes allegedly perpetrated in Dujail against 148 Iraqis, who were originally tried and sentenced to death by a legal Iraqi court for their failed assassination attempt against their president Saddam. The Tribunal had overlooked many of Saddam’s other more severe crimes causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from all ethnic minorities, his war of aggression against Iran, his illegal invasion of Kuwait, and his crimes against the Kurds in the North and against the Shiites in the South. Many of these crimes were perpetrated with the command and cooperation of successive American administrations, who supplied Saddam with weapons and intelligence. Such crimes were not meant to be uncovered. For torturing of many dissident Iraqis, causing the death of reported million others, gassing Kurdish population, oppressing Kurds and Shiites, and for war crimes against Iranians and Kuwaitis Saddam should be punished. Yet he was hanged for much lesser crime; the trying and execution of 148 assassins in Dujail. Using the same measure hanging should be the sentence for causing the death of almost 700 thousands mostly civilian Iraqis during the last three years of American occupation, the destruction of all Iraqi civilian infrastructures, the collapse of all civilian services, the causation of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fleeing out of Iraq and becoming refugees in foreign countries, the bombings of various religious shrines, the tearing of the Iraqi social fabric and inciting ethnic civil war, the theft of Iraqi’s oil national resources, the looting of cultural treasures, the massacre of civilians including women and children, the use of illegal weapons, such as depleted uranium and phosphorus bombs, against whole cities and burying thousands of victims in massive graveyards, the nightly raids against civilian homes and kidnapping people including women and children, the spreading of terror, insecurity and chaos within cities, the imprisonment of thousands of innocent people in massive encampments, torturing, humiliating, raping, and murdering of innocent civilian prisoners, and many other war crimes.Invasion of Iraq, in itself, is a capital crime completely similar to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. The invasion was based on total lies and fabrications; Iraq did not have WMD, did not support terrorists, and did not pose any threat to its neighboring countries not mentioning a threat to the US as the administration’s lies claimed. Freeing Iraqis and spreading the American democracy were other false justification for the terrorist war against Iraq. The UN Secretary Kofi Annan, in his resignation speech, called the war on Iraq an “illegal act that contravened the UN charter”, thus making the war a supreme international crime. Annan also declared that Iraq under the rule of dictator Saddam was much better off than under the American democracy.Saddam is just a “baby” ruthless dictator compared to Bush and Blair. They had waged illegal war to rob Iraqis natural resources. They, and their administrations, had caused the deaths of almost a million people within a short period of three years. They had caused the destruction of a whole country. They had spread terror in Iraq and threats of terror against the whole Middle Eastern region. They had legalized torture, rape, and murder of prisoners. They had kidnapped citizens of other nations and sent them to be tortured in prisons scattered around the world. They did not only terrorize and caused the deaths of citizens of other nations, but also had terrorized their own citizens, caused their deaths by sending them to illegal wars, and had violated their human and civil rights through imposing draconian laws such as Patriotic Act, legalizing surveillance, discriminatively persecuting and imprisoning citizens depending on religious background labeling them as foreign combatant, trying them with undisclosed evidence, terrorizing their citizens with imaginative enemies, and recruiting their young children to fight and to die in illegal wars throughout the whole world, and cutting down on all types of social services and siphoning tax money, allegedly designated for spreading American democracy and rebuilding other countries, into their bank accounts through large corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, and other so-called contractors. These companies have not yet fix nor rebuilt anything in Iraq within the last three years.In a “might is right” world Saddam was hanged for his crimes, yet who has the might to hang Bush, Blair and company for their crimes?Source (Amin)* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.