Ding Dong, the witch is dead...

As did just about everyone else, I followed the "Saddam curtain call" show last Friday night and then picked it back up early Saturday morning. Heck, even against my better judgement, I found the cell phone video showing the actual event. Since then, I have read lots of points of views, countless news stories, etc. trying to make sense of it all.

While I am a firm believer in the punishment fits the crime, actually seeing the events take place made me begin to waiver a little. Even my wife, who cares as much about politics as I do about shoes was scouring the net for some kind of personal justification as to witnessing the death of another human being. It was very surreal, seeing this gentle looking older man, led in what appeared to me a uneasy silence, to the gallows to meet his maker. He appeared calm, clutching a copy of the Koran, prepared to get it all over with. How could someone like this deserve such an end?

Then I started thinking about what he, as a leader of a nation, had done. My first recollection of Saddam was watching a show in which Saddam had just come into power. He walked into some sort of parliamentary meeting and sat down. He then starting point out different men sitting in attendance. All in all, he pointed out 15 or so people that he believed had opposed him during his rise to power. They were removed and shot, no questions asked. I then thought about the countless people (about 500,000 by most estimates) that have been found in the 400 or so mass grave sites throughout Iraqi. Who were they? What did they do so terrible that Saddam would want them and any memory of them erased from existence? Then there was the incident with the Kurds. He unleashed "mustard gas", a violent nerve agent, not on troops in the battle field but on whole villages. Men, women, children, they all suffered a violent death. Then there were the countless stories of torture, rape, interrogation, fear, mass killings by his death squads. How his two sons, would make families sit and watch as mothers and daughters were tortured and raped.

I could go on but I think I have made my point. He was a bad man. Plain and simple. He was not the gentle old man I saw being led to his death. Because of one man, and without any plausible reason, a whole nation lived in fear. And I think the reason some over here can't grasp it is because they have never lived like that. To see thousands cheer and celebrate the death of one man tells me they knew something I didn't and couldn't. Yeah, there used to be a bully near my home and I can remember times I was afraid to go out, that I might get punched or made fun of, but never that I was be tortured and if I was lucky, shot in the head.

I bid you good bye Saddam....and good riddance.