- It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging---
most of it (bar the last moments) shown on state television in occupied
Iraq.
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- It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. After
a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch---the largest
single unit of the US Human Rights industry--- had to condemn it as a total
travesty. Washington's orders; defence lawyers were killed and the whole
procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nurnberg was a
more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till
now, been the crudest and most grotesque. The Great Thinker President's
reference to it 'as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy' as clear
an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. The contemptible
leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment,
were silent, as usual. And while some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad,
the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the
Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies (its self-description: "which
attempts to spread the conscious necessity of realizing basic freedoms,
consolidating democratic values and foundations of civil society")
reveal that just under 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country
was better before it was occupied. The ICRSC research is based on detailed
house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November
2006. Only five percent of those questioned said Iraq is better today than
in 2003; 89 percent of the people said the political situation had deteriorated;
79 percent saw a decline in the economic situation; 12 percent felt things
had improved and 9 percent said there was no change.
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-
- Unsurprisingly, 95 percent felt the security situation
was worse than before. Interestingly, about 50 percent of those questioned
identified themselves only as "Muslims"; 34 percent as Shiites
and 14 percent as Sunnis. Add to this the figures supplied by the UNHCR:
1.6 million Iraqis (7 percent of the population) have fled the country
since March 2003 and 100,000 Iraqis leave every month, Christians, doctors,
engineers, women, etc. There are one million in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan,
150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees that do not excite the sympathy of
Western public opinion, since the US (and EU backed) occupation is the
cause. These are not compared (as was the case in Kosovo) to the atrocities
of the Third Reich. Perhaps it was these statistics (and the estimates
of a million Iraqi dead) that necessitated the execution of Saddam Hussein?
That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten
is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of
those who now occupy the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his
trial outbursts, the approval of Washington (and the poison gas supplied
by West Germany) that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals
in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. He deserved a proper trial and punishment
in an independent Iraq. Not this.
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-
- The double standards <SNIPT>
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- http://www.zaman.com/?bl=commentary&alt=&trh=20070102&hn=39621
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