Some interesting details regarding the execution have surfaced; it would seem that certain Shia politicians managed to force US to hand Saddam over, even though Americans had doubts about the wisdom of the timing.
New York Times article:
“The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law,†the Iraqi official said. “We do not want to break the law.â€
The American pressure sent Mr. Maliki and his aides into a frantic quest for legal workarounds, the Iraqi official said. The Americans told them they needed a decree from President Jalal Talabani, signed jointly by his two vice presidents, upholding the death sentence, and a letter from the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein, certifying the verdict. But Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, made it known that he objected to the death penalty on principle.
The Maliki government spent much of Friday working on legal mechanisms to meet the American demands. From Mr. Talabani, they obtained a letter saying that while he would not sign a decree approving the hanging, he had no objections. The Iraqi official said Mr. Talabani first asked the tribunal’s judges for an opinion on whether the constitutional requirement for presidential approval applied to a death sentence handed down by the tribunal, a special court operating outside Iraq’s main judicial system. The judges said the requirement was void.
Mr. Maliki had one major obstacle: the Hussein-era law proscribing executions during the Id holiday. This remained unresolved until late Friday, the Iraqi official said. He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime minister’s office at which American officers and Mr. Maliki’s officials debated the issue.
One participant described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.’ â€
To this, the Iraqis added what has often been their trump card in tricky political situations: they telephoned officials of the marjaiya, the supreme religious body in Iraqi Shiism, composed of ayatollahs in the holy city of Najaf. The ayatollahs approved. Mr. Maliki, at a few minutes before midnight on Friday, then signed a letter to the justice minister, “to carry out the hanging until death.â€
And some further reading; a
diary from DailyKos about how and why both the death sentence, and its execution - pun indented - was a bad idea.
Just a small disclaimer here, in case some of you are not familiar with DailyKos: it's a Democratic webroots community, so their comments are bound to be biased to some degree. That being said, it's a whole lot more sane and considerably less biased than the right wing counterpart, Free Republic
(not even going to link to them, as I don't want this forum to show up as a referrer on their logs).
Anyway, what do I think of this?
I'm most amused.
It seems that to some degree the puppet has cut its strings, and is calling the shots. And why do I find this amusing? Because US has had strange bedfellows in the past, like the Taliban - under a different name, but it was the same people - when it was fighting against Soviets in Afghanistan and Hussein, when he was fighting the religious Iran. And US still hasn't learned that in the end this thing doesn't work out.
It's very much a case of "You reap what you sow".
