Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, 13 kilometres from the Iraqi town of Tikrit to a family of shepherds. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son "Saddam", which in Arabic means "One who confronts". And true to his name, he faced the American offensive courageously. In the photo on the left taken from a footage shot on April 4, 2003, Saddam is seen touring the streets of his bombed capital, smoke emanating from oil fires in the distance. As U.S.-led ground troops were marching toward the capital, a smiling Saddam Hussein greeted cheering, chanting crowds in the streets of Baghdad - He still had a smile on his face! According to a former bodyguard of his, "He was stressed but he didn't want to destroy the morale of the people who were watching him" - What a brave soul he was!- "Crimes against humanity" - Perhaps, this phrase has been misused by the American Government more number of times than the phrases "Sorry" and "Thank You" have been misused by us lesser mortals. In international law, it refers to acts of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, as being the criminal offence above all others. If Saddam was convicted for his crimes against humanity in ordering the deaths of 148 Shi'ite villagers in the town of Dujail in 1982, then why is it that the very same law allows Bush to allow the American soldiers to massacre more and more Iraqis? Isn't forcing more than 3000 Iraqis to run away from their country daily a "crime against humanity"? I may add that it was this very same Bush who started this so-called "War against Terrorism", aptly renamed by a famous newspaper as "War for American Domination in the Middle East". And on what grounds - WMDs? Mr. Bush, where are the weapons of mass destruction? And who had used them in this Iraqi war - Iraq or your own country?
- "Iraq Special Tribunal" - One of the biggest jokes in modern history! This, my friends, is a tribunal which was initially led by an Iraqi-American lawyer Salem J. Chalabi. Critics pointed to his lack of experience and close ties to Iraqi dissidents, questioning US motives in his appointment. And Bush says - "Saddam was executed after receiving a fair trial - the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime"! And yeah, this execution is certainly going to give them justice, right? And what can be the justice that can be given to the millions of Iraqis who are sufferring now? Who should be executed for their sufferrings Mr. Bush? Who??
I am not entirely a supporter of Saddam - he had his own flaws - but who doesn't? All I don't support is the way Bush is trying to justify the attack on Iraq and find favour with the American public. Americans may be good, but the American Government surely isn't - especially towards authoritarian regimes like that in Iraq, Cuba etc. They are just "afraid" of such people and their growing international appeal. Who is America to try and act like a "World Protector"? We have not asked it to protect us from terrorist attacks - by the very same terrorists who were bred by it's own government in the early stages (Remember the Taliban and Osama?). This , my friends, is the very same country which, inspite of being a self-tagged "military superpower" has not been able to catch a single health-failing Osama Bin Laden alive/dead - Hats off to him for eluding the American forces for more than 5 years.
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