Saddam’s Execution a “Horrible Spectacle,” But No Aberration
Saddam Hussein’s execution was apparently marred for the West by taunting that occurred as he was being strung up. Worldwide condemnation has followed, and we find ourselves in a full-blown media froth demanding an answer to the question, as posed by The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’s Margaret Warner:
The heart of the matter, of course, is how this horrible spectacle was even allowed to unfold with the taunting of Saddam while he’s on the gallows. What more have you been able to learn about that? I mean, who was supposed to be in charge of this?
Here, here! No one should have to be taunted whilst on the gallows! It mars what should otherwise be a most blessed event.
No, Ms. Warner, the heart of the matter is not the “horrible spectacle” of the taunting, but of the execution itself, and of the mindless killing which continues to go on day after day. In fact, such horrible spectacles are no aberration at all in Iraq, the only difference being that for the first time one man’s killing has been put on a perpetual loop on our Western TV screens, and people such as yourself are rightfully disgusted. But rather than blame those really responsible for bringing this spectacle into your life, the U.S. and Iraqi governments who killed him, you blame the messenger, those that recorded it.
And your disgust is further proof that Bush is following the right tack by prohibiting pictures being taken of flag draped coffins returning home in the dead of night to Dover Air Force Base. If the similarly horrible spectacle of the deaths of the six hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi people were to be shown, each one looped repeatedly as Saddam’s, not to mention the deaths of the now three thousand Americans killed there, the horrible spectacle called Iraqi Freedom would be stopped in its tracks.
