Word: itely
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...After all, he had ruled for nearly three decades by a crude medieval code that vulgarized Iraqi public life. And yet the former dictator's final moments--the screams of "Go to hell" from spectators at the gallows, the taunts of "Muqtada, Muqtada" by guards evidently loyal to Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr--were undignified even by Saddam's standards. As if to block out the barbs, Saddam loudly intoned his final prayer, the traditional Islamic invocation to God and the Prophet Muhammad. But that too was cut short: without warning, the hangman opened the trapdoor beneath his feet...
...since he was removed from power: vicious sectarian hatreds that intrude, as his brutality once did, upon every aspect of Iraqi life, including the final seconds of Saddam's. His death did nothing to dampen those hatreds. The celebrations over his execution lasted barely a day before the Shi'ite-Sunni war resumed in earnest, with scores of Iraqis killed in bomb blasts across the country. Among Sunnis, the images of Saddam's hanging sparked new anger at the Shi'ite-led government. In the face of growing outrage at home and abroad, the Iraqi government launched a probe into...
...what, in the end, did Saddam bequeath to his people? Some of Iraq's new demons were spawned by him. Remnants of his regime dominate the Sunni insurgency and many jihadist groups. Some of the Shi'ite anger that fuels the current sectarian war can be traced to the mass murder of Shi'ites that the dictator ordered in the 1990s. Saddam's malevolence indirectly begat al-Sadr, who was destined to a quiet life in the seminary of Najaf until Saddam in 1999 ordered the murder of his father and two older brothers, thrusting Muqtada into the limelight...
...question is whether the sectarian tumult surrounding his execution will lend Saddam a new stature, allowing his loyalists to portray him not as a convicted killer but as a victim, mercilessly lynched by a vengeful, U.S.-backed Shi'ite government. Indeed, some have been planning to do so all along. One afternoon last October, I watched the televised Saddam trial in the company of Abu Hamza, a former senior officer in the Republican Guard. Watching his former boss sitting sullenly in the dock, Abu Hamza shook his head. Even a loyal follower could see no dignity there. Then...
...think the tyrant got a raw deal. His trial, though flawed and highly compromised by violence, ultimately resulted in a just verdict supported by the evidence. The trouble is that because the court that tried Saddam was set up by the occupying power and run by a partisan Shi'ite government, few Sunnis believed the proceedings were legitimate, or accepted the court's verdict as impartial. And that was before the ghastly scenes of last Saturday morning. Now you'd be lucky to find a Sunni willing to concede he should have been tried...