Word: saddamized
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That's how recent executions have proceeded in Iraq--at least when the equipment works. Since the Iraqi government reintroduced capital punishment in 2004, several executions have been beset by glitches and logistical snafus. At first, executioners used an old rope left over from Saddam's regime that stretched too much to break the condemned's neck; it sometimes took as long as eight minutes for the hanged to die. New ropes brought in for later executions jerked harder on the convicted person's spine, but executioners soon noticed the cords fraying on the bend of the reinforced steel installed...
...executed 50 prisoners convicted of murder or kidnapping, says spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says the government plans to execute "two or three more batches of 14 or 15 each" in the coming months. Al-Maliki told the BBC last week that Saddam too could be hanged "before the end of the year." For the beleaguered Iraqi government, the practice of executions plays a political role as well as a legal one: amid the inescapable violence on Iraq's streets, the death penalty plays well with Iraqis tired of seeing gangs commit murder...
...Saddam, though, is almost out of time. If his sentence is upheld by the appeals court, Iraqi and U.S. officials say the plan is for him to be hanged from the same gallows used for common criminals. That could change for security reasons, says a U.S. lawyer working closely with the court, but even a technical snafu probably won't be enough to save him now. Remember the man who slipped the noose, believing Allah had saved him? His reprieve didn't last long. "We hanged him," says an Iraqi official who watched as prison guards took down his body...
...relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, while Perle is legendarily gloomy and dark. But both played a role in pushing the U.S. into war in Iraq--Adelman in an influential Washington Post Op-Ed promising that the war would be "a cakewalk" and Perle warning of catastrophe if we left Saddam Hussein and his weapons unmolested. Now, interviewed in Vanity Fair, they say it all may have been a mistake. Oops...
...Vanity Fair's quotes, there is no note of contrition. It's not their fault. In fact, dispensing with Saddam, establishing peace and democracy in Iraq and then watching those ideals spread throughout the Middle East is still a good idea. It's just that President George W. Bush bungled the job. Among other things, he failed to recognize the degree of "disloyalty" within his Administration, says Perle--who was chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board--thus proving the accusation even as he makes...