Saddam Hussein to be murdered for the GOP

As you know, just two days before Americans go to the polls this November, a verdict is expected in (one of) Saddam Hussein's trial(s). He and his co-defendants are almost certain to get the death penalty.

You've got to be extraordinarily naïve to believe that the timing isn't intentional. For the last two news cycles before the vote, pundits will point to the verdict as a tangible sign of progress in Iraq, even as the country stands on the brink of falling into total chaos.

The trial's been driven by politics since its start. In January, the first judge to hear Saddam's case resigned because of the government's attempt to influence the proceedings. An Iraqi source told reporters: "He's under a lot of pressure. The whole court is under political pressure."

That pressure originates in Washington, and is transmitted via an occupation authority that is filled with Republican political hacks with no experience or qualifications to justify their appointments.

Of course, if anyone deserves the death penalty it's Saddam Hussein. Let's be clear on that point.

But the importance of Saddam the human being pales next to the significance of Saddam the dictator -- the leader who ordered the gassing of the Kurds, who drained the "Marsh Arabs'" marshes, who put down his opponents with remarkable cruelty, who ordered whole villages to be razed and under whom torture was almost as prevalent as it is in Iraq today. In order to get vengeance against Saddam the flesh-and-blood man -- and for the sake of the American electoral calendar -- Saddam the dictator will never see justice.