Saddam wins big! (And human rights take a thumping)

Under "Iraqi law*," Saddam Hussein must hang before January 27 for ordering the deaths of 148 people in the town of Dujail in 1982. CBS reports that the execution will be recorded, but it's not clear if the tape will be broadcast.

As I've written before (here, here, here and here), the trial was a joke -- an utter sham. And while Saddam Hussein, the decrepit old man, doesn't deserve much in the way of sympathy, the fact that the Bushies -- in order to score domestic political points -- threw away an opportunity to bring to justice Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq who ordered the gassing of as many as 30,000 Kurds, will go down as one of the great tragedies in a war that's been replete with them.

Saddam couldn't have hoped for a better end than a swift death after an illegitimate trial by Western occupiers, or a better legacy than that which will result from it.