A “tribute” to Saddam Hussein

“At night, he heard the sound of weeping from other parts of the building, and asked a guard what was going on. “Those are the Anfal prisoners,” the guard replied, “and they are leaving the prison.” Halabja, in other words, was not part of the Anfal operation. “Where are the Anfal prisoners being taken?” Faraj asked another guard the next morning. “That is none of your concern,” the man answered. “If you ask that question again, you will be sent off with them too, to be lost forever.”

[Human Rights Watch, “Genocide in Iraq: The Al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds” (1993), ch. 8]

“…all persons captured in those villages shall be detained and interrogated by the security services and those between the ages of 15 and 70 shall be executed after any useful information has been obtained from them, of which we should be duly notified.”

[“Chemical” Ali al-Hassan Majid, Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Iraq Directive SF/4008, 20th June 1987]

Am I glad we’re rid of the bastard, the same way I was with Pinochet? Sadly, no.

This one is a bit harder than the Pinochet “tribute” because Saddam is a very different case, since we’ve killed him. Whilst the world is better off without him in power, this is only in that the world is better off with one less mass-murdering, genocidal despot. Unfortunately, we have managed to screw up so badly in Iraq that hundreds of murdering wannabe genocidal despots have taken his place, and this death will not change that one bit.

That report quoted above is 1993, describing actions that took place in 1987/1988, at a point in time where Western arms manufacturers were happily selling production capability for VX and mustard gas to Saddam’s Iraq (at the same time as surreptitiously selling arms to its main enemy at the time, Iran, perhaps purposefully in order to prolong the war.) We had a responsibility then to the world not to support Saddam, and we blew it big time. The Guardian’s obit makes clear the extent of his depravity throughout his career, all well known and televised; yet it was ignored until Kuwait made it impossible to ignore. The world should never let such a thing happen again, but it will.