Outside the Beltway

Saddam Hussein Executed in Baghdad (Video, Photos)

James Joyner · Friday, December 29, 2006 · 9 comments

Saddam Hussein is dead.

Some Arab media, including state-run Iraqiya television, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.-financed Al-Hurra, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed. There was no confirmation from the Iraqi government.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam’s execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country’s judicial process. The ruling can be appealed, but it was issued within an hour of the time Iraqi officials said they expected the execution to be carried out.

Saddam and others were convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982. Also to be hanged were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

WaPo has the following graphic:

They have a collection of videos and other features under the heading “The Life of a Dictator.”

NYT merely has this: “Breaking News 10:37 PM ET: Saddam Hussein Has Been Executed, According to a Senior American Official in Baghdad.”

Drudge broke out TWO sirens:

He also provides this chronology of network coverage: “CNN Broke at 10:06… NBC first broadcast net to report execution of Hussein at 10:14 pm, ET — CBS went up at 10:18 — ABC up at 10:25…”

South Park, of course, anticipated this some time back:

More gruesome videos, I’m sure, will follow.

UPDATE: The blogospheric reaction has been, as might be expected, substantial despite the inconvenient timing of this during a holiday lull. Lots of discussion of ethics and efficacy.

• Leopold Stotch believes too many conservatives have lost sight of the difference between justice and vengeance.
• Richard Fernandez observes that, “US forces kept custody before and after his execution to prevent his corpse from being desecrated in a society where justice is often regarded as inseparable from revenge.”
• Warner Todd Huston argues the AP is “misusing words” to “lead us to feel that this execution isn’t justice, but is mere vengence.”
• John Cole has mixed emotions: “While justice was served with the death of Saddam, it is hard to not feel like this is little more than revenge…”
• Marty Peretz believes this a special case: “Even if Saddam is not exactly in the category of Eichmann, he–like Pol Pot and other leaders of deliberately killer regimes–has no claim on our conscience.”
• Andrew Cochran: “The execution will have no impact on the current situation in Iraq, other than being cited as another excuse for more terrorism by Sunni insurgents. But Saddam was a mass murderer and a tyrant. To the best of my knowledge, he was the only ruler in the past 50 years who used chemical weapons on his own people and against another country.”
• Robert Farley tells Saddam: “Enjoy sharing the hotseat with Augusto Pinochet. In fairness, you made the General look like a rank amateur.”
• Bruce McQuain: “I’m sure Hell’s VIP room is occupied tonight.”
• Steven Taylor, who thinks the trial was a wasted opportunity, has some wishes: “May his victims rest in peace. And may his demise not be used as excuse for further violence, although I fear that hope will not come to fruition.”
• Steve Bainbridge has a thorough discussion of Roman Catholic teaching on capital punishment and why he believes executing Saddam is justified.
• Kevin Hayden notes that Saddam was not Osama and that a lot of guys were trying to kill him, so it’s no big deal that he murdered a couple hundred thousand people a while back.
• Creature: “Evil dictators rule throughout the world. They kill and oppress their people. This one is now dead, not because of the horrible acts he committed — the worst of which came with America’s approval — but because Bush, Cheney et al. had an agenda.”
• Jim Henley believes “the US and its Iraqi allies chose to try Saddam on one of his relatively minor crimes because if they did so they could get him safely hung before they had to try him for the major ones, the gas attacks and massacres that happened during The Years of Playing Footsie with the United States.”
• Ezra Klein is “not remotely convinced that turning Hussein into a martyr to satiate our need for vengeance is the wisest strategic decision in the long run.”
• Shakespeare’s Sister quotes him.
• Merv Benson says “Good riddance.”
• Tammy Bruce, too.
• Dr. Sanity pens an Eric Claptonesque satire, “Cheers in Heaven.”
• Patrick plans to “ululate, pass out sweets, and fire a few rounds off into the sky.”
• Jimmie: “I hope he heard the voices of every single person he killed.”
• Jill: “Six days ago this country celebrated the birth of a prince of peace. Tonight we spit on his memory by indulging in a death-gasm.”
• Aazmaaish has some photos of Saddam being shackled in preparation for the hanging. [Reader sandcrab points out that these are likely from the trial, since Saddam is in a different suit than he’s hanged in.]
• Josh Marshall contends “this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.”
• Serr8d believes dark days are ahead: “A realization by the majority of Humanity that Hussein (or Stalin, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or whoever) is truly a murderous dictator is never enough for another fragment of humanity who has lost a hero. Saddam Hussein will be avenged…by someone, in a never ending cycle of vengence and revengence.”
• egalia notes that President Bush “slept through it, just like it was a hurricane or something.”
• John Little has a good news links roundup.
• Ed Morrissey, without apparent irony, liveblogged the execution.
• Greyhawk: “Perhaps because I’ve been there, done that, and will again I just don’t share the enthusiasm expressed as so many exclamation points (!!!!) and cheers from so many bloggers who haven’t and never will.”

After all that, more South Park is needed (warning: vulgar language):

Screen captures of various MSM websites and their coverage of the Saddam execution:

Click the thumbnails for larger images.

Photos of Saddam being prepared for execution and with a rope around his neck found at various places (I had these below the fold but all the MSM outlets are plastering them on their front pages, so it seems silly):

***UPDATE*** Gone Hollywood has the execution video, minus sound.