US-backed death squads no better than Saddam

A GREAT day for Iraq, said the Bush administration after learning that Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging — a sentiment echoed by the US-backed puppet government of Iraq.

The trial of Saddam and its outcome can only be viewed with profound cynicism and contempt considering the gross ‘crimes against humanity’ being perpetrated daily by the new Iraqi regime under the noses of American military forces.

As exposed in an excellent Channel 4 programme recently, the supposedly democratic police force created with the help and advice of the American occupiers has been responsible for untold numbers of summary executions — murders — of innocent Iraqis.

Families across the strife-torn country live in fear of uniformed thugs calling to abduct them.

The reign of terror ushered in by these death squads looks set to match or even surpass the inhumanity attributed to the broken, imprisoned man who is waiting to die.

The American invaders and occupiers of Iraq have murdered and tortured thousands of people and subjected many more to humiliating degrading treatment. Their presence in the country has boosted the ranks of Muslim extremists and acted as a magnet for jihadis from every part of the Islamic world. The US backed Saddam to the hilt for years when it suited its foreign policy interests to do so. It supplied him with arms throughout the long, bloody war with neighbouring Iran.

There were no weighty words of censure or condemnation from Washington when Iraqi forces used gas against the Kurds.

No, all was hunky-dory until Saddam invaded oil-rich Kuwait and threatened American access to mid-eastern black gold.

Only then, from a US point of view, did Saddam become a tyrant and a brutal dictator.

The attack on the Twin Towers, which had nothing to do with Saddam, was invoked as a reason for invading Iraq, along with a bogus claim that the dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction. 9/11 was America’s ‘Reichstag fire’, a viable excuse to engage its real or imagined enemies.

Having turned Iraq into a hell on Earth for its own people — a vast torture chamber and combat zone where gunmen and bombers operate almost at will — the great friends of liberty in Washington are desperately seeking a way out of the resulting bloodbath.

Even as Saddam contemplates his end, the US is actively co-operating with some of the most brutal and bloodthirsty regimes on the planet in the pursuit of its highly suspect ‘war on terror’. It has cosied up to rogue governments, using their hidden dungeons for so-called rendering of detainees.

It has redefined torture as an acceptable interrogation technique. It has torn up the Geneva Convention on Human Rights.

Saddam, whatever his crimes, is a victim of victor’s justice. He came to trial only because an illegal war waged by his former partners in crime toppled him from power.

Those who helped make him what he was will celebrate when the hangman’s rope snaps his neck. They will view pictures of the corpse on TV or in the papers.

I wonder if any of them will feel just a little bit uneasy about their part in his dictatorial career?

Saddam will be remembered as a tyrant. But he should also go down in history as a scapegoat for America’s policy of meddling in other countries’ affairs and propping up ‘friendly’ dictatorships.

John Fitzgerald

Lr Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny