First Saddam Post of 2007 (and maybe the last)

(Warning: This post contains no mirth.)

I may have to kill myself.

I (gulp) find myself agreeing with that ass, Christopher Hitchens. This may lead me to some heavy drinking, as his own company apparently leads him to do.

The soused one says:

“The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein's last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against "the Persians" and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.”

The pickled one then quotes Orwell:

“Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.”

Someone else this weekend wrote that when Saddam was hanged all the bodies of the thousands he murdered came back to life and danced in the streets of Baghdad. Pause. You mean they didn’t? Who could’ve known?