I really don't think this is a good decision , and I don't just mean for the violent retribution that is almost certainly going to follow.
We need to engage with the Sunni at some point , and I can't help feeling that swinging Saddam in the breeze is not going to serve that re-engagement at all.
I am also deeply concerned as to what is actually motivating this decision. It seems he was finally judged on handing out death sentences to 140 people, after there was a failed assasination attempt on him, during the Iran-Iraq war, whilst Iraq was under martial law.
So why wasn't he prosecuted over Halabja?
So what about these hundreds and thousands of murdered and disappeared we heard about?
Closure? As was commented earlier , that would have been solved by someone emptying a 92F in the hole. Revenge seems more likely and hardly a process dripping with judicial review and oversight.
What happens after Saddam is executed, but the violence just keeps going. What purpose will it have served?
Except to create a martyr for those Sunni or other Iraqis who will now have a figurehead in whose name to committ more ghastly atrocity and murder.
