Informed Speculation

The victims, those who stil live, are jubilant:

People were celebrating in the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, as the verdict was read. They burned pictures of their former tormentor.

Celebratory gunfire also rang out in Kurdish neighborhoods across the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where taxi driver Khatab Ahmed sat on a mattress in his living room to watch trial coverage with his wife and six children.

“Thank God I lived to see the day when the criminals received their punishment,” the 40-year-old exclaimed on hearing of Saddam’s death sentence.

Not everyone is happy; predictable holdouts include human rights groups (deadly irony there), European governments opposed to the death penalty, and (shocker!) Muslim clerics who warn the verdict will inflame tensions, if they have anything to do with it:

In a world sharply divided on Iraq since the U.S.-led war began in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s death sentence Sunday unleashed fears of fresh violence, European condemnation of capital punishment and new questions about the fairness of the tribunal that ordered him to hang.

Underscoring the fault lines that split the international community and widened the divide between Muslims and Christians, Islamic leaders warned that the verdict could inflame those who revile the United States — undermining U.S. policy in the volatile Middle East and inspiring terrorists to strike.

Critics accused U.S. President George W. Bush of deliberately arranging the timing of the sentence, handed down two days before pivotal midterm elections in which Democrats are fighting to regain control of the U.S. Congress.

“The hanging of Saddam Hussein will turn to hell for the Americans,” said Vitaya Wisethrat, a respected Muslim cleric in Thailand, where a bloody Islamic insurgency is raging in the country’s south.

“The Saddam case is not a Muslim problem but the problem of America and its domestic politics,” he said. “The Americans are about to vote in a midterm election, so maybe Bush will use this case to tell the voters that Saddam is dead and that the Americans are safe. But actually the American people will be in more danger with the death of Saddam.”

Many European nations voiced their opposition to the death penalty, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, and a leading Italian opposition figure called on the continent to press for Saddam’s sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.

In Pakistan, the opposition religious coalition claimed that American forces have caused more deaths in Iraq in the past 3 1/2 years than Saddam did during his 23-year reign, and insisted Bush should stand trial for war crimes.

On Meet the Press, all the Democrats took the opportunity to criticize President Bush.  Ho-hum…

The BBC has a good roundup of world reaction…

Atrios, silence (not even an Open Thread!); Glenn Greenwald, silence (and you never answered my five-question challenge, Glenn); Kos, silence (though georgia10 weighs in); Billmon, silence (thoughs he’s up in arms about those darn Jews again)…

Omar and Mohammed of Iraq the Model have the last word, fittingly:

I was overwhelmed with joy and relief as I watched the criminals being read their verdicts. For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.

Until this moment and while I’m typing these words I’m still receiving words of congratulations in emails, phone calls and text messages from friends inside and outside the country. These were our only means to share our happiness because of the curfew that limits our movement.

This is the day for Saddam’s lovers to weep and I expect their shock and grieve to be huge. They had always thought their master was immortal so let them live in their disappointment while we live for our future.

This is a day not only for Iraqis but a historic day for the whole region; today new basis for dealing between rulers and peoples are found.   

No one is above the law anymore.

I was particularly pleased by the way Judge Raouf Rasheed handled the session; he was reading the court’s decision and at the same time chastising members of the current government for their misbehavior and threatened to throw them in custody regardless of their ranks!

We are living a new era where there’s much hope despite the difficulties…our sacrifices have a noble cause, that is to build a new model that obviously terrifies other tyrants.

I believe it wasn’t Saddam alone who was shaking and shouting in hysteria when the verdict was read; I can see hysteria takes over all of Saddam’s followers and apologists.

Today we had turned a page that was full of pain and ugly crimes that were committed by the same criminals who were shaking in the hands of Iraq’s new justice.

We were among the first to bring Saddam’s crimes in Dujail to the surface in this blog almost three years ago even before cases were chosen or a tribunal was formed.

I did that because one of my friends was a direct victim of that crime when he was thrown in prison in the middle of the desert when he was only 7 years old along with his mother and a younger sister and lost 30 members of his extended family over the years of that tragedy.

Some people back then questioned the credibility of my friend’s story and couldn’t believe the crimes of Saddam were that cruel and inhuman. But today that the truth is out there for the whole world to see, the criminals stand small and shaking while the families of the victims stand proud seeing justice served.

A great day for justice and freedom, and the Butcher of Baghdad will reap what he sows…