If you do a search of my blog, you’ll find this article, where I speculate on whether or not the capture of Saddam Hussein was staged. It’s a sad commentary on your society when you have doubts about whether your government would lie to you, but you have too when you are American, and your government has the type of track record that ours does. Not the worst, but certainly not squeeky clean.
Anyhow, here’s a lovely quote from an article that has the ring of truth about it.
“I was so angry,” says Samir, who immigrated to St. Louis eleven years ago after fleeing Iraq. “I began cussing at him, calling him a motherfucker, a son-of-a-bitch — you name it. I told him I was Shiite from the south and was part of the revolution against him in 1991. I said he murdered my uncles and cousins. He imprisoned my father.
“All these years of anger, I couldn’t stop. I tried to say the worst things I could. I told him if he were a real man he would have killed himself. I asked him: ‘Why are you living in that dirty little hole, you bastard? You are a rat. Your father is a rat.’”
In Arabic, Saddam told Samir to shut up. And when Saddam called him a traitor, an enraged Samir silenced his prisoner with a flurry of quick jabs to the face.
“I punched Saddam in the mouth.”
If Saddam had murdered my uncles and cousins, I might have done more than punch him in the mouth. Self-restraint is not always appropriate.
The article reference above is well worth a few moments of your time. While I have mixed feelings about the whole occupation of Iraq, there are moments and events that cause me to believe we’ve done a very good thing. Saddam’s capture as told in the above article helps me see the positive side of our current Middle Eastern incursion. I do not claim to fully comprehend the big picture and history is going to sort all that out. However it turns out, I hope Saddam will be rotting in the ground again soon, permanently.
