Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Ave Atque Vale, Saddam

...Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,
For 'alf o' Creation she owns:
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,
An' we've salted it down with our bones.
(Poor beggars! -- it's blue with our bones!)

Hands off o' the sons o' the Widow,
Hands off o' the goods in 'er shop,
For the Kings must come down an' the Emperors frown
When the Widow at Windsor says "Stop"!
(Poor beggars! -- we're sent to say "Stop"!)

***
Rudyard Kipling “The Widow at Windsor”

Saddām Hussein Abd al-Majīd al-Tikrīti, sometime President of Iraq, Field Marshal of the Iraqi Army, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Secretary-General of the Baath Party, Light of the Arabs, the New Saladin, etc., etc., etc., went on trial for his squalid little life today in Iraq. He Who Confronts is now himself confronting justice, ostensibly for killing 150 Shiites in Dujail, Iraq in 1982. This trial in the former Baath Party headquarters may be just the beginning, Iraq’s own Sawdust Caesar could face at least fourteen other trials. Seems a waste to make this wretch, who ordered the killing of dissidents by feeding them into woodchip cutters – wait this long for his date with the hangman.

Saddam’s had more people murdered that El Jefe’s had hot dinners, which is saying a lot. But his murders and crimes are not the real reason Saddam will walk up the long ladder, and then hang from the short rope. Justice is good, but a secondary consideration here. Saddam’s real hanging offense was not to “Stop !” when the modern equivalent of Queen Victoria’s Britain – the US, said to stop. The hanging of Saddam is the point of the war in Iraq: an object lesson to Saddam’s confrere dictators and neighbors. Not cooperating with the United States can be bad for your health. Are you listening Boy Assad ? Hear us al-Sauds, Boss Chavez, Fidel ? Paying attention Mamoud in Tehran ? How bout you, Bob in Zimbabwe, or Prune Face Kim in North Korea ?

Yes, gentlemen tin-pots, potentates and Grand Poobahs, look at Mr. Saddam and think on it. Wear your pretty uniforms, strut and give yourselves medals. Buy all the guns we'll sell you. Come to Las Vegas and drink and whore yourselves sick, and to Houston to see the doctor, but remember, when Washington or Wall Street says "jump," your role is to say "how high?" Little Mr. Saddam forgot. He thought because he called himself President/Field Marshal he was the cat, not the mouse.
When the Ambassador or the local US representative comes calling to ask for your police files on Bin Laden; or tells you to hand over your nukes, arrest certain persons, or keep your lousy traps shut, best give a very respectful listen. Go ahead: bleat to Kofi, his fellow idiots in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land on the Hudson or the stupid little liberals and their media friends all you like about the war-monger Americans. See how much good it did President/Field Marshal/Chairman/Secretary-General Saddam, dragged out of his hole in the ground covered in his own piss, and soon to be dangling from a rope till dead, dead, dead; ashes tumped into an anonymous lime-pit someplace. Dream about it guys. It’s coming to you soon if you don't play nice.
Saddam can squirm and delay all he wants, and his lawyers will get to dance, but never forget the rope’s coming. Vale Saddam, you stupid bastard.

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