ding-dong, the witch is dead

(updated)

Saddam, after he got plucked from his “spiderhole,” got ample opportunity to lecture the people of Iraq, the judge, the worldwide television audience, and his victims—those who survived him, that is.

His quick ending is not A-okay with Human Rights Watch, and I get that. But you gotta admit it’s somewhat better than the justice meted out by our very own all-American hero Judge Roy Bean. And to suggest, as the Nation does, that it was a “show trial” is a hideous stain on the memory of the tens upon tens of thousands who were brutalized by the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe starting in the late 1940s and ending only when the populations of those wretched nations were “pacified.” (update: Not to mention the innumerable “enemies” Stalin murdered inside the Soviet Union.)
What Saddam deserved was the fate of the Romanian tyrant and megalomaniac:

Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Ceausescu after their execution at a military base in Tirgoviste on Dec. 25, 1989

What he got was a lot better than what he gave.

So it goes.