Media in Mourning?

December 31, 2006

After news of the execution of Iraq’s brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, sunk in, some articles appearing in various American news sources leaves me with the impression they are in mourning over his death. As I stated in a previous post, Saddam Executed, Was It Worth It? many on left leaning blogs questioned whether or not his execution was really worth it.

Carrying this notion further, media sources, ones I often refer to as our lamestream media, seem to be joining in with efforts to either minimize the effects to Iraqis or another attempt to bash President Bush and any good to come out of the War on Terror in Iraq.

To start with, we find a video of an early morning newscaster from WESH NBC Channel 2, out of Orlando/Daytona Beach, Florida posted at Neocon Express blogsite clearly stating the pending execution was an “assassination.” Did he miss that it was an Iraqi court under Iraqi law that sentenced Saddam and carried out the execution in accordance with Iraqi law?

Newsweek posted an article titled Does the Dictator’s Death Solve Anything? Not missing a chance to engage in Bush bashing, the author begins with “ President George W. Bush was sleeping at 9 p.m. at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when Saddam Hussein's body plunged through the trapdoor of a gallows in Kadhimiya Prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.”

He continues; “But the much more complicated question for now and for the future concerns the "good" he achieved, which may well have been interred with his regime. At a terrible cost, but with ruthless efficacy, he kept Iraq unified and provided a critical balance of power against Iran. If the Middle East is to be stabilized, and American long-term interests protected, those goals are still critically important.”

“So as Bush searches for ways to extricate the United States from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, which has now cost almost 3,000 American lives and drains more than $2 billion a week from U.S. coffers, little is gained from Saddam's demise. The challenge was not how to eliminate him: he ceased to be a factor when he was dragged out of a "spider hole" three years ago. The problem remains how to replace him.”

Maybe it also escapes the author that the Iraqis will no longer have any fear of Saddam somehow returning to his ruthless power?

Moving on to the Chicago Times, we find the headline THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN, Was justice too swift?

The article begins: “ Saddam Hussein's trials and his march to the gallows were intended to be turning points in Iraq's history in which justice was delivered on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people killed by the dictator's brutal regime.”

”But for many human-rights advocates and legal experts who followed the trials, Hussein's rapid conviction and execution instead left them with doubts about the emerging Iraqi government and the fairness of its judicial process.”

And; “ Yet in the end, critics said, the flawed trials and the swift appeals process suggested that the system did little more than provide victors' justice, delivered by a Shiite-dominated government against a Sunni Arab who repressed Shiites for more than two decades.”

Friday evening, as news was breaking of his execution being “really eminent,” the New York Times ran an editorial titled The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein.

From the editorial, “ After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste.”

It ends “ Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.”

No, it may not automatically create a new and better Iraq, but it will ensure, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he will never return to power to slaughter innocent Iraqis again.

Returning to Newsweek, author Howard Fineman has an article out titled The Saga of Saddam and the Bushes.

Fineman says, “ In the conference room aboard Air Force One, we talked about evil. "Is Saddam evil?" I asked. Glancing across the table at his aides, he demurred. I asked again; again, a demurral. We went on to other topics. Several exchanges later, Bush interrupted an answer to blurt out a declaration: "By the way, Saddam is evil!"” He adds, “For both Bushes, dealing with Saddam became a way to measure presidential manhood.”

He ends with, “When Bush Two visited his father in Kennebunkport, Maine, at the start of the 2000 campaign, he said that if he did not win, he would have a lot more time to go fishing with his dad. Father and son may yet get their chance for fishing trips. They will both be relieved that Saddam is gone, but I bet that the subject won't come up.”

A Reuters article on Yahoo titled “Fallen tyrant” taunted in Saddam video discusses the poorly filmed video that has popped up on the internet, seems to be an effort at making the reader feel sorrow over his being taunted by guards, until they were instructed to stop.

APNews My Way tells us that Thousands Flock to See Saddam’s Grave. Here we read, “ Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.”

“Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site. Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.”

The article also tells us, “ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.”

I wonder when we will hear revelations of Ahmadinejad’s crimes and secrets in our media?

I am reminded that during and after World War Two, our enemies were tried by us and our allies and many sentenced to death without a cry from the media. By these same standards, what did their executions accomplish? I guess not much, other then the nations freed from brutal leaders back then never were able to return to power and wage war against innocent people or slaughter their citizens that opposed them. No one cared to rehabilitate them or draw secrets from them, they deserved to die and they did.

If our media, or anyone else, is truly interested in what “crimes and secrets” Saddam had, maybe they can ask the survivors of loved ones murdered during the carnage Saddam brought upon his own people.

Lew