Quote of the Day II / Saddam Hussein Executed

"This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us."
--Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall, on the impending execution of Saddam Hussein

Personally, I find it hard to care whether Hussein lives or dies, but something about this definitely does feel off to me. Not simply because of an opposition to the death penalty (I'm mostly against, but willing to make key exceptions), but largely because of the obvious theatricality of this hanging that Marshall acknowledges. Perhaps the Iraqi government sped this up as a show of power, but at least to me Saddam's sentencing by an Iraqi kangaroo court and a quickie hanging looks pretty pathetic (which may be all Saddam deserves, but still). Would not a real trial in an international court been better for all parties? All moot questions now, I guess.

Also, no consideration seems to have been given as to what effect this quickie hanging will have on already explosive tensions in Iraq. Or, maybe they did take it into consideration, and just figured 'hey, they were all killing each other already'. Win-win for Bush; Saddam's dead and any ensuing violence gives him a reason to stay.

Finally, I find it very odd what with all the rhetoric in 2002/2003 about how Saddam was an imminent threat to America (not) and the greatest terrorist mastermind in the world (definitely not), that the crimes he was put on trial for stopped at 1982. Anyone have guesses on this? Why stop there? My instinct tells me it has something to do, in some way or another, with the fact that the U.S. officially cemented its relationship with Hussein's Iraq in 1983. A very tangled web.

In closing, I hope the media at least has the dignity not to air the footage.

[UPDATE (10:15pm): CNN reports breaking news that it's done. Saddam is dead.]