No good answers? Really?

Submitted by Richard Blom (United States), Nov 20, 2006 at 16:01

Ends D.P.: "There are no good answers".

Yes there are, but simply not possible for a respected journalist to say so publicly and survive professionally. Your short piece is a cautiously balanced exercise as it realistically it must be but I hope you agree there's a piece missing. The hard and, I suppose, awful truth is that he never should have been taken prisoner. I always thought that Mussollni met the perfect, almost poetic end. Unceremoniously hung on a meathook without an ounce of drama. His death remembered as a footnote. Why should it have been otherwise. Perfect!

Whatever the short term firestorm, Saddam H. should have been shot in his spiderhole, photgraphed once, left there or perhaps draped around a rock. The last Saddam anyone should have seen was the filthy baglady of Baghdad we tripped over at the farm. Nobody would have cried for long. Shot and discorded. Simply that. Appropriately that.

Certainly he will be no less a martyr now to those who will care to remember his trial only as a Babylonian Passion play. In this version the Shia and the Americans are both the Jews and the Romans. And there will remain enough photos to keep scrapbooking suicide bombers inspired for decades. In any case, it's hard to imagine an Iraq worst than it is today. Although to think of it, Saddam is still standing and the drama is, unfortunately, not yet over. More photos to come and who knows what else.

RB

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