Guessing on Future Regarding Saddam

[Annie]

It's too weird how little this is being covered.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009457

Hang Time
One man who probably won't be ringing in the new year Sunday night is Iraq's former dictator. ABC News reports from Washington:

Saddam Hussein will remain in U.S. custody until he is taken to his execution, which is expected to happen over the weekend, a senior U.S. defense official tells ABC News.

Even when he is taken to the gallows, the United States will be guarding him, and he will effectively be in joint U.S.-Iraqi custody.

The tight U.S. security surrounding Saddam during his final hours is meant to eliminate the risk of a last-minute attack or escape. As one official said, "We don't want to have to find him hiding in a hole again."​

Earlier, the Associated Press reported, Saddam issued an odd farewell letter in which he "called on Iraqis not to hate the U.S.-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003." Don't hate us because we're America the Beautiful!

The editorialists at the New York Times are fretting over what they call, in a headline, "The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein":

This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.​

Once again, the Times editorialists don't seem to be reading the Times news pages. As the New York Sun's Daniel Freedman points out, the Times itself carried a report three weeks ago belying the claim that Iraqis are apathetic about Saddam's pending execution:

One of the most coveted jobs in Iraq does not yet exist: the executioner for Saddam Hussein. The death sentence against Mr. Hussein is still under review by an appeals court, but hundreds of people have already started lobbying the prime minister's office for the position.​

Anyway, let it be noted that the New York Times, which is unhappy that Saddam is being brought to justice too quickly, has been complaining for years that the U.S. is too slow to charge detainees at Guantanamo Bay with war crimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[ekrem]

Turkish press is saying, that he will be hung latest at 5 o clock in the morning Turkish time.
5 o clock would be 22 o clock in USA.