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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein was meant to be, by the depraved standards of the Iraq war, something of a feel-good moment. President Bush saw it that way, or claimed to. A statement issued in his name stressed that Saddam's execution had been made possible by "the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law." The deposed dictator's dangling, the President said, "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy. . . . We are reminded today of how far the Iraqi people have come since the end of Saddam Hussein's rule."
Compared to many of the other horrors that have served as milestones along the four-year journey from shock and awe through stay the course to surge and pray, what happened at 6:10 A.M. on December 30th in that dank, foul-smelling execution chamber was relatively free of bloodshed. Only one person was killed, and he was anything but an innocent civilian. Yet in many quarters--here, in Iraq, and around the world--there has been a conspicuous failure to feel good.
It did not take long for the hanging to become a metaphor for the over-all disaster of which it...
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