DESOLATION ROWS.(The Talk of the Town)

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 is part. Although the deed was done in a rush, under conditions of dubious legality, and with little regard for its aftermath, initial reports suggested that it had at least been done with appropriate solemnity, and that the condemned man had gone to his death meekly, as if acknowledging, even repenting, his crimes. According to the first dispatch posted online by the Times, "Those in the room said that Mr. Hussein was dressed entirely in black and carrying a Koran and that he was compliant as the noose was draped around his neck." One witness was quoted as saying, "He just gave up. We were astonished. It was strange. He just gave up."

Mission accomplished, you might say. But as the details trickled out--first via officially provided videotape, silent and redacted; then via cell-phone-camera samizdat, jerky and noisy; finally via fuller eyewitness accounts--a truer picture emerged. The hangmen's black ski masks, the jeers, the jostling in the dark, the shouts of "God damn you," the chanted prayer cut short by the sudden chunk-chunk of the trapdoor and the violent interruption of the prisoner's free fall, the display of the glassy-eyed corpse--the brutal spectacle bore an irresistible resemblance to a video from some terrorist Web site. The sectarian subtext compounded the catastrophe. "Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!" guards chanted--Moktada being Moktada al-Sadr, the militant cleric whose Shiite militia is responsible for the wholesale murder and torture of Sunnis and whose support is vital to the political survival of Iraq's nominal government. Saddam's tormentors gave him an unexpected, undeserved gift. Their taunts chased away his fear and awakened his contempt. "Moktada?" he shot back. "Is this how real men behave?" A few seconds later, the trap sprang. The ex-tyrant died with a curse on his lips and a sneer on his face, a plausible candidate for warrior-martyr mythmaking.

Within the limits of its reach, Saddam's regime was as murderous and fearsome as all but a handful of the modern era's many dictatorships: not quite on the level of Hitler's or Stalin's, but far, far worse than the likes of Pinochet's or Ceaus[cedilla]escu's. No trial was required to prove Saddam's guilt; no punishment could be commensurate to his offenses. The aims of any proceedings against him were not forensic or punitive but educational and, in the highest sense, political. The best venue would have been an international court, like the one that prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic; but the Bush Administration's disdain for such institutions was nearly a match for Saddam's own. A trial or trials under Iraqi auspices had, or should have had, several purposes: to bolster the legitimacy of the fledgling government; to demonstrate the impartiality of its justice system; to promote national reconciliation; to act as an ...