Irony in the noose - what price hypocrisy?

It took some doing to make over a scoundrel like Saddam Hussein into a figure of controversial wary sympathy. The deed was carried out through an ill-concealed combination of effort between the Iraqi authorities, and American Bush and his UK poodle. There can be no question about the facts of the affair.

Saddam Hussein deserved to be harshly punished. He was a bully to his weaker neighbours, and a tyrant to most of his own people.

The US government, which shoved him into power in the first instance, covered itself with gory deceit. President Bush Jnr wanted regime change in Iraq, but he denied it, rather than honestly declaring his desire and intention. He conspired with the UK Labour Party senior, Tony Blair, to wage war on Iraq on a pretext.

The pretext was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The US has detection technology that can identify ants courting out of season. That country's military authorities boast they can burn the pants off any target without singeing the underlying skin. There is exposed hyperbole in such claims, evidenced by continued American failure to discover the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden.

Nevertheless, it strains belief to breaking point that the US security forces had not established grave doubt that Saddam Hussein really possessed weapons of mass destruction, despite his own stupid claim to that effect. UN experts did raise grave doubts.

Still, President Bush mounted an invasion of Iraq, without bothering about securing legitimacy from the United Nations.

Still, UK premier Blair, dishonouring the image of the British bulldog, wagged along.

The lying of the two leaders - for it could not have been anything less than that - was exposed through the deed of the invasion itself, as the might of the allies encountered scant resistance from fleeing Iraqi forces.

Still Bush and Blair did not express the slightest regret, confirming that regime change, after all, was their real objective all along.

Saddam Hussein's cruel dictatorial regime in Iraq needed to be changed. But change should not come out of the barrel of a foreign gun. Rebellion, insurgency, revolution, the much constrained democratic process, can and should bring about change. That had been long overdue in Iraq, but the Iraqis should have been left to their own devices to make the effort.

They were not. Bush saw to that, with Blair yapping alongside.

Regime change came through missiles fired from tanks and warplanes, not as a result of matured desperation in Iraq. The Bush/Blair axis won the military war, but fell woefully short of the moral high ground.

They became guilty of immoral falsification of justification for the invasion.

The one factor that offered some mitigation of the Bush/Blair misbehaviour was the cornering of Saddam Hussein as the rat that he was. What should have remained the enduring ugly image of the tyrant was that of him emerging, scared and dishevelled, from a miserable bunker.

That alone devalued Saddam Hussein in the eyes of those who applauded, ignored or forgave him his sins. It could have minimised the risk of dragons hatching out of any hyped up memory of him.

What will endure instead of the bunker disgrace, is the image of a Saddam Hussein defiant on the gallows.

What will fire the anger of Arabs seeking a cause is the knowledge that the authorities who oversaw his execution in an American-controlled compound allowed his hangmen and witnesses to taunt him in his end.

Those of us who oppose capital punishment - in the belief that God giveth life, and only God can take it away - feel saddened when executions take place, as they still do among other places in various parts of the US, whose currency notes proclaim trust in God.

Yet, we have to recognise that others are entitled to the right of their opinion, about execution as a punishment and a deterrent. Those who still believe in capital punishment can, at least, argue a rationale.

Hypocrisy can offer no such tentative reasoning.

On political grounds, it was a mistake to execute Saddam Hussein, rather than to leave him exposed for the evil rat that he was, who hid in a hole without putting up as much of a personal fight as a mouse.

A mistake that could equate to sowing the wind, and reaping the whirlwind of a new wave of martyrs, however misled they may be by the evil that inspires them from Saddam Hussein's grave.

Perhaps the most telling articulation of that mistake came from the Vatican.

Politically mistaken as the execution was, it paled into insignificance compared to the way it was done. In turn, that does not even begin to compare to the hypocrisy that dripped from the leaders of the US and the UK once anger mounted over what had occurred.

A hanging is a hanging is a hanging, is a deliberately defined end. There were times when an execution would be executed in public, to offer entertainment as well as a warning to the good and bad citizenry. There came a less uncivilised day when executions took place in relative privacy, away from the excitable, easily maddened crowd.

Whoever, legally or illegally, filmed the hanging of the Iraqi tyrant, found eager, hungry buyers among the global media. The same television stations that are reporting the angry reaction to the filming, the taunts, the edge-of-the-grave insults, competed with each other with chunks of dirty money for the right to transmit them in the first place.

How much did they pay for the first purchase? To what heights were distribution gains raised? What price hypocrisy?

The commercial price was exceeded by far by that of the political administrations of the US and the UK.

When the noose slipped over Saddam Hussein's head broke his neck, no one gloated more, or did so more openly than George W Bush. In his measured, mechanical, staccato reading voice, the American president exulted over the death of the tyrant. He bled into his unreserved approval all the justification he could muster for his misdeed in invading Iraq, his guilt for the death of innumerable Iraqi civilians and 3,000 of America's own military personnel.

A president on the downslide, whose society has become more unequal than ever under his rule, many of whose own party see him as an albatross on their back, sought refuge in the hugely unwise, if morally deserved, execution of the Iraqi tyrant.

In the UK, Margaret Beckett, the foreign minister of the Labour government, a political misnomer, if ever there was one, also came out early to welcome the execution.

She raised internal hackles thereby. Straightaway, from the office of the Prime Minister - who else? - came a bald statement that the foreign secretary spoke for the whole government.

Once the manner of the execution began to appear within hours, cracks in the ranks competed with hypocrisy to rush away from responsibility by association and open approval.

A chorus of disapproval built up to drown out the earlier acclaim. Blair's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, at last found fine voice. He was disgusted by the manner in which the execution was carried out, he said. He might yet come round to confess a hint of a doubt that it was wise to do it all, no matter the indisputable evil that had been Saddam Hussein.

The British act was outdone on the American stage. Spin was rapidly put out that a top-ranking American diplomat had advised the Iraqi authorities to postpone the execution by a fortnight or so.

Not, mind you, to refrain from doing it, so as to deny Saddam Hussein undeserved victory, and to avoid the conception of who knows how many would-be martyrs.

Not to leave the tyrant rot in prison while the image of him emerging humbled from a bunker prevailed. Simply, to postpone execution by a few days.

The revelation did not postpone quick disgust at that diversionary effort. Had the US government truly wanted to influence the Iraqi authorities in any way, it possessed more direct and timely means to do so.

Had the US diplomat's late advice sprung from official policy, would the American president who sets that policy have marched out to welcome the great news of justice meted to Saddam Hussein?

The whole affair stinks to the depths of hell. Repulsion towards it can in no way be mistaken for sympathy towards Saddam Hussein. He was more valuable dishonoured alive, than somehow honoured in death. Alive, he should not have become a wind sown to raise whirlwinds.

The point is that, punishing the tyrant with death, in reality rewarded him. Executing him amid insults, minimised his ignominy.

Exulting over his death made him a perceived victim of Anglo-American intrigue.

Transmitting his slogan of an Arab Palestine and final faith in Allah, turned him into a symbol of resistance to the end.

Irony was rarely ever written so bold.