:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 10.20.2005 ::

:: "For Iraqis, the big event has begun" ::

International Herald Tribune
By Edward Wong
The New York Times

From the very start of the trial, from the moment Saddam Hussein refused to tell the judge his name, Hiba Raad said she knew that she was watching the same man who had ruled over Iraq for decades with muscular authority.

"He's a hero, he's a tough leader," Raad, an education student at Mustansiriya University, said as she reclined in black pants and a T-shirt on a sofa in her living room. "If he came back, I'm sure he'd provide us with security."

In her home in the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya, Raad had just finished watching the opening session of the trial on an Arab network with her parents and sister. They continued staring, transfixed. The grandmother, Samira al-Bayati, shuffled into the room.

"I felt sorry," she said. "I almost cried. Every country in the world has terrorism. All the presidents of this region torture their people. Why, of all the countries, do they come after us?"

So went some of the talk Wednesday afternoon as millions of Iraqis spent hours gazing at the stern, wrinkled visage of the leader they once feared, loathed and lionized. It was nothing less than a national spectacle.

Viewpoints varied widely, some calling it a tawdry display of victor's justice, others a long-awaited, if somewhat unsatisfactory, accounting for sins too numerous to list.

Read more here.

ALSO
Saddam: 'I am still president of Iraq'
Mail & Guardian Online

posted by me

:: 11:33:00 AM [+] ::
...