Swift Justice for Saddam

I was getting some juice at the deli down the street, run by a Palestinian family, previously the fathers and now the sons (who happen to be huge Giants fans), and they were watching CNN report that Saddam had been executed. (CNN developing story link here.) One of the guys behind the counter said to me, "That's a wrap!"

I thought for a moment he said, "That's Iraq!"

"Do they have pictures?" I asked, in the "Photo, or it didn't happen" vein.

"I don't know. Should they show that sort of thing?" he replied.

"I guess not."

The next day...

Ski masks? My god. How horrible. From the Times:

His executioners wore black ski masks, but Mr. Hussein could still see their deep brown skin and hear their dialects, distinct to the Shiite southern part of the country, where he had so brutally repressed two separate uprisings.

Sunday night now, a day later, and new images are surfacing.

Someone shot the actual hanging with his cellphone and posted it on Google Video.
UPDATE: Apparently, this someone was apprehended by Iraqi authorities after the hubub his cellphone video caused. (msnbc)

The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper “one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.”

Those damn camphones. You can never tell when they're on the phone or shooting video. I mean, what were they supposed to do? Stop the execution and tell everyone to turn off their cellies?

An interesting nugget from this piece: "Saddam was put to death in an execution chamber used by his own security men for years." How's that for poetic justice?

The WikiNews page on the execution is evolving, complete with annoying "Digg"-esque commentary:

"Saddam's death was filmed in HDTV but it is thought that the footage will only be available on [Blu Ray] media so it could be some time before the footage is seen as nobody in the world has a [Blu Ray] player as yet."

This is why Wikipedia has a bad rap.

Anyways, fascinating these days to read about a man's last words before he goes to his (very public) death. (The NYTimes has published quite a good account. These are times for good old-fashioned journalistic writing.) His official last words:

"Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians."

I guess, in that order. The Persians seemed kind of an afterthought, or the furthest back in his memory.

The Times' obituary (by Neil McFarquhar) is a good read too. His favorite wine was a Portugese Mateus Rosé, his favorite snack (in prison), Doritos (according to his guards). He was OCD about germs and keeping an immaculate desk. With all the Godfather-esque offings of family members and advisors, I can't wait for the TV movie of his life.

I did a poster for a play one time in college. The play was called "Our Country's Good" and since it involved a hanging, I decided to make a noose and use it on the poster as a graphic and typographic element (as an "O"). Well, I did some research into how to tie a proper hangman's noose and recalled being fascinated that the number of loops can make the difference between literally life and death, or at least, a slow, agonizing death and a swift cracking of the neck. How to tie a proper hangman's knot, courtesy of the U.S. Army:



A proper noose should have 6 to 8 turns (more would create too much friction and less would not be tight enough to kill) and the first thing I did when I saw the photos of Saddam at his execution was to count the turns in his rope:

7 turns. Well, that's a wrap.