The accidental martyr

The US Midas touch in Iraq is alive and well. This from a post on Juan Cole's Informed Comment:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that hundreds of demonstrators marched in Dur, near Tikrit on Monday, protesting the execution of Saddam Hussein. Young men carried machine guns and fired them in the air, chanting "Muqtada, you coward," and "Hakim! Yellow-belly! Agent of the Americans!" They unveiled an enormous mosaic of Saddam Hussein inscribed, "The Martyr-Hero."

Here's the lede of a story from the IrishExaminer.com:

RAGE over the hanging of Saddam Hussein spilled into the streets in many parts of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland yesterday, especially in Samarra — where a mob of angry protesters broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and a photo of the executed former leader.

The US now says it wanted to delay the execution, but Spot asks, boys and girls, how credible such a claim is when Saddam was in US custody before - and after - the hanging?


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