Submitted by Dr. Pary Karadaghi, Jan 3, 2007 18:18

I would like to thank Ms. Shlaes for reminding us of the era of Nixon and Kissinger and the betrayal of the Kurds or hanging them to dry so to speak in invoking Voltaire's famous phrase about hanging. Its ironic that Saddam is executed during the same week as Gerald Ford passes away. In no way does it reflect on President Ford for indeed he was an honorable man. When President Ford took office the leader of the Kurdish movement was fighting for his life and asking Washington to save Kurds from Saddam Hussein. But the execution of Saddam came too soon for thousands of victims. As I watched the trail of Saddam, a Kurdish woman, who recently testified at Saddam's on going trial before his sudden execution, spoke of his acts of genocide in connection with the 1987-1988 "Anfal" campaign against Iraq's Kurdish minority. The woman faced Saddam and said, "the Quran you are now holding is it not the same Quran you burned in our village mosques" If the trial continued as scheduled on Jan. 8, 2007 the trial of Saddam and all conspirators would have concluded in a matter of months and justice would have prevailed for over 200,000 Iraqi Kurds who lost their lives in the Anfal campaign and over 4,500 villages razed to the ground.

Many witnesses provided testimonies that documented the tens of thousands of family members who perished during the Anfal campaign. These witnesses wanted to know what happened to their family members and wanted restitution and conviction of the perpetuators. Saddam and his men made comments ridiculing these witnesses. For example Saddam asked one witness: "You said you are illiterate, so how did you know the planes that bombed your village were Iraqis." He went on and asked another witness how many cells were in the prison in Nugrat Salman where you were taken? The man old, sick and broken (he had been beaten while in jail) said, "I only knew of the cell I was in, there were 8-10 of us in that cell. I didn't dare ask or find out how many more were there. I know there was over 7,000 of us in that prison. I lost my wife, children, my sons and their wives and grandchildren and my brother and his family." At the end of his testimony he gave the judge a long list of his disappeared family members names.

Why deny so many of Saddam's victims the chance to see justice done for the crimes committed against them by Saddam and his henchmen. An opportunity was lost to establish truth and reconciliation and for Kurds and Shiites to move on in Iraq. Instead Saddam was executed last Saturday for ordering the killing of 148 Shiite men and boys in the village of Dujail in reprisal for a failed assassination attempt that took place in July 1982. Yet though the trial was criticized by human rights groups, the verdict was consistent with the evidence. Saddam's signature was on the order to execute 148 Kurdish men and boys. He freely admitted that he signed the document. The evidence against him was overwhelming. But so was the evidence of the Anfal and the lost 8,000 Barzani men and boys and the chemical weapon use against Halabja (in one single attack over 5,000 men, women and children were killed by chemical gas in seconds) and at least 200 other Kurdish villages. Many survivors have horrific tails to tell.

I agree with Ambassador Peter Galbraith, January 3^rd article A Regrettable Rush to Execution published in The Boston Globe. He stated that Saddam's execution meant there would be no accounting for his other crimes: the destruction of the marshes and the Marsh Arabs in the 1990s, the murder of tens of thousands of Shiites in the aftermath of the 1991 uprising, the killing of 8,000 members of the Barzani clan in 1983, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the murder of tens of thousands in various purges over his decades in power. Obviously, it was never practical to try Saddam Hussein for every crime he committed. But the rush to execution actually interrupted Saddam's ongoing trial on genocide charges in connection with the 1987-1988 "Anfal" campaign against Iraq's Kurdish minority. That trial was scheduled to resume Jan. 8 and would have concluded in a matter of months.

Saddam was a dead man walking since the first minute he walked into the courtroom and the trail began. Without a doubt he would have been convicted of multiple crimes against humanity. The Baath party meticulously documented every killing, gazing, torture, raping of women and their sale to brothels in Egypt and elsewhere. Yet the evidence against him did not address the horrific genocide of the Kurdish people. He will forever remain convicted for only one part of his evil deeds, and with no mention of the Kurdish decimation. Delaying the execution a few more months would have made little difference. If he was convicted for the genocide he committed perhaps it would have set a precedent concerning conviction of other dictators guilty of genocide. Now we shall never know.

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