Not Ready For Prime Time
A public execution is a staged, theatrical event. It is a morality play put on by a government to teach a lesson. The participants are in costume and the gallows is a stage. The purpose is to demonstrate that “crime doesn’t pay” and “justice will be served.” If the forms aren’t properly observed it can turn the villain into a martyr.
What John refers to as the Ox-Bow Incident in Baghdad took what should have been a ritualized set piece, and made it a badly performed improvisation.
Having seen the unedited video, Riverbend calls it a lynching in which Saddam is the only one showing any dignity.
Glenn Greenwald notes that Iraqi law was not followed and links to a Steve Soto post that reveals that the “cast” was replaced by members of Moqtada al Sadr’s Madhi Army.
Now the media is reporting the U.S. tried to delay the execution, an exercise in crisis management now that it is obvious that that the Shrubbery’s one seeming success in Iraq is as flawed as every other action he has taken.
The “script” is centuries old and there are detailed “stage directions” covering the “props.” Everyone knows that in Westerns, when the mob takes a suspect out of jail to lynch him, the surprise evidence appears to prove the suspect was innocent. In the old days it occurred before the suspect’s death, but later, if the screenwriter was looking for an extra dose of morality and wanted to really punish the mob, the innocent was allowed to die.
2 comments
I hadn’t read Riverbend’s latest.
Heh. I don’t know that I believe that US tried to delay the execution. It was what shrub wanted. I’m sure it has great bragging points.
OWL, I noticed that stories about the US trying to restrain the Iraqis didn’t appear until well after it was determined that there was going to be a backlash.