Saddam’s humiliation? The media should remember the calamity and terror he willfully inflicted on the masses. I suggest folks take another look at a piece of September 2002 column written by Raleigh News & Observer op-ed columnist Rick Martinez. Here are the pertinent paragraphs:
The environment: Saddam is the first war leader to launch an environmental attack. As his forces retreated from Kuwait in 1991, he ordered them to set fire to 720 oil wells. The poisonous plume that emerged scarred Mother Earth’s atmosphere for more than six months. Today, Kuwaiti doctors blame a rise in lung cancer and respiratory diseases on Saddam’s toxic fog. The pollution wasn’t limited solely to the air. The lakes of oil released from the sabotaged wells have seeped into Kuwait’s fresh-water aquifers. The war may have ended in 1991, but the ecological damage was so severe that the Kuwait Institute of Science continues to monitor the long-term effects.
Human and women’s rights: Torture is what distinguishes Saddam from the usual human-rights violators. In August 2001, Amnesty International issued a report detailing Iraq’s systematic use of torture, mutilation and rape. Saddam’s opponents have been subjected to electric shock, usually to the genitals. They have been suspended by the wrists and beaten with canes, whips, hosepipe or metal rods. Cigarettes have been extinguished on their bodies. Fingernails and toenails have been ripped out and hands pierced with electric drills. Some have been sexually abused. Bodies of executed prisoners have been returned to their families with eyes gouged out.
Amputation, once considered torture in Iraq, has become mainstream. Since 1994, the Iraqi judiciary has ordered the cutting off of hands, ears and feet for crimes considered petty in the civilized world. In 2000, Saddam authorized a new judicial sentence: Iraqis who have uttered abusive remarks about Saddam or his family have had their tongues cut out.
In Saddam’s Iraq, women are not only the recipients of torture, they are instruments as well. Amnesty International reports a former general who fled Iraq in 1995 and joined the Iraqi opposition received a videotape on June 7, 2000, that showed the rape of a female relative. There is growing evidence that beheading is becoming the preferred tool of terror and execution for women. In October 2000, dozens of suspected prostitutes were beheaded in front of their Baghdad homes. That same month, a Baghdad obstetrician was beheaded after she criticized Iraq’s health services. In December 2000, men from an Iraqi militia beheaded a woman in front of her neighbors. Her crime? She was married to a suspected Islamic opponent of the state. All of these women were executed without trial.
