"Saddam loved poison gas" and someone has turned the loonie loose.

It's scary how dementia means if you can look at the bigger picture you are in fact a narrow minded, mindless bigot.

At least he's easy to spot!

Whiite agnostic Englishman.

Yo angry Bush toady, perhaps if you slow down on the beer and Christmas Ho-Ho's your obsession with poison gas will dissipate, along with the nasty ass-gas you're inhaling.

Aw jeez, not even YouTube has the whole hanging. But they do have everything right up to the "money shot" part. Go see it.

See for yourself if you believe the Hairdoos that Saddam either looked 1.) Defiant or 2.) Scared.

Actually, Saddam in his last moments appeared with as much dignity as anyone could probably muster considering the humiliating circumstance of your last moments on Earth.

Some rightwingnut might think I have sympathy for Saddam, and they would be right to an extent. I sympathize with anyone who is being put to death. It's what makes me a human being and it makes someone who can't see that the death of a person is at least a somber moment and no cause for celebration, either a shallow fool or perhaps a person who is of the same sub-human dreck as he thinks the condemned man or woman to be.

Although there is no sound, the hangman appears to be explaining to Saddam the procedure of what is going to take place in the next few moments. Saddam nods as if he understands, but leans in close to look into the hangman's eyes, as if asking for some clarification of a finer point. Or maybe he is just making sure that the hangman is never going to get the sight of a condemned man's eyes out of his head every night for the rest of his life.

NOBODY appears to be taking any pleasure in this dreadful business. But whether the stupid-ass news readers at CNN understand it or not, Saddam refused to take the hood. He chose to be executed with his face in full view of his executioners and witnesses. You tell me if you think that's the final act of someone who is scared.

Saddam lifts his chin to allow the noose to fit snuggly at his neck, the thick hangman's knot is positioned correctly slightly forward of his ear, so that the impact of the thick knot striking the side of his head and the loop yanking upward would cause a complete fracture between his C-1 and C-2 vertebrae, rendering merciful unconsciousness until the brain is deprived of oxygen and the heart muscle finally fails.

Saddam didn't do what a lot of people do when they are about to die. He didn't beg. He didn't cry. His knees didn't buckle. He didn't appear to have any nervous shaking.

So whatever any rightwing nut or blow-dried TV creature might say about Saddam at the end, he conducted himself with dignity until the trap swung open. Any of you who think ill of him should be so courageous at your own moment of death.

No, I don't give a damn about Saddam, other than no matter what else he was, no matter how bad he was, he was just a man. Jesus was just a man too. And that's the whole point of the message of Christ. You can hate Saddam and cheer his torturous execution, but if you do, you were one of the ones who mocked Jesus as he died on the cross.

I'm not a preacher, but I remember it is written that Jesus said something like, "what you do to the least of them, you do to me."

Killing Saddam was an act of barbarism that Americans can't really say they were not a part of.

Since EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT MSNBC, I'd just like to add my two cents: MSNBC sucks.

...and so does littering a website chock-a-block full of fucking annoying flash ads.

Killing Saddam was an act of barbarism that Americans can't really say they were not a part of.

I opposed the invasion from the beginning and voted against Bush twice, but if I'm complicit in Saddam's death, I'm alright with that; I've searched my conscience, and I feel fine.

When I learned that Hitler II (saddamnable) was dead.

A real BIG STIFFIE!

Thanks for one of the finest posts I've ever seen on Salon. The astounding hypocrisy of the media regarding the war and its casualties, the death and destruction that they exploit for ratings while simultaneously airbrushing so as not to reveal the real barbarism of our conduct as a nation, could well serve as the very definition of pornography.

I feel certain that if the columnist and letter writers here had been around when WWII ended, and somehow Hitler had been captured, they would be writing in about how "sad" it was that he should be put to death and that the US was really responsible for his death and, somehow, his crimes against humanity.

Saddam was a practitioner of genocide. Do you get it? He wasn't some little clown. Do you know what his many, many crimes against humanity are? They are enormous. Women beheaded for prostituation, the death penalty for gays, imprisonment of tens of thousand Kurdish women, children and the elderly detained in condition of extreme deprivation. We all know about the mass graves filled with his own people. The list goes on, I'm barely scratching the surface. He ground his country into the dirt for his own self-aggrandizement

It's astoinishing that the dislike of Bush and his bungling of Iraq, that even a confirmed belief that invading Iraq was wrong, should lend itself to empathy for Saddam or anything like a belief that this execution was a bad thing.

Anyone with a belief in justice should feel satisfied at this time. And grateful that, in the giant mess of this terrible war, some act of moral balance managed to occur.

"Killing Saddam was an act of barbarism that Americans can't really say they were not a part of."

Don't lay your guilt trip on me. I voted for Nader.

Hey, it's their country. If Iraqis want to execute their ex-dictator in a creepy manner using guys in ski masks, I guess it's their prerogative.