NYT: US officers mad Rice 'gave green light' to handover Saddam

NYT: 'Revenge over justice;' US officers mad Rice 'gave green light' to hand over Saddam

RAW STORYPublished: Sunday January 7, 2007

A lengthy front page article in Sunday's New York Times reports that after a "sequence that [US] commanders saw as motivated less by a concern for justice than for revenge," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "gave the green light" for Saddam Hussein to be turned over to Iraq, so that prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki could hang the ousted ruler before the year’s end.
Maliki had been sentenced to death by Hussein's government in 1980, forcing the Shi'a Muslim to live in exile in Iran and Syria before returning to Iraq shortly after the invasion in April of 2003 to help lead the De-Baathification Commission of the Iraqi Interim Government. After being elected to the transitional National Assembly in January of 2005 and serving as the senior Shi'ite member of Iraq's constitutional drafting committee, Maliki was named prime minister-designate by President Jalal Talabani last April.

"But for Mr. Maliki’s inner circle, the hanging was a moment to avenge decades of brutal repression by Mr. Hussein, as well as a moment to drive home to Iraq’s five million Sunnis that after centuries of subjugation, Shiites were in power to stay," John F. Burns writes for The Times.

According to Burns – the only Western print reporter allowed to witness the start of the former dictator's trial – Hussein knew he was to be executed early last Saturday as he was flown by helicopter "over Baghdad’s darkened suburbs," but could "have known little of the last-minute battle waged between top Iraqi and American officials – and among the Americans themselves – over whether the execution, fraught with legal ambiguities and Islamic religious sensitivities, should go ahead."

Maliki had attempted to "coerce second-tier American military and diplomatic officials into handing over Mr. Hussein, first on Thursday night, then again on Friday," but the "American push back was complicated by the absences of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American military commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who were both out of Iraq on leave."
"Even before a smuggled cellphone camera recording revealed the derision Mr. Hussein faced on the gallows, the hanging had become a metaphor, among Mr. Maliki’s critics, for how the 'new Iraq' is starting to resemble the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade," Burns writes.

Excerpts from Before Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back:
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The hanging spread wide dismay among the Americans. Aides said American commanders were deeply upset by the way they were forced to hand Mr. Hussein over, a sequence commanders saw as motivated less by a concern for justice than for revenge. In the days following the hanging, recriminations flowed between the military command and the United States Embassy, accused by some officers of abandoning American interests at midnight Friday in favor of placating Mr. Maliki and hard-line Shiites.
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At 10:30 p.m., Ambassador Khalilzad made a last-ditch call to Mr. Maliki asking him not to proceed with the hanging. When the Iraqi leader remained adamant, an American official said, the ambassador made a second call to Washington conveying “the determination of the Iraqi prime minister to go forward,” and his conclusion that there was nothing more, consistent with respect for Iraqi sovereignty, that the United States could do.

Senior Bush administration officials in Washington said that Mr. Khalilzad’s principal contact in Washington was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that she gave the green light for Mr. Hussein to be turned over, despite the reservations of the military commanders in Baghdad. One official said that Ms. Rice was supported in that view by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser.

“It literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and our looking at their law and interpreting it differently,” the official said. “Finally, it was decided we are not the court of last appeal for Iraqi law here. The president of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.”
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The Americans suggested that foreign reporters be invited to the hanging, along with United Nations observers. American commanders feared the concern for procedure might be swept away by the urge for revenge. “Anybody who’s been involved in a firefight will tell you there’s a moment when rage takes over,” an American official said. The Iraqis dismissed the idea of outside observers and assembled an execution party of 14 Shiite officials and a Sunni cleric invited to help Mr. Hussein with his prayers.
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FULL ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK