Bob Ellis raises an interesting question [alternate link here] about the treatment of the former Iraqi leaders after Saddam's hanging over the new year. Now that they've executed Saddam, former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz must be rapidly approaching the head of the line.
(Aside: it seems that the execution was illegal under Iraqi law, because they didn't wait the mandatory 30 days from the sentence before execution. The government sacked the first trial judge, defence witnesses were intimidated and killed, and Saddam's lawyers assassinated. That's what passes for a fair trial in Iraq.)
Soon they'll have Tariq Aziz to deal with. He's a Christian, a friend of Pope John Paul, and literate, well-spoken, Anglicised evidence of how broad-based a secular government Saddam ran, and how much 4 million university graduates, civil servants, medical professionals, lawyers, judges, soldiers, police and schoolteachers miss him now, in a world of veils and checkpoints and daylight kidnappings and suicide bombings and 10,000 policemen killed in two years.
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