This is an interesting piece to critique. Let's start with the original piece by John Burns, who actually seems to be a very well-qualified international reporter. Burns reports accurately what US sources would desperately like everyone to believe--that the US did not want Saddam hanged in haste. But that angle beggars belief, in that Saddam was not turned over to an international criminal court, and the ink on the new "laws" are barely dry, and the reader has no way of knowing which part of it were shoved down the throat of the Iraqis, and which part of the laws are as old as the laws of Hammurabi (rendering the headline totally absurd--Iraqis did not learn "legal"--they passed it down to Western Civilizations, as even the ... More »

Glenn Greenwald is a liberal, anti-war blogger, but his essay is well worth reading by anyone concerned with the process of the law. Greenwald's thesis, similar to that of many who have questioned the justice fo Saddam's execution, is that the United States capitulated to the Iraqi government's extra-legal rush to kill the former dictator.