[Very OT] Saddam Hanging Video -- Some comments

[Ian Petersen]

I wasn't going to watch the video until Paul said this:

> As for a frame of reference, people
> in the know saw for certain the "official" story of the quietness and
> cooperation of Saddam was shown to be a farce: he was anything but quiet or
> complacent -- he was clearly rebellious right to the bitter end. And because
> the video was freely available, the media could not be shown up by some wanker
> holding up a cell phone, so they had to report on it also.

And now that I've seen the video, I wonder what I'm missing.  Perhaps
I have misunderstood what you mean by "rebellious right to the bitter
end"?

While a little unnerving, the video on pandachute.com doesn't really
show much.  From the doom-and-gloom in this thread, I was expecting to
see Saddam convulsing at the end of the noose, or something (which is
why I didn't originally want to watch the video).  What I did see was
the guards put the noose around his neck, and then a split second of
Saddam falling, after which, the screen goes black.  I couldn't
understand any of the audio, but there was some shouting here and
there.

Throughout, Saddam seems calm.  I suppose his calmness could be his
final rebellion, but the video quality is poor, and his expression
could just as easily be that of a man who has come to terms with his
impending doom, or that of a man too much in shock to have any real
emotion to share.

I agree with a lot of the politically-motivated discussion in this
thread--the wrongness of the war, the insensitivity of the people in
the west, the failings of the major media outlets, etc.--but I don't
see how this video can make much of an impact as a reality check for
those of us in the West (myself included) who have never had to deal
with unnatural death, war, or the tyranny of a sociopathic dictator.
Personally, I was more affected by the images of the planes flying
into the World Trade Center that were played in a loop on all the
major news stations for the first week after September 11, 2001, and I
found that entire event to be surreal.

Ian

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