Saddam: Justice Served

Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hanging by an Iraqi court yesterday for the murder of 148 Shiite men and boys.

It is a far more merciful fate than met his victims, and it covers only a tiny fraction of his crimes.

The list of his bestial crimes is long, but I'll try to summarize:

-- Repeated attacks against his neighbors, including a war with Iran that killed one million soldiers.

-- The murder of between one million and eight million of his own countryman -- victims' group continue poring through official Iraqi documents to come up with a final tally. But even the low end of these numbers puts him in the same league as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Tactics ranged from rounding up and shooting the victims to gassing whole villages of civilians (see photo above);

-- Torture on an incredible level -- eyes gouged out, electric shocks to the genitals, the rape of women and children, infants tortured in front of their parents, hands lopped off, people tossed into shredding machines and vats of acid, and on and on;

-- Repeated violations of the international peace accords ending the first Gulf War, including continuing human rights abuses, failure to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors, and ardent support of global terror;

-- Continuing concealment of WMD programs despite international requirements to fully disarm and prove that he had done so;

-- The wholly corrupt oil-for-food program, which allowed Saddam to continue to collect money to support his murderous regime while lining the pockets of U.N. officials and their associates, including the son of Secretary General Kofi Annan.

One day before the elections, it's important to keep all this in mind as many anti-war candidates question why we're in Iraq.

We know why.