The Saddam Hussein Verdict - New York Times

The Saddam Hussein Verdict - New York Times: "Saddam Hussein’s horrendous crimes deserve exemplary punishment. During his own dictatorship, that would have meant a gruesome death, after a staged trial or no trial.

In an Iraq fully liberated from his evil thrall, it might have been something very different — an exemplary exercise in the rule of law, aimed at holding Mr. Hussein fully accountable, but also at healing and educating a nation he so ruthlessly divided.

Regrettably, yesterday’s sentence to death by hanging in a case involving the execution of 148 Shiites in the 1980s fell somewhere short of that goal. Mr. Hussein got a fairer trial than he ever would have allowed in his courts. But Iraq got neither the full justice nor the full fairness it deserved. President Bush overreached in calling the trial “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.”"