[Schwartz] Iraq - Mystery of the Saddam photos

|

[In the interest of good taste, and out of respect for our Iraqi readers and correspondents, I shall not be re-printing the infamous photographs on this blog.*]

Yesterday the New York Post (not my favorite newspaper by far) made an interesting suggestion:

The Sun said it received the pictures from a source in the U.S. military who hoped the release of the pitiful pictures will deal a blow to the lingering Iraqi insurgency.

The Pentagon seems to be of a different opinion. Today the Post reports today,

The Pentagon yesterday launched an investigation into who photographed Saddam Hussein in his underwear at a U.S-run prison in Iraq.

The sensational snapshots of the former tyrant, published in yesterday's Post and the London Sun, violated Pentagon regulations and Geneva Convention guidelines.

*Yet, I must admit, I find the predicament of Saddam Hussein, while ironic and justified, strangely fascinating: what is it like for him to have gone from all that power to such decrepitude? to have his sons shot dead? his macabre dreams dashed? and all his might and terror stripped from him? Here we see a man who had palaces built in his honor now huddling in the cold on a plain cot.

The New York Post quotes The Sun's "defense editor," Tom Newton Dunn: "[Hussein and his accomplices] are just old men now, and seem to have acceped their day is over. They're just waiting out their fate. Most of them know that means the gallows."

Truth be told, I've always been fascinated by dictators-turned-powerless. I recall reading when I was younger about a South American dictator who, after a coup de tat, is now living out his existence somewhere in Central America. He owns a computer hardware shop and lives in the upstairs apartment. The Ben Kingsley character in the film, House of Sand and Fog, also fascinated me in the same manner (though, all the characters in that story fascinated me, and it's a great damned movie--go watch it!) The fate of the Thanos character in the graphic novel The Infinity Gauntlet also always moved me. Unlike the old South American dictator or Kingsley's character, Thanos gains a kind of serenity within himself at the end of the story.

One would hope Hussein's is a humbling experience, though by most accounts, Hussein seems himself as ultimately justified by God. Thus is the severity of his megalomania...