Saddam Hussein's last moments: "I saw fear, he was afraid"

Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday. "I saw fear, he was afraid," Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator's last moments. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists," he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, "Saddam said, ‘Iraq without me is nothing.’"

Ali says he followed Saddam up the gallows steps, escorted by two guards. He stood over the hole and filmed from close quarters as Saddam dropped through—from "me to you," he said, crouching down to show how he shot the scene. The distance, he said, was "about one meter," he said. "He died absolutely, he died instantly."

-Michael Hastings, Newsweek

By now most of America has seen the snippets of video as Hussein was escorted to his hanging.  I can tell you it's unsettling.  A man's last moments ought to be I guess.  I can't say that I saw fear in the face of Saddam Hussein in the piece now being played over and over again on network feeds but I certainly did not see defiance. 

I saw a broken man resigned to his fate.  I saw justice meted out but you know, it isn't all that satisfying.  In fact, there was a keenly disturbing sense to it all for me personally.  Odd really.  I'm surprised by my reaction.  Though I'm not surprised by the reaction of Iraqis in Iraq and Iraqis in the U.S.

Of course now the debate swirls as to what the execution might mean.  Who really knows.  I doubt that the violence in Iraq will subside and in fact think that in the near term, it's likely to get worse nevertheless, the world has reduced the population of thuggish brutal dictators by one and for that there should be satisfaction.

Are you satisfied?

UPDATE: Scott Ott, the satirist at Scrappleface, speaks for many:

(2006-12-30) — The Pentagon announced this morning that a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) was found today in Baghdad, hanging from a rope on a platform.

“This particular WMD,” a Pentagon spokesman said, “is known to have killed thousands of Iraqis, as well as Iranians, Kuwaitis and some U.S. troops.”

The weapon is described as “a nasty, corrosive agent which kills indiscriminately and without warning.”

“A lot of folks — including Hans Blix, the United Nations and the Democrats — said there were no WMD in Iraq,” the Pentagon source said. “Perhaps they were just looking in all the wrong places.”

According to Iraqi government sources, the WMD has been contained, neutralized and prepared for burial.

AND MORE: Michelle has a link to the video snippet of Hussein's last moments.  You'll have to scroll to get to it.  More importantly, Michelle links to Andy McCarthy's comments and sentiments that seem to give reason for my own unsettledness:

I had to turn off the TV-news.

This is a solemn, important moment. It's not a joyous one. An evil man deserved to die. His elimination was necessary — not close to sufficient, but necessary — for achieving, over time, a semblance civilized stability in Iraq...

...This wasn't victory. It didn't end suffering. It was, in the heat of a war that has actually gotten more vicious and more uncertain since Saddam's capture three years ago, the carrying out of an essential but unpleasant duty. It marginally enhances Iraq's propects, and ours. But Saddam's death (as opposed to his deposing) has no impact whatsoever on the deep dysfunction and hatred that is rending what passes for Iraqi society...

...Saddam's death is a marker worth observing. It is not something to go up in a balloon over.

AND YET MORE: Hopeful Amphibian takes us back to a moment during Gulf War I when it was thought that Saddam Hussein had been killed and the celebration that ensued in his apartment complex:

Then came the rumour that Saddam Hussein had been killed. The first news I heard of it came in the form of whoops and shouts from the floor below. Startled by the noise, I went down the stairs and encountered a group of men dancing and laughing and embracing one another - as I approached I too was grabbed and hugged.

"I love George Bush! I love George Bush!", one shouted, a huge smile on his face, tears in his eyes. And he told me why. Saddam had been killed. At least he hoped so, he really hoped so. "I love George Bush!"

Kurdish refugees, these men had sought safety in our country. In its wisdom the government had decided that they were only due 90% of basic benefits - they were left with about £15 each a week from which they had to find money for transport, lunch, clothing, other essentials. They were not allowed to look for employment, although some of them were working illegally for cash-in-hand in local burger and fried chicken outlets.

The man who embraced me had seen his uncle shot by Hussein's soldiers - had been forced at gunpoint to watch the murder and applaud it. Others of his family and friends had also been killed.

Confronted by his joy I was jarred - and still am. Yes, I can take a good, academic, western liberal line, opposing the wars we decide to prosecute in the Middle East, suspicious of our reasons for doing so. But I'm also left with his embrace, his smile, his tears, and his "love" (at least for a season) of an American President.

I really don't know how to "end" this anecdote. There's no simple conclusion - just this memory that still disturbs me and forces me to remember that behind and beyond the soundbites, debates, slogans and speeches are the disparate and difficult stories of people who have been through far more suffering than I will probably ever know. Stories that won't fit "views" or "theories" or easy judgments. That's all.

That's all indeed.

Comments

[Leslie]

I always go back to that family picture of the Husseins that floats around. He and his wife on the couch, the children, mostly grown. All well dressed and smiling.

What a metaphor. Saddam built greatness for his family using tools of power, greed and violence. I suspect his wife on the couch went along with it because she liked the greatness or out of fear, who knows?

A person doesn't become an evil dictator suddenly. It's a process of handing yourself over little by little until one day you're in so far that even when the whole world calls you guilty, you can't find the way out.

"Man looketh on outward appearances, but the Lord looketh on the heart".

His family picture reminds me of the magnitude of what's in my heart. Saddam sold himself every day for the taste of power.

What day goes by where we don't wrestle God for the spot on the throne? Or like Frodo, standing over the firey canyon unable to toss in the ring, which he can't bring himself to part with even though he knows it will destroy him.

Saddam chose "the ring" and destroyed himself and so many others.

We all wrestle with similar attractions, and that, for me, is the unsettling part.

[lewis]

i couldn't see that he was afraid ,moments before he was excuted..but i saw a brave man died in honor

[k. matern]

The ten commandments say thou shall not kill,not thou shall kill bad people think about it