Iraq and the New Year

The new year brings promise, worry, fear, and the continuation of violence. The media trots out yet another grim milestone that 3,000 American servicemembers were killed in Iraq, and notes that 16,000+ Iraqis were killed in violence over the past year. That's a scary number, but nowhere near the figures trotted out by the likes of the Lancet whose statistical surveys claimed that hundreds of thousands were killed since 2003. Reporting on the violence is not easy, but when you rely on unnamed sources and no way to corroborate the information, one has to wonder what exactly is going on and whether we're getting an accurate picture of the violence, or one that is greatly inflated by stringers and editors whose agenda and bias influence the reporting:

On the first day of the New Year, Iraqi Police reported finding the 40 handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad. A police official, who refused to be named out of security fears, said 15 of the bodies were discovered in the mainly industrial Sheik Omar district of northern Baghdad.

An Iraqi worker for the Algerian Embassy in Baghdad was shot to death, police said.

No named officials, no comments from the US or Iraqi government. Just some unnamed individual. Is this how the AP avoids another Jamil Hussein situation?

Saddam Hussein, hung right before the end of the year, was buried just outside his home town of Tikrit.

Saddam Hussein's body was flown to the burial site by American choppers in accordance with a U.S. and Iraqi agreement.

Unlike the hangmen who exchanged taunts and curses with Saddam, the mainly Sunni Arabs who gathered at the gravesite in Ouja, just outside Tikrit, unleashed an outpouring of grief and anger.

Although there was no immediate sign of retaliation for Saddam's Saturday-morning hanging, there were plenty of threats yesterday from Sunnis.

"The path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood," said college student Mohammed Natiq, 24.

"God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end."

Gunmen in Tikrit ignored local police and took to the streets of the city, calling for vengeance while carrying pictures of Saddam and shooting off rifles into the air.

Arab nationalism? Nasser and others preached Arab nationalism, but there is no such movement. Today's claims to Arab nationalism are an extension of political Islam, not a secular movement. That's a huge difference.

It should not be a surprise that Tikritis responded in such a fashion with the death of Saddam coming at the hands of those he oppressed. This is a continuation of the clan/tribal nature of Iraq that makes a transition to a representative government more difficult.

The Times and others still question the so-called rush to execute Saddam Hussein, though I wonder whether carrying out the death sentence could have waited until after the Anfal campaign trial. One former judge in the Dujail trial claims that the execution violated Iraqi law, though he resigned because he was subjected to incessant claims of being too lenient with Saddam.

Rizkar Mohammed Amin, who later resigned as the trial's chief judge, said Iraqi law banned executions during the Eid al-Adha festival period that marks the end of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

The four-day Feast of the Sacrifice began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday -- the day Saddam was hanged in Baghdad -- and on Sunday for Shiites.

Amin also claimed that Iraqi law stipulates an execution must be carried out 30 days after the appeal court's decision on the sentencing, which in this case upheld the death sentence of Saddam.

But in ratifying the death sentence on December 26, the appeals chamber insisted that the law stipulated the sentence be implemented within 30 days.

Amin resigned as chief judge of the Dujail trial following political pressure amid accusations that he was lenient with Saddam and occasionally allowed the late dictator to carry out outbursts in court.

The Iraqis claim that Saddam was executed before Eid (sunrise before the holiday starts). The Iraqis are going investigate of the cellphone video of the execution that made its way to the Internet.