Countdown!

This sure is fun: Saddam to die by Sunday. 'Course I won't see it, and really don't want to see it, but I sure do want to note the time. I'll just feel a great, comfortable pleasure. Maybe have a glass of warm milk. Celebrate.

I first saw the Drudge headline --it must have been just a little after 6:00-- Saddam to be hanged in 36 hours. But there was no text (and I may not remember the words exactly). Then at 7:40, CST, I clicked on a headline about the same as that beginning this post, referencing Sunday, and found that it was first reported by NBC (undoubtedly this link will be useless because the story will be so often updated). But anyway NBC got the story first and it runs like this:

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday.
The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi government to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution.

An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution.

Promises, promises. I sure hope it works out. As I've said, it will be calming and pleasing.

I suppose it's very much a "wheels of justice" thing, but most explicitly it's the "inevitability" thing. It's good politics. Everything the Americans have wanted to do, step-by-step, they've done: Regime overthrow, elections, constitution; Uday and Qusay dead, and now Saddam, and dead by a very western sort of court. Nothing stops the American intent. Things keep grinding on. This should encourage those who support those things a good American should support, and it should give some discouragement to those who do not. Some problems yet of course, but all-in-all, encouraging.

"The wheels of the god's move slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine"

That's always been more powerful to me than comprehensible. I suppose its appeal is in the promise it seems to give of a final, inevitable justice in all things. It's possible to be patient and absorb a lot as long as there's a sense that at some point all things will be balanced and nothing over-looked. This is my sense towards the execution of Saddam. It's a final, proper ordering of things by a well ordered even if inexperienced court. It bodes well for future Iraqi civil society.

That violence will erupt? This is the "Arab Street". This is a concept. It doesn't exist. Like the unicorn... Oh, I guess it does exist --as long as they can get a lot of press and be sure nobody shoots them-- but as an existent anger thing it isn't. It is a scare tactic, sort of Global Warming from the Arab Street.

--I should say something sometime about the Catholic Church's immoral position regarding capital punishment. They don't seem to realize that by saying it's wrong to execute Saddam thay're saying it's perfectly fine to kill kids. They say that because they violate justice by ignoring its very sense, something every human understands. They're saying that there is no guilt worthy of death and therefore there is no innocence worthy of life and therefore there is no reason not to kill because there can be no moral judgment because no moral courage by which to make it. Some sick puppies now days, there in the Church.