Last Updated: Saturday, 30 December 2006, 17:06 GMT

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A bitter family saga is at an end

一个悲惨的家族传奇故事画上了句点
马特·弗莱（Matt Frei）报道，BBC 华盛顿记者
By Matt Frei
BBC Washington correspondent

The US said Saddam Hussein was

hanged after a "fair trial"

When Saddam Hussein looked in disbelief at the over-

sized noose that was fitted by masked volunteers
around his neck, the man who helped to put it there by
invading Iraq and toppling the dictator was soundly
asleep at his ranch in Texas.当萨达姆·侯赛因怀疑地看着由蒙
面志愿者在他脖子上套上的超大绞索时，那位通过入侵伊拉克并推翻独
裁者而帮助实现这一幕的男人，乔治·布什（George Bush），正沉
沉地睡在他德克萨斯的牧场里。

It was only nine o'clock in the evening in Crawford but

George Bush was already embedded in the land of nod, with
orders not to be woken until the morning.

The blithe indifference of deep slumber was the final snub to

the dead man who once described himself as "Salahadin II",
"the Redeemer of all the Arabs" and "the Lion of Baghdad".

Some might think that George Bush can't afford to sleep

soundly these days with his approval ratings in the cellar and
his policy towards Iraq in inertia.

But while the world stirred to comment, cyberspace buzzed

with applause or condemnation and Cable television
hyperventilated, George Bush soldiered on in sleep. He arose
only at 4.40am, we are told, which is his usual time of rising.

One hour later he had a 10-minute conversation with his

National Security adviser Stephen Hadley about the events in
Baghdad.

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Shortly thereafter the White
House issued a pre-prepared
written statement: "Today
Saddam Hussein was
executed after receiving a fair
trial - the kind of justice he
denied the victims of his
brutal regime."

The statement, which will not Saddam Hussein tried to get George
be complemented by a HW Bush assassinated
presidential turn for the cameras, betrayed no hint of
gloating or crowing. It went on to say that "bringing Saddam
Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq".

On one level, the hanging of Saddam Hussein is the end of a

dramatic family saga that has pitted the Bushes of Texas
against the Husseins of Tikrit.

Failed alliance

It is a saga that started with a tacit alliance.

When George HW Bush was vice-president, Saddam Hussein

was still seen as a potential partner thanks to his status as
the enemy of America's enemy, Iran.

It was in 1983 that Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched to

Baghdad as a friend of the Reagan administration to shake
the hand of Saddam Hussein and offer America's help against
the ayatollahs during the Iran Iraq War.

Alliance finally turned into animosity when Saddam Hussein

invaded Kuwait and President Bush cobbled together an
international alliance of Western and Arab states to remove
him from Kuwait but not from power.

"The butcher of Baghdad" began to call President Bush "the

viper" and George junior, "the son of the viper".

It was at that time that the famous Al Rashid hotel in

Baghdad received an elaborate mosaic of President Bush "the
criminal", which patrons were forced to stomp across on
entering the lobby.

Two years later Saddam Hussein tried to get President Bush

assassinated.

The White House has always maintained that personal

grudges had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

And yet in September 2002, as preparations for war were

well under way, George Bush the younger told a Houston
fundraiser: "This is after all the man who tried to kill my

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dad."

Mafia rule

The personal side of this bitter family saga is over.

But even from his unmarked grave, Saddam Hussein will

continue to haunt the Bush administration and define the
legacy of the 43rd president of the United States.

Saddam had always promised to lure, fight and defeat the

Americans in the cities of Iraq.

No-one thought at the time that this would happen after he

had already been deposed.

But his prophetic threat is becoming reality, triggering a

multi-headed insurgence that
no longer fights on his behalf,
and a vortex of sectarian
violence that makes a
conventional civil war look
organised and coherent.

The brutal bloodletting, ethnic

cleansing and vicious
fragmentation, in which The former Iraqi leader is likely to
American troops now find haunt the Bush administration
themselves embroiled, is also a legacy of Saddam's regime.

A quarter of a century of his mafia rule, in which tribal

loyalties were lavishly rewarded and anything less was
severely punished helped to rot the cohesion of a young and
artificial country.

The extent to which Iraq is disintegrating has taken many

Iraqis by surprise. It was grossly under-estimated by the
officials who planned the occupation.

President Bush and his advisers have always liked to

compare the birth pangs of Iraqi democracy to the
emergence of a free Germany after the World War II.

Bloodletting

But what they were dealing with was not Germany 1945 but
Germany in 1648 emerging from the feudal bloodbath of the
30 years war.

Another example would have been Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

So not even the few beleaguered optimists in the Bush camp,

including the president himself, believe that the execution of
Saddam Hussein will stem the bloodletting and allow America

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to plan for a graceful exit.

The sectarian violence in Iraq

has reached its own alarming
momentum, in which Saddam
Hussein had been reduced to
a walk-on part.

The White House may boast

about the new rule of law but
for many ordinary Iraqis
justice comes in the form of Nearly 3,000 US servicemen and
death squads, torture gangs women have already been killed
and rogue police road blocks.

These days the wrong identity card can get you executed.
This is not the kind of justice that George Bush had in mind.

So now the noose has done its deed the Pentagon is, if
anything, expecting a spike in the sectarian violence.

The US State Department has put its embassies on a security

alert "to prepare for demonstrations and possible attacks".

And the American public, which had long expected the

execution of Saddam Hussein is waiting with growing
impatience to see how exactly the president will execute his
heralded "new Iraq strategy".

More troops? More money? More hope? For American soldiers

December 2006 proved to be the bloodiest month of a bloody
year.

Sometime in the next 10 days 3,000 US servicemen and

women will have been killed by a war that was declared
"accomplished" in May 2003.

Saddam Hussein is dead. His legacy lives on.