Tariq Aziz and 'Chemical Ali' Get 15 Years

They should be hanged, of course, but I imagine these two won't last 15 years in jail anyway.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Ali Hassan al-Majid, a senior official in Saddam Hussein’s Baath party known as “Chemical Ali,” were sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against humanity in the killing of Baghdad merchants in the 1990s.

Aziz and al-Majid were charged over the 1992 murders of 40 Baghdad wholesalers accused of speculating on food prices when Iraq was under United Nations sanctions. The Iraqi High Tribunal handed down the sentences today, President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on the party’s Web site. The two men faced the death penalty.

Two of Hussein’s half-brothers, Watbam Ibrahim al-Hassan and Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, were sentenced to death in the case, the PUK said. A 15-year sentence also was given to co-defendant Mizban Khadr Hadi, while Ahmed Hakki got six years. Issam Huwaish was acquitted and released, the party said.

Iraqi-Born Canadian Charged With Spying

I'm sure he was just trying to slip into Buffalo last week to enjoy the Christmas festivities.

An Iraq-born Canadian citizen who was detained at the U.S. border is accused of conspiring to spy for Iraq.

U.S. Justice Department officials say 47-year-old Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish will appear in federal court in Buffalo for a detention hearing Tuesday. He was detained while entering the United States at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo Dec. 24.

A criminal complaint filed in Maryland Monday alleges Darwish, while working at a Maryland restaurant, was paid to provide information to Iraqi government officials and intelligence officers, including that Iraqi volunteers were being trained by the U.S. military in Virginia.

An alleged co-conspirator pleaded guilty in Maryland last week.

Much more here from the Department of Justice release.

Darwish is a Canadian citizen born in Iraq. During part of the alleged conspiracy, he resided in Maryland. According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) routinely recruited individuals, either currently in the United States or to be placed into the United States, to support the IIS and the Government of Iraq. Following the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces in March 2003, the United States military obtained confidential IIS documents establishing that Darwish provided information to officials of the Government of Iraq and intelligence officers with the IIS.

The seized documents also established that Darwish received payments from the IIS and the Iraqi government as compensation for his assistance and information. For example, an IIS document indicated that Darwish had provided information he received from a source of Iraqi descent that Iraqi volunteers, including the source, were being trained by the U.S. military in Virginia. Another document identifies Darwish as an employee of the Iraqi Interests Section (ISEC), formed in 1991 within the Algerian Embassy in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Iraq for invading Kuwait.

Specifically, according to the affidavit, throughout the conspiracy Darwish performed tasks at the Iraqi Embassy and at the ISEC. For example, the affidavit alleges that from 2000 through March or April of 2004, Darwish was working full-time at the ISEC as an assistant to the accountant and as a driver, for which he was paid $1,500 per month. Darwish also had obtained a work visa for a position as a cook at a restaurant in Maryland during that time frame, in an effort to legally remain in the United States.

According to the affidavit, in January 2004, a co-conspirator asked that Darwish locate and destroy any ISEC files associated with the conspirator, in an effort to conceal that person’s ISEC activities and Ba’ath Party membership. While attempting to locate the files, Darwish learned that the files had already been destroyed and shared this information with his co-conspirators. Darwish also is alleged to have told his conspirators about his employment activities at the Iraqi Embassy and the ongoing activities in the United States of the Iraqi ambassador and other Iraqi government officials who were associated with the interim government following the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime.

Darwish also is alleged to have attended social gatherings at the Iraqi Embassy and the ISEC, which were used to recruit individuals to work for the IIS; to interact with individuals who were already working with the IIS and Saddam Hussein’s regime; and to maintain the loyalties of the participants to the Ba’ath Party and Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Saddam's Democrat 'Spy' Fit to Stand Trial

A former Democrat Senate and Congressional staffer has been ruled mentally fit to stand trial for spying for Saddam Hussein.

An ex-congressional staffer busted for allegedly acting as a spy for Saddam Hussein might be a bit paranoid, but that doesn't mean she's not fit to stand trial, a shrink testified yesterday.

Psychiatrist Richard Ratner told a Manhattan federal judge that he examined Susan Lindauer several times at her request despite her previously being declared mentally incompetent by other mental-health experts.

"I concluded that she was mentally competent," Ratner said.

Lindauer, 45, is fighting to have her day in court, claiming she wants to prove that everything she did was under the supervision of US authorities.

Shocking, isn't it, that a Democrat would aid and abet the enemy?

In case you're unaware of Lindauer, here's the complaint against her from back in 2004.

A former Democratic congressional aide was arrested today on charges that she worked as an Iraqi spy. Susan Lindauer, 41, has been charged with conspiring to work with the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions with Saddam Hussein's government, according to the below indictment unsealed today by federal prosecutors in New York. Lindauer, arrested this morning at her Maryland home, allegedly met with Iraqi agents during several visits to the country's U.N. mission, where she "accepted various payments" in return "for services provided to the IIS in the course of her ongoing intelligence relationship with them." Lindauer, who also allegedly traveled to Iraq in early-2002 to meet with IIS agents, has previously worked as a press spokesperson for several elected officials, including former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun and congressmen Ron Wyden and Peter DeFazio.

The Wikipedia page for this alleged spy claims she's an anti-war activist and journalist.

Lindauer faces up to 10 years in prison on the most serious charge and five years on the lesser charge if she is convicted. Her case is currently active. At the time of this writing, after a very long period with almost no news coverage, her case may be going to court if it is determined that she is competent to stand trial.

She's also a second cousing to former Bush chief of staff Andy Card.

This NY Times article describes her as "committed yet erratic."

Obama Endorsed by Saddam Hussein Supporter

Another key endorsement for the appeaser. I'm sure he'll be happy to put this one on the resume. Ironic how on the day Obama and the Democrats had a complete meltdown over George W. Bush chiding appeasers, Obama receives an endorsement from perhaps the biggest terror appeaser in the Congress.

Rep. Jim McDermott on Thursday became the fourth U.S. House member from Washington to endorse Barack Obama for president.

The Seattle Congressman told the P-I's Joel Connelly that Obama is his pick because "I am confident as president he will end the war in Iraq and bring our sons and daughters home."

McDermott has represented Seattle for 19 years and is one of the more liberal voices in the Democrats' 235-member House caucus. He is the last House member from this state to declare his support for a presidential candidate.

Not only did McDermott provide aide and comfort to Hussein, Saddam even picked up the tab for his visit to Baghdad.

More recently, this slug was ordered to pay up for eavesdropping on John Boehner.

I guess he's got a thing for guys named Hussein.

Now Maybe If He Shared a Cell With Yasser Arafat...

Poor Saddam. He sounded almost as loony as Jeremiah Wright.

Saddam Hussein feared catching AIDS or other diseases during his U.S.-supervised captivity, a leading Arab newspaper said Monday in publishing excerpts of his prison writings.

The London-based Al-Hayat said the comments came in portions of Saddam's prison diaries that it obtained from U.S. authorities. The U.S. military confirmed some of the late Iraqi leader's writings had been released.

When Saddam found out his U.S. military guards were also using his laundry line to dry clothes, he wrote that he demanded they stop, according to the excerpts.

"I explained to them that they are young and they could have young people's diseases," Saddam wrote. "My main concern was to not catch a venereal disease, an HIV disease, in this place." He said some soldiers ignored his request.

What did this idiot think, the guards were going to tie him down and have their way with him?

In the excerpts, Saddam also described having an intimate conversation with his American doctor about women and said his English gradually improved by talking to his captors.

"I was speaking it using my hands and signs if I could not find the exact word," he wrote. "But our language (Arabic) is more beautiful and deeper."

Saddam also wrote how hard it was to have to ask for things, such as once when he requested a flower.

"It was a serious sacrifice from me to ask for the first time in my life," he wrote.

The softer side of Saddam. How touching.

Of Course, Saddam Had No Link to Terrorists...

Such is the folklore that some people want to believe.

Well, we see more evidence all the time that the late Iraqi dictator had ties to terror groups, and this item from the Times of London today demonstrates his maniac so Uday had some sinister plans in mind for Ahmed Chalabi.

Saddam Hussein's son Uday hatched a plot to assassinate the leader of the Iraqi opposition in London in April 2000, according to a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war.

The abortive conspiracy called for an elite recruit in the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group to kill Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was based in London.

The plot is outlined in Iraqi memos that detail Saddam’s support for a wide network of Middle Eastern terror groups, including Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda. They include a 1993 cooperation deal with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became second-in-command of Al-Qaeda when the two groups merged in 2001.

OK, so Saddam Hussein had a cooperation deal with Islamic Jihad when it was headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri? But we're told there was no link between Saddam and al Qaeda?

There is, however, no evidence of the firm link to Osama Bin Laden that the Bush administration had claimed as one of the justifications for attacking Iraq: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ [ie, direct connection] between Saddam’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda.”

I guess we're supposed to wait until there are pictures of Saddam and Osama bin Laden together before we're allowed to make a connection.

The plot to attack Chalabi in April 2000 is the only example of a specific attack planned in London. It called for a Fedayeen operative to make his way across Europe “for the purpose of executing a sanctimonious [sic] national duty, which is eliminating hostile agent Ahmed Chalabi”.

The Fedayeen was later to prove one of the few Iraqi forces that offered tough resistance to the 2003 invasion, but on this occasion its operation failed because the agent was unable to obtain a visa to enter Britain.

The documents show that officials at the Iraqi embassy in London had a stock of weapons that Saddam had ordered them to destroy in July 2002. The embassy asked Baghdad for advice “regarding how to destroy weapons in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, 19 other guns with ammunition, and silencers”.

Saddam had extensive cooperation with Middle Eastern terrorist groups. One memo refers to an agreement with Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1991 Gulf war for attacks against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, which was taking part in the operation to free Kuwait. The memo, dated March 1993, says that whereas Iraq had promised to finance and train Egyptian Islamic Jihad for the attacks, it was now prepared only to provide the group with finance.

As for Uday, well, we know how he wound up.

No Link or Ties Between Saddam and Al Qaeda ... Except for This Mountain of Evidence

Leave it to the antique media to completely miss a story, and for those rare occasions when they get close to one, they typically get it wrong.

Eli Lake chronicles Saddam Hussein's terrorist ties, but all wekk the leftwing media has told us there are no ties.

A Pentagon review of about 600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein's willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East.

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no "smoking gun" linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups. The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

• The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

• Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.
• Beginning in 1999, Iraq's intelligence service began providing "financial and moral support" for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region, Barham Salih.

• In 2001, Saddam's intelligence service drafted a manual titled "Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family." In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer "martyrs" for operations inside the Kingdom.

• In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

Gateway Pundit has a great roundup dismantling the latest media effort to claim Saddam Hussein never had ties to Al Qaeda.

I guess without photos of the two of them having tea together, the left can claim they had no relation whatsoever.

Linked within are posts from Doug Ross, Powerline, Stephen F. Hayes, Pajamas Media, as translated by Omar at Iraq the Model, Ray Robison, Dread Pundit Bluto, and Pat Dollard.

More also from Ed Morrissey. Additional commentary via Memeorandum.

Pakistan Releases Palestinian Hijackers

These scumbags originally were sentenced to death, had those sentences commuted to life in prison and now walk free. No doubt they'll be welcomed home as conquering heroes.

Who said terrorism doesn't pay?

Pakistan Releases 4 in 1986 Hijacking

Pakistani authorities freed four Palestinians on Thursday who were convicted in the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet in Karachi that left 22 passengers and crew dead, a prison official said.

The men were released after completing their jail terms and deported to the Palestinian territories, said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The alleged leader of the group, a Palestinian called Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, was released from prison in Pakistan in 2001 through a series of amnesties, but was arrested a day later by FBI agents in Bangkok on his way to Jordan.

In 2003, a U.S court sentenced Safarini to three consecutive life terms plus 25 years for his role in the hijacking.

The five men hijacked the Pan Am Boeing 747 as it sat at Karachi airport waiting to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, en route to New York. They were demanding the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and Cyprus.

Later the same day, Pakistani commandos stormed the plane and the hijackers began shooting and throwing hand grenades at the passengers and crew they had herded into one area of the plane, according to court papers presented at the U.S. trial of Safarini.

In all, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. The five men were arrested.

At a 1988 trial in Pakistan, the Palestinians admitted carrying out the hijacking, but blamed Pakistani troops for the passengers' deaths. All five were given death sentences that were commuted to life in prison, which means serving 14 years in Pakistan.

The men had been held in a high-security prison in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital Islamabad.

Rawalpindi, of course, is now notorious as the location of Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week. Bhutto was in power when their sentences were reduced to the alleged life in prison.

The prison official gave the names of those released Thursday as Mohammed Abdul Khalil Hussain, Daud Mohammed Hafiz, Mohammed Ahmed al-Munawar and Jamal Saeed.

More on Sarafini here. He apparently was a member of Abu Nidal's terror crew.

Nidal was reportedly murdered by Saddam Hussein after refusing to train Al Qaeda fighters.

Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa'eda fighters based in Iraq, The Telegraph can reveal.

Despite claims by Iraqi officials that Abu Nidal committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Saddam, Western diplomats now believe that he was killed for refusing to reactivate his international terrorist network.

According to reports received from Iraqi opposition groups, Abu Nidal had been in Baghdad for months as Saddam's personal guest, and was being treated for a mild form of skin cancer.

While in Baghdad, Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, came under pressure from Saddam to help train groups of al-Qa'eda fighters who moved to northern Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. Saddam also wanted Abu Nidal to carry out attacks against the US and its allies.

Happy Anniversary, Saddam!

Has it been a year already?

Naturally, Reuters finds as many fans as possible.

Black graffiti lauding Saddam Hussein appeared overnight in his home town and small groups of mourners turned out at his grave on Sunday, the first anniversary of the former Iraqi leader's execution.

"There is no life without the sun and no dignity without Saddam," read one painted slogan in his home town, Tikrit, north of Baghdad. "Paradise for the hero Saddam," read another.

The graffiti appeared on buildings including the town's police station and its agriculture and electricity directorates.

Saddam was hanged for crimes against humanity in a rushed execution criticized by the international community. Fellow Sunni Arabs were also angered by illicitly filmed footage that showed Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows.

Don Surber also has fond memories and links. Thanks!

Bush the "New Saddam"

Wow, this is really creative. I guess they're getting their inspiration from kook lefty bloggers.

On the upside, they didn't dress him up as Hitler, though I'm sure the editorial board labored over that decision.

How George Bush became the new Saddam

It's a long article, and I'll give the author credit for at least going to Iraq. Still, preconceived notions are carved in stone and no amount of progress would ever suffice to report anything positive.

But hey, they get to play with Photoshop and make Bush look bad, and isn't that all that matters?

During the congressional hearings about the surge, I kept thinking of Tattoo on Fantasy Island, half expecting Ambassador Crocker to tug on Gen. Petraeus’s sleeve and say, “Look, boss, da plane.” Smiles, everyone, smiles! Sometimes I think Iraq doesn’t exist at all. It’s just a series of preconceptions, a country invented to keep the West’s intelligentsia busy arguing and pontificating, fighting over facts about a place that is so clearly a work of fiction. Frankly, I wish it didn’t exist, at least for the sake of Iraqis. First Saddam, now this.

UPDATE: More from Jules Crittenden, Michelle Malkin.

'Chemical Ali' to Hang

I wonder how many cellphone videos we'll see of this.

Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' sentenced to hang

Two decades after Iraq's military laid waste to Kurdish villages, the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and two others to death for their roles in the bloody campaign against the restive ethnic minority.

Al-Majid, a cousin of executed former President Saddam Hussein, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering army and security services to use chemical weapons in an offensive said to have killed some 180,000 people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Of course, as the left continually points out, they never had any WMD in Iraq, so obviously there's a big mixup here.

Report: Galloway Received Saddam Cash

Loathsome British hack George Galloway, good friend of the late Saddam Hussein, apparently was receiving money under the guise of a charity.

LONDON (AP) - A charity watchdog criticized fiery British legislator George Galloway Friday, saying a campaign he set up to fight sanctions against Iraq received money diverted by Saddam Hussein.

The Mariam Appeal, which the legislator set up in 1998 to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl with leukemia and to fight the sanctions, received at least US$376,000 dollars in improper donations, according to a report published by the Charity Commission.

The campaign’s chairman, Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, received illegal payments from the former dictator’s government in return for a major contract under the UN’s oil-for-food program, the report said.

Galloway said the report was false.

The commission said it would take no action against the charity, which has been disbanded, and prosecuting agencies said they were not planning to follow up the report.

The commission’s findings follow a 2005 UN-backed investigation that said Saddam’s government had allocated 18 million barrels of oil to Galloway, directly and through Zureikat, to support his campaign for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq.

Galloway has always denied the allegations.

"The commission is also concerned, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Mr. Galloway may also have known of the connection between the appeal and the (oil-for-food) program," the commission said in its conclusion.

Kerrey: Iraq Central to War on Radical Islam

Bob Kerrey will surely earn the enmity of the left with such a pronouncement. Well, he's not running for anything, so I guess he doesn't have to pander to the nutroots.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

Read it all.

More Saddam-Al Qaeda Ties

Hopefully, the day will come when the facts can no longer be denied. That would, however, require the left to admit they've been wrong on so many fronts, so I won't hold my breath.

An al Qaeda document newly released by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) of the United States Military Academy provides an extraordinary new connection to a previously reported order by Saddam Hussein to support al Qaeda attacks upon US forces in Somalia. It corresponds with other documents that show Saddam Hussein was using Islamic terrorists as proxies to attack US interests. The document was part of a US Army report on al Qaeda in Africa. That study contends that although al Qaeda managed to train other Islamic fighters in Africa, it did the organization no long term good, as it failed to bend the region to al Qaeda doctrine.

Read the whoe thing.

Inside Saddam's WMD Bunkers

It will be interesting to see what kind of traction this story gets. If this is indeed correct, then as everyone knew, Saddam Hussein was developing WMD; the problem is, we may have let them slip away into the hands of the Syrians and Iranians (via Protein Wisdom).

It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as yet another dodgy claim from a warmongering lackey of the world Zionist neocon conspiracy giving credence to yet another crank pushing US propaganda. If so, perhaps you might pause before throwing this article at the cat. Mr Gaubatz is not some marginal figure. He’s pretty well as near to the horse’s mouth as you can get.

Read the whole thing.

Osama-Iraq Connection

Interesting video courtesy of Power Line.

Of course, everybody knows there was no connection between bin Laden and Iraq. I wonder why ABC News has been hiding this?

Saddam's Half-Brother Swings

It's an outrage!. I just hope when the video comes out some stupid parents don't let their impressionable kids see it.

BAGHDAD, Iraq-Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, officials said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism.

Making matters worse, they had the Chargers going all the way.

UPDATE: Decapitated. Ouch.

Boys Die Copying Saddam Hanging

None of this would have happeend if we didn't invade Iraq, I guess.

CAIRO, Egypt - The boys' deaths — scattered in the United States, in Yemen, in Turkey and elsewhere in seemingly isolated horror — had one thing in common: They hanged themselves after watching televised images of
Saddam Hussein's execution.

Officials and relatives say the children appeared to be mimicking the former dictator's Dec. 30 hanging, shown both on a sanitized Iraqi government tape and explicit clandestine videos that popped up on Web sites and some TV channels.

The leaked videos, apparently taken by cell phone cameras, set off international outrage over the raucous scene at Saddam's execution, but some experts are more concerned about the images of the deposed Iraqi leader dropping through the gallows floor and his body swinging at the end of a rope.

The experts say such graphic images can severely affect youngsters who do not yet understand the consequences of death and violence — especially because Saddam's death received intense international attention.

I blame the parents for letting the kids watch it.