Hussein is a real swinger
Mack Hall

P erhaps the best joke ever made by a condemned prisoner is credited to St. Thomas More. Sick and feeble

after months in prison, he

stumbled and fell on the steps to the scaffold, and reportedly said "See me safely up, captain; as for my coming down, I'll shift for myself."

What will Saddamn Hussein say to the world as he faces his long-overdue end, perhaps within a few weeks?

Will can't-get-over-itformer president Jimmy Carter accompany Saddamn to the scaffold while anticipating a book and movie deal, and maybe another Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes, Saddamn Hussein is coming to the end of his rope. Really. The man who is responsible for more Muslim deaths - often by direct order - than any other individual in history is going to a relatively easy end himself. He invaded Iran in the 1970s, was recognized by our Democratically-controlled Congress in the 1980s as a terrorist insider, and then invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. He dropped poison gas on thousands of Marsh Arabs simply because he didn't like them, built a system of death camps for his own people, including a special one for children, photographed his personal enemies being pushed off high buildings and highway overpasses to their deaths and had those he really, really, really didn't like fed into industrial shredders. Feet first.

Have you noticed in video from Iraq that there are very few middle-aged men to be seen? That's because a generation of Iraqis died young in Saddamn's wars, coups, purges, firing squads, death camps, scientific experiments, torture chambers, raperooms, hangings, beatings, beheadings, throat-cuttings, mass poisonings, forced suicides and whatever else the fevered imagination this son of his mother could dream up.

And those were Saddamn's own people. The Kuwaitis, Kurds, Arabs, Iranians and others who suffered under him could tell us more.

What will happen in Iraq now is up to the Iraqis. Like the Russians, they can play at being victims only up to a point. They have caused much suffering among other nations, and the other nations have not punished them. Instead, many nations have given them much wealth and precious human lives to rid them of tyranny and to help them rebuild. But this can't go on indefinitely. Both Russia and Iraq must now stop whining, grow up and join the adults.

For now, hundreds of Iraqis are reported to be applying for the job of Saddamn's hangman. The Iraqi government must not give the job to some well-meaning amateur; this event calls for someone who knows the ropes. After all, Saddamn wouldn't want his executioner let him down.

What will Saddamn's last meal be? Peas and garrotes?

Will he be too choked up for any last words?

Will he regret all the opportunities for peace and prosperity that were dangled before him?

Say bye-bye, Saddamn.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville.