by Zach Bigalke

Created on: January 03, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

War we can always have if we want it; peace we should zealously seek, and keep when found.

- Pietro Ziani, Forty-Second Doge of Venice (1205-1229)

As Saddam Hussein, head defiantly uncovered, stood atop a gallows awaiting death - in a building in the predominately-Shiite Khadamiya district of Baghdad that once was the headquarters of his military intelligence service - just before six a.m. on 30 December 2006, a new era in peaceful Iraqi governance looked like more of a pipe dream than at any time in the previous three years since his capture. As the state officials and guards assembled below the gallows, sectarian harassment erupted. The nefarious and precisely-targeted chants of "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada" [al-Sadr, a Shia cleric who is the leader of the radical-Shia Mehdi Army militia and has long been an open enemy of Hussein] from several of those present opened the path for further impromptu diatribes against Saddam. Another shouted out that Saddam was going to Hell. One of the executioners even leaned into the deposed former ruler, declaring, "You have destroyed Iraq, impoverished its people and made us all like beggars while Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world." Only after Munqith al-Faroun, the deputy prosecutor during the deposed leader's trial, spoke up - rightly demanding that the crowd pay enough respect to allow a convicted man his rights - did the crowd revert to silence. Moments later, the deed was finished, the sixty-nine-year-old body swinging lifelessly from its yellow noose.

The implications of Hussein's execution are only beginning to be felt. For Sunnis in Iraq, Saddam's death essentially signifies the assassination of the last legally-elected ruler of Iraq. The Maliki-led government is nothing more than that of a pro-American puppet government in the eyes of Sunni leaders and former Baathist sympathizers. It will be increasingly difficult, in the weeks and months to come, for the Iraqi government to convince the Sunni community that this execution was not merely an act of retaliation.

Indeed, it will be hard to prove otherwise to the greater Arab world. The execution, carried out at the beginning of the Eid al-Adha holiday celebrated worldwide at the end of the hajj, is being condemned as an "illegal" execution. And, indeed, all signs point to this execution being illegal. Kurdish judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, who first presided over Hussein's trial, enlightened reporters with the knowledge that, under Iraqi law, "no verdict should

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