Yes, I agree in general with your ideas, however you use some large emotive words like "dictator" when describing Saddam. How do we know he was such a terrible dicator? Was he like a Ceacescu of Romania who kept his nation in poverty to ensure no threats could arise? Are all dictators necessarily bad?

No, in fact under the Ba'ath regime, universities and hospitals and dams and huge infrastructure projects were completed. Education was free and women had an equal role in society. It was secular, Tarik Azziz is a Christian and had one of the most senior positions in government.

The worse thing about Saddam's execution is that it prevents any real investigation into the claims of genocide and tyranny. Why wasn't he tried on the Halabja gassing or the putting down of the Shia rebellion after Gulf War I? In fact, where exactly are the mass graves with claimed 300,000 bodies? Has there ever existed evidential proof suitable for a court of law that shows Saddam was intending the kill the Kurds with gas and that it was Iraqi gas that did it?

No, we have been surely subject to a huge insidious demonisation program, one that has so clouded the view that it is impossible to make an objective judgement about Saddam's supposed despotic dictatorship. Give me the proof, in a court and I will accept it. Kill the man without such proof and I then suspect motives other than "justice".

[Posted in comments to Ian Macwhirter's article in the Sunday Herald http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1096790.0.hold_these_grotesque_executioners_to_account.php ]