Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

The man, who ruled Iraq with an iron fist for 35 years, was visibly shaking as he waited to learn his fate in what some had billed the trial of the century over the execution of 148 Shia villagers from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam’s life.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman ordered: "Make him stand," as Saddam pleaded to guards: "Don't bend my arms. Don't bend my arms."

Saddam, dressed in a dark jacket and white shirt, harangued the tribunal’s chief judge as the judgment was read.

"You can’t decide. You are slaves. God is great. Life is for us and death for our enemies. Life for the nation, death for the enemies of our nation," Saddam said, visibly shaking, his face wrapped tightly in a scowl.

A court official held Saddam's hands behind his back as Rahman, shouting to be heard over the defendant, declared: "The highest penalty should be implemented."

One of his lawyers shouted bitterly that marshal in the visitors gallery was chewing gum and laughing at Saddam’s reversal of fortune.

Next, Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and Iraq’s intelligence chief at the time of the Dujail killings, appeared in court. He stood quietly as the judge sentenced him to death.

Before Saddam and Barzan Ibrahim appeared, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the Revolutionary Court that issued the execution orders against Dujail residents, was sentenced to death. He screamed "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Great) as Rahman delivered his verdict. The judge flicked his wrist and ordered the guards to drag Bandar back to his cell.

Saddam’s former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence, while three Baath party officials from Dujail received up to 15 years each and a fourth, more junior figure, was cleared.

Next week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent much of their campaigns addressing state and local issues. But no future historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools or directing funds to highway projects.

The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large—as a decisive “No” vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration’s endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush’s decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration’s calculation—as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides—the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran’s hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel’s northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.

The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen—in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala Lumpur—as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq.