cnn has the story and the video of his execution here(with a graphic content warning) if you really want to see it.

andy mccarthy at NRO:

This is a solemn, important moment. It’s not a joyous one. An evil man deserved to die. His elimination was necessary — not close to sufficient, but necessary — for achieving, over time, a semblance civilized stability in Iraq. The celebration in the streets, though, the dancing and firing guns in the air, does not augur well for that achievement.

This wasn’t victory. It didn’t end suffering. It was, in the heat of a war that has actually gotten more vicious and more uncertain since Saddam’s capture three years ago, the carrying out of an essential but unpleasant duty. It marginally enhances Iraq’s propects, and ours. But Saddam’s death (as opposed to his deposing) has no impact whatsoever on the deep dysfunction and hatred that is rending what passes for Iraqi society. The unbridled display of dancing and shooting says more about that than the death of one man — monstrous though he was — who has been imprisoned for three years.

Saddam’s death is a marker worth observing. It is not something to go up in a balloon over.

saddam’s death won’t heal all wounds he inflicted on his victims, but it will be some measure of justice for them. it was primarily a victory for the iraqi people, not for the united states government. we can breathe a sigh of relief that saddam is gone, and that he will not return to power. that is the only guarantee we have. we can’t guarantee that saddam loyalists will now join the political process and help stabilize iraq’s new government. i hope that they will, but deep ethnic and religious divisions among the iraqi people can’t be bridged without a struggle, even with the death of a dictator.

tags: iraq, saddam hussein