Citing Precedent
Last night I was watching a program on the Discovery Channel chronicling the history of our good buddy Saddam. One interesting detail emerged that I was previously unaware of. In 1963 after a Baathist coup toppled the military government of Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassem , the Baathists executed Qassem and then showed his corpse (as well as the corpse of one of his aides) on national television in order to convince Iraqis that he was indeed dead.
Perhaps I missed it but I don't recall ever hearing this fact mentioned by the major media in the recent debate about whether to show the bodies of the departed Hussein brothers. There was some discussion about the Iraqis having a history of such behavior but no specific examples were cited. Might not this have been considered relevant to the story?
Maybe we'll hear about it when Big Daddy Saddam buys the farm.
UPDATE: Rick e-mails to say that the actual executions of Qassem and his aide were televised live, which seems credible given the fact that they were killed in the Iraqi national television studios.
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