An Unlamented Death

I somehow missed the fact that a month ago General Ali Hassan al-Majid was put to death by hanging in Baghdad as punishment for his war crimes, crimes against humanity, and attempted genocide.

He was better known as Chemical Ali and was one of Saddam Hussein's most trusted and absolutely ruthless henchmen. He acted as the head of Saddam's secret police, as the military governor of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait leading up to and during the first Gulf war, and as the interior minister for Iraq.

It was in his role as interior minister that he crushed the Shiite uprising that occurred after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, because of the United States unwillingness to protect these people since our U.N. mandated goals had already been accomplished, so ordered George H.W. Bush.

Perhaps one of Ali's most evil accomplishments though was during the Anfal campaign to suppress the Kurdish uprising in their requests for more autonomy in the northern third of the country of Iraq. His men destroyed more than 4000 Kurdish villages and displaced one million Kurds by having done so. They killed all males old enough to offer resistance to Saddam's regime. By the time Chemical Ali was done, it was estimated that the number of Kurds killed numbered at 180,000 people.

At Chemical Ali's first trial, the prosecution played some recordings for the court. One from 1988 had this evil man heard telling some senior Baath party officials what he had planned for the Kurds prior to his campaign of genocide there. He is quoted as saying, "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? F___ them!"

Well it took far too long but eventually the international community put together a coalition of the willing lead by the United States under George W. Bush's leadership and did capture this man, his president Saddam Hussein, and also killed Saddam's two vicious and evil sons in this just war. Millions of Iraqi's were liberated from the tyrant of Saddam and now last month a free and democratic Iraq meted out justice to this evil man, Chemical Ali.