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A January 2007 State Department cable published by WikiLeaks reveals new details about what happened before and during the controversial execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The document, which recounts a meeting between the then-U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, and chief prosecutor Munqith Faroon, was written two weeks after the event. It reveals many of the minute details involved in the preparations for the execution as well as Hussein’s final moments, when cell phone camera video captured him on the gallows while being taunted by witnesses.

Fourteen Iraqi officials took a helicopter flight from the International Zone to the execution site. According to the document, these officials were searched by U.S. marshals, who took their cell phones “for operational security reasons” and returned the devices when the officials returned by helicopter after the execution.

According to the cable, Faroon said the only witnesses were the 14 officials who flew by helicopter and the guards who were already on the scene. But the same document contradicts him, as it reports an SUV with six Iraqi government personnel arrived at the scene an hour before the execution. These six are described as the Iraqi government’s “video personnel” and personal security detail.

The cable also notes it is unknown if these six officials were searched by Iraqi guards at the site, or how many of them actually entered the execution building, because there were no U.S. personnel in the courtyard or the building.

There was one aspect of the execution that the United States was involved in: the cable says the execution platform was built by Americans. Faroon told Khalilzad that “the original platform was not built to standards,” and that criminals were suffering during executions because of it.

The author of the cable placed responsibility for how the execution was handled squarely on the shoulders of the Iraqi government, saying it “was responsible for the execution building, access to the building and courtyard, and the conduct of the execution. The [government of Iraq's] lack of a clear and coordinated plan to control the witnesses and conduct the execution resulted in a hastily run and confusing event.”

Faroon and a judge met with Hussein before the execution to read him the verdict and escort him to the execution site.

Faroon admits he “sympathized” with Hussein, who “entered with his covered head, hands tied and shaking involuntarily.”

After the judge read the verdict and death sentence, the cable says, Hussein “became more animated and began speaking, ‘as if he were still the president.’”

After Hussein was escorted to the room where the execution was to take place, Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie asked him if he was afraid. According to the cable, Hussein responded that “he was not afraid, that he had been ‘anticipating this moment’ since he first came to power, knowing that as president he had many enemies.”

Hussein was holding a Quran up until his final moments, and asked for someone to ensure that it was given to the son of Awad al-Bandar, the head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, who was to be executed approximately two weeks later. Hussein handed Faroon the book after he agreed to take it.

According to the document, Faroon says that up to this point, “nothing ‘improper’ had occurred.”

When the guards began tying Hussein’s feet together, he asked who would help him get up the stairs. According to Faroon, it was at this point a guard told Hussein to “go to hell.” The cable reports that Faroon “raised his voice immediately and warned people that ‘he would not allow the guards or witnesses to speak’ to Saddam.”

When Faroon turned around to admonish the witnesses, he “saw two government officials openly taking photos with their mobile phones.”

Hussein was escorted up the stairs and declined an offer to have his head covered with a hood. He began to pray, and before he finished, Faroon says, one person began shouting “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada,” a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose father is believed to have been murdered by Hussein’s regime.

Faroon again raised his voice to silence the witnesses. The document says Hussein died instantly, and his body was removed from the platform and placed in a bag. A religious leader later made sure that the body was washed in observance of Islamic traditions.

The cable ends with a paragraph about Khalilzad asking Faroon about what changes the Iraqi government would make for the upcoming executions of al-Bandar and Barzan Hassan, Saddam’s half-brother and former intelligence chief. Faroon responded that fewer witnesses would be allowed; a prosecutor, a judge, a religious leader, and the prison director, as Iraqi law requires.

“This, [Faroon] concluded, will prevent unacceptable behavior and unnecessary controversy,” the document concludes.

The cable was dated January 15, 2007, the same day the executions of al-Bandar and Hassan were carried out. Hassan was decapitated during his hanging.

Two security guards working for the Iraqi Justice Ministry were later detained by authorities after cell phone video of Hussein’s execution was posted on the internet.

Source: CNN

The former president of Blackwater Worldwide was charged Friday with using straw purchases to stockpile automatic weapons at the security firm and filing false documents to cover up gifts given to the King of Jordan.

The federal indictment charges Gary Jackson, 52, who left the company last year in a management shakeup, along with four other former workers. The charges against Jackson include a conspiracy to violate firearms laws, false statements and possession of an unregistered firearm.

Also indicted were former general counsel Andrew Howell, 44; former executive vice president Bill Mathews, 44; former procurement vice president Ana Bundy, 45; and, 65-year-old Ronald Slezak, a former weapons manager.

The charges open a new front of the government’s oversight of the sullied security company. Several of the company’s contractors have previously been charged with federal crimes for their actions in war zones, but the company’s executives have so far weathered a range of investigations.

The company has been trying to rehabilitate its image since a 2007 shooting in Baghdad left 17 people dead, outraged the Iraqi government and led to a federal charges against several Blackwater guards — accusations later thrown out of court after a judge found prosecutors mishandled evidence. Around the time that Jackson left the company, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services.

The latest case stems from a raid conducted by federal agents at the company’s headquarters in Moyock in 2008 that seized 22 weapons, including 17 AK-47s.

Blackwater signed agreements in 2005 in which the company financed the purchase of 34 automatic weapons for the Camden County sheriff’s office. Sheriff Tony Perry became the official owner of the weapons, but Blackwater was allowed to keep most of the guns at its armory.

The indictment accuses Blackwater officials of enticing the local sheriff’s office to pose as the purchaser of the weapons, something prosecutors called essentially a straw purchase. The office provided blank letterhead to the company, which then used the stationery to prepare letters ordering weapons.

Prosecutors said company officials, hoping to land a lucrative overseas contract, presented the king of Jordan with several firearms as gifts then realized that they were unable to account for where the weapons went. To cover it up, they falsified four federal documents “to give the appearance that the weapons had been purchased by them as individuals,” according to the indictment.

Federal law prohibits licensed firearms dealers such as Blackwater to have more than two of the same style of weapon. Law enforcement agencies can have fully automatic weapons.

Kenneth Bell, an attorney for Jackson, said the former executive was a true American hero. Jackson spent two decades in the military as a Navy Seal.

“These charges are false,” Bell said. “He will defend himself, as he defended this country, in what he calls the greatest justice system in the world.”

Xe spokesman Mark Corallo said the company has fully cooperated with the federal investigation. He declined further comment. Jordanian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

One of the 2005 agreements viewed later by the AP says the weapons will be kept under “lock and key” and doesn’t describe whether Blackwater would use the guns. Perry said at the time that his department only used the AK-47s in shooting practice at Blackwater and that none of his 19 deputies were qualified to use them.

Blackwater has said federal authorities knew about the weapons for years and that investigators got a complete look at the company’s cache in 2005 after two employees were fired.

In a 2008 interview with the AP, Jackson and other Blackwater executives said the company provided the local Camden County sheriff’s office a place to store weapons, calling the gesture a “professional courtesy.”

“We gave them a big safe so that they can store their own guns,” Jackson said at the time. Added then-executive vice president Bill Mathews: “We give stuff to police departments all over the country, and we take particularly good care of our home police departments.”

Company officials, including both Jackson and Howell, downplayed the raid during the interview. Jackson said some of the 16 uniformed officers who came to serve the warrant were embarrassed by the event and said agents had to stop at Blackwater’s front gate to get passes to come onto the company’s sprawling campus in northeastern North Carolina.

“As a hypothetical, one would think that, if you were going on a raid, you’d take your Kevlar and your weapon,” Howell said to laughter from other executives.

Source: The Associated Press

Here is a shocking statistic that you won’t hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide – more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).

Since 2001, when Washington launched its so-called war on terror, there has been a dramatic year-on-year increase in US military suicides, particularly in the army, which has borne the brunt of fighting abroad. Last year saw the highest total number since such records began in 1980. Prior to 2001, the suicide rate in the US military was lower than that for the general US population; now, it is nearly double the national average.

A growing number of these victims have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. What these figures should tell us is that there is something fundamentally deranged about Washington’s “war on terror” – which is probably why western news media prefer to ignore the issue. How damning is it about such military campaigns that the number of US soldiers who take their own lives outnumber those killed by enemy combatants.

What is even more disturbing is that the official figures only count victims of suicide among serving personnel. Not included are the many more veterans – officially classed a civilians – who take their own lives.

Most likely, these deaths are reported in some small-town newspaper in “a brief” news item with no context or background as to what drove these individuals to take their own lives. It is estimated that the suicide rate among veterans demobbed from fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is as high as four times the national average. The US Department of Veteran Affairs calculates that over 6,000 former service personnel commit suicide every year.

Many of these men have come home to a country they have fought for only to find no jobs, their homes repossessed by banks that have enjoyed trillion-dollar bailouts and broken relationships.

Meanwhile, President Obama – the erstwhile peace candidate – has taken on the role of Commander in Chief with gusto, telling his countrymen and women that they are fighting a “just war” to “defend American lives”. Only a year ago, he was campaigning for the presidency on a ticket to end such wars. Now, more than his predecessor, George W Bush, Obama is committing to wars without end. How soul-destroying is that for a grunt holed up in a bunker, with his young family back home probably telling him that they have just signed up for food stamps? In their guts, these US soldiers must know – as many other ordinary people around the world do – that these wars are nothing but a desperate, pathological bid by a dying power to salvage its crumbling empire – an empire that enriches a tiny elite and impoverishes the majority. Is it any wonder that many of them simply lose the will to live?