Comedian becomes another victim
The Washington Post has an article about Walid Hassan, the Iraqi comedian and star of the television show "Caricature" who was killed on Monday: "Iraqi comedian becomes another victim."
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Latest casualty of war: laughter
Worry, fear, precaution, and tears are the elements of life for Iraqis.
Weary and fed up with the daily killings, kidnappings, and lack of public services, the only relief many Iraqis have found lately has been laughing during the 45-minute comedy satire show "Caricature."
But now, Walid Hassan, the star of the show, was assassinated Monday – seemingly just for the crime of relieving Iraqis of their pains.
Hassan farced the Iraqi government’s lack of control, the Shiite militias, the Sunni insurgency, and didn’t hesitate to criticize the U.S. forces in his show on Fridays evenings.
Pain and sorrow, the symptoms of daily Iraqi life, were relieved by Hassan’s comedic prescription as Iraqi families would run to watch the show and forget about their bloody and chaotic lives.
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Why security contractors are targets
Four American security contractors kidnapped by unknown gunmen in southern Iraq on Thursday were riding shotgun on 43 empty trucks traveling north from Kuwait to central Iraq when they were kidnapped at an unauthorized roadblock manned by Iraqis wearing police uniforms. Speculation around Baghdad is that their kidnappers will soon issue ransom demands.
There are at least 35,000 foreign security contractors working in Iraq. Just about all of them will tell you that escorting convoys is the most dangerous and least desirable duty in the country.
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Iraq pullout scenarios
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Academics targeted
Even by Baghdad standards it was an audacious kidnapping: Twenty pickup trucks carrying as estimated eighty gunmen, all wearing the blue and black camouflage uniforms of Iraqi Interior Ministry troops, pulled up to the four-story building of Ministry of Higher Education in the Karada district of central Baghdad just after 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Four security guards did nothing to stop the raiders herding clerks, education officials and visitors into offices and confiscating cell phones. The women were left behind, but more than a hundred men were led outside and driven away. The whole operation took 20 minutes. 
Prime targets
According to Iraqi government officials, who moved quickly to suspend university classes to protest the kidnapping, academics are prime targets for gunmen because they rarely have personal protection.
Despite the dangers, they continue to express relatively liberal political views in classrooms and in public -- particularly against what many of them see as emerging Islamic fundamentalism. Statistics show more than 150 academics have been killed since the Iraq war began.
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Saddam on trial - The Sequel
He didn’t look like a man who’d been sentenced to death the day before yesterday.
Saddam Hussein walked into the same court room where two days ago he’d been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang. That verdict, automatically appealed, hasn’t stopped a second trial from continuing.
After years of seeing Saddam from the safe distance he always kept from both foreigners and Iraqis, it’s electrifying seeing him in person –- even through the bullet-proof glass of the reporters’ gallery.
Imagine someone so powerful people were literally afraid to whisper his name. So powerful some Iraqis were convinced he had magical powers that kept him in charge for years when the U.S. said it wanted him gone. And now here’s this man. Prisoner rather than president. Sentenced to hang –- but not quite yet.
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Saddam defeated
Saddam looked tried, shaken and haggard in court. He looked like an old man.
On the first day of Saddam's trial a year ago, he burst into the courtroom, looking so dashing the Turkish company that made his suits registered an unprecedented spike in orders. Iraqis say that Saddam had such a force of personality that no one had the courage to look him in the eyes. I believe they were right. When Saddam came into court a year ago, he looked me straight in the eyes, and smiled. I must admit it was frightening. He had an animal charisma, a savage charm that penetrated the glass that separated the press box from the courtroom. Today, I looked into Saddam's eyes again. They were flat and lifeless. The energy was gone.
My first experience with Saddam was in 2002 when I briefly became a local celebrity in Iraq for my stupidity. I was at breakfast one morning at a local hotel and accidentally forgot a bag I was carrying on the floor by my chair. Inside was $9,000 cash, every penny I had in Iraq. There was no banking system in Iraq. No credit cards. No ATM machines. The situation remains the same today. All transactions were in cash. Also inside the bag were my passport, credit cards and other documents that could not be replaced in Iraq.
But the bag was found. Saddam Hussein told me. He announced it on television. It was an item on the local news. Saddam reported that a government employee with the information ministry (who no doubt had been following me) had found the bag and turned it in without stealing a dollar. This, Saddam said, was proof of the basic honestly of the Iraqi man. As a reward, Saddam ordered the man be paid $9,000 (the amount he could have stolen) and I was returned my briefcase in a mini-ceremony in the office of the deputy information minister.
This was the kind of regime Saddam ran. It could be folksy, or brutal if you crossed it; most often, it was just plain cruel. A woman I know was jailed and tortured (hung by her wrists and beaten with a cane) because she lent a man who turned out to be a Dawa party member (the current prime minister is a member of the same Shiite party) the equivalent of one dollar. During her one session in court, her lawyer told the judge, "Your honor, please excuse me for bringing this traitor before you. I am innocent of her crimes and do not want to be soiled by affiliation."
She spent five years in prison, never married (she was considered a security risk) and now looks after her ailing mother. Executions were common. My best friend in Iraq was sentenced to death for deserting the army. He was tied to a stake, had his name written on a piece of tape on his leg (to identify the body), and was only rescued because his mother sold the family car and used the money to bribe an army commander. He was untied just seconds before the order was given to fire. It was an evil regime, led by a man who once had the power to instill fear with a passing glance, but who has it no more.
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Saddam verdict lacks details
The final court session and verdict today were fast, direct and clear, but not clear at all.
In less than 10 minutes, Saddam Hussein was told he was guilty of crimes against humanity, but never exactly how or why.
Was it the witness testimony that proved Saddam's guilt?
Was it Saddam’s own acceptance in court of overall responsibility for the draconian punishment his regime carried out of the villagers of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt in the town? Was it documents the prosecution said Saddam signed ordering the deaths of Dujail residents that ultimately swayed the judges? We still do not know.
The full verdict, a document of several hundred pages, explaining how and why today’s judgment was reached was not released. U.S. officials said it should be ready by Thursday. So why issue the verdict today? U.S. court advisors told reporters today it was delayed mainly for technical reasons. All insist the verdict was not politically timed and that it was an Iraqi decision; there is no reason to doubt their word.
The furthest the chief judge went today to explain why Saddam was sentenced to death was to say Saddam was found guilty of Article 12 A, through Article 15 B, of the Iraqi High Criminal Court Law (the tribunal trying Saddam's constitution). All that means, examining at the law, is that Saddam was guilty of "willful murder" because he had "ordered, solicited or induced the commission of such a crime, which in fact occurs or is attempted." Saddam Hussein was found guilty of ordering murders. Who he murdered, how, when and what proved his guilt, we are told, will be explained on Thursday.
It was not sufficient for the International Center for Transitional Justice, an NGO that has been monitoring the trial since the beginning. In a statement tonight the group said, "Today's verdicts were delivered in a 40-minute session that gave little indication of the judgment's detail and reasoning."
On the “Today” Show this morning Michael Scharf, one of the leading experts on the Saddam trial, said the Dujail case was easy to prove and that his guilt was clear. I believe Scharf is correct. There was an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982 and the Iraqi dictator oversaw a massive revenge campaign, even awarding medals to some of his henchmen for punishing his enemies and their families and neighbors. But the lack of clarity today adds fuels to critics who say Saddam's trial was politically motivated and that the verdict was rushed to meet American political deadlines -- the very accusation Saddam Hussein's lawyer made today.
Saddam was almost certainly guilty, but why? It's still unclear.
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Other people's sons
Will Mock was 23 years old. He was from a Harper, Kan., family that for generations had sent the youngest son in the family into military service. I got to know Will in Fallujah, where I was embedded with his Army unit in the battle two years ago.
He was a really sweet guy. He talked a lot about his mother and grandmother in Kansas, about how he was hesitant to go home because he was worried they would find him changed by the war -- not the nice, well-mannered boy who'd left. I told him I couldn’t imagine them being anything but really proud of him.
Will was killed last week by a roadside bomb near Baghdad. It was his second deployment to Iraq.
He was buried in Kansas on Thursday.
In Baghdad, on Wednesday evening, mortars were being fired as I flew into the battalion's base for his memorial. The helicopter a few minutes ahead of us was waved off, unable to land because of the incoming fire. We landed safely and didn’t think much of it. This is Baghdad, after all.
A portrait of Army Sgt. Willsun M. Mock is surrounded by flowers during his funeral Thursday in Harper, Kansas. Photo: Travis Heying / The Wichita Eagle
Memorial services too "sensitive" to cover
For the soldiers, the ceremonies are both deeply personal and a connection with something much bigger.
For Will -- Sgt. Willsun Mock -- his buddies talked about his professionalism, how he lived by the motto he had tattooed on his arms: strength and honor. They talked about how his salsa dancing landed him the young woman who became his fiancé. They didn't mention that she broke off the engagement when he was deployed for the second time.
And the photos of Will as a cute baby and an awkward teenager and then a proud soldier didn't quite capture that completely earnest, slightly shy smile that made Will come to mind when I heard the phrase "America's sons and daughters."
For the first two years of this war, we routinely covered memorials in Iraq -- showing Americans the way soldiers honor their fallen comrades and then walk out the door and get on with what they do every day.
The stories gave faces to the figures of the fallen. Now, even if the soldier's comrades and family don’t mind, the memorials are deemed by the military too "sensitive" for the mainstream media to cover. I was there because I knew him.
So for almost all Americans, Will would have been a number -- somewhere between 85 and 90 on a list of casualties in October that would grow by more than a dozen more. After his death, a two-paragraph press release read: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad soldier died at approximately 1 p.m. today after his patrol struck a roadside bomb."
Ann Mock, right, and her daughter Teresa Kirby, react after Mock received a folded U.S. flag that covered the coffin of Mock's son, Sgt. Willsun M. Mock. Photo: Travis Heying / The Wichita Eagle
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Soldiers' stress
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Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
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