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 Blair Breaks His Silence on Saddam Lynching 
  
 Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit 
  
 sent by Dave Muller (southnews) 
  
 Reuters - Jan 10, 2007 6:49AM (Australia) 
  
 Blair berates manner of Saddam's hanging 
  
 British Prime Minister Tony Blair has broken his silence on Saddam 
 Hussein's hanging, calling the manner of the execution "unacceptable" 
 and "wrong". 
  
 Other ministers in Blair's government have condemned the way Saddam was 
 hanged. 
  
 But Blair - US President George W Bush's main ally in the invasion of 
 Iraq - had not spoken out publicly until now, despite rising pressure to 
 do so. 
  
 "As everybody saw, the manner of the execution is unacceptable and it's 
 wrong, but we should ... not allow that ... then to lurch into a 
 position of forgetting the victims of Saddam, the people that he killed 
 deliberately," Blair told a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister 
 Shinzo Abe. 
  
 A mobile phone video showed observers taunting Saddam with shouts of "Go 
 to hell" and chanting the name of a Shi'ite cleric before he fell 
 through a gallows trapdoor on December 30. 
  
 The images provoked international criticism and further inflamed 
 sectarian passions in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has 
 pledged an investigation. 
  
 Blair was on holiday at the Miami home of pop star Robin Gibb of the Bee 
 Gees when the execution took place. 
  
 A spokeswoman for Blair said on Sunday the prime minister believed the 
 manner of the execution was completely wrong but British media clamoured 
 for Blair to speak out personally. 
  
 "The manner of the execution of Saddam was completely wrong but that 
 should not blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people, 
 including the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, one 
 million casualties in the Iran-Iraq war and the use of chemical weapons 
 against his own people, wiping out entire villages ...," Blair said. 
  
 "So the crimes that Saddam committed do not excuse the manner of his 
 execution and the manner of his execution does not excuse the crimes," 
 he said. 
  
 On Sunday, finance minister Gordon Brown condemned the way Saddam was 
 hanged as "deplorable". 
  
 Brown is expected to take over as premier when Blair steps down this 
 year after a decade in office and his intervention was seen by some 
 media as undermining Blair's authority. 
  
 The execution placed the British government in a difficult position as 
 it opposes the death penalty. 
  
 Bush has said Saddam's hanging should have been carried out in a "more 
 dignified way" but argued that he received justice, unlike his victims. 
  
 Brown faces a tough challenge stepping into Blair's shoes. 
  
 The Labour government has been undermined by the war in Iraq and is 
 beset by scandals, while the opposition Conservatives have revived their 
 fortunes under leader David Cameron. 
  
 ) 2007 Reuters, 
  
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