It is bush that should be hang by his balls.

taha yassin ramadan at the back


Iraq hangs Saddam deputy on war anniversary
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq hanged former Saddam Hussein deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan on Tuesday as the nation entered the fifth year of the US-led war still battling a raging insurgency and sectarian conflict that left another 49 people dead.
Former vice president Ramadan was executed before dawn, less than three months after the feared former dictator was himself hanged.
Both had been convicted for crimes against humanity over the killing of 148 Shiites in the 1980s. "Ramadan was hanged at 3:05 am (0005 GMT) today," said Bassem Ridha, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Ramadan, aged almost 70, was the fourth regime official to be executed for his role in the killings of the Shiites from the village of Dujail after an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982.
"The execution was smooth with no violation," Ridha said, after an international outcry over the manner of the previous hangings of Saddam and his former cohorts.
Footage of Saddam being taunted then executed on December 30 was circulated on the Internet.
The January 15 hanging of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti -- Saddam's half-brother and head of the feared secret police -- was particularly gruesome, with his head ripping from his body as he plunged through the metal trap door. Ramadan "was very calm and composed.
He asked his family and friends to pray for him and said that he was not afraid of death," defence lawyer Badie Aref said before his execution. He was buried later on Tuesday in Saddam's home village of Awja in northern Iraq outside a hall in which the dictator himself is laid to rest.
"The body of Ramadan was washed and then buried in the garden of the hall next to the graves of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar," Sheikh Ali Nidr from Saddam's tribe told AFP, adding that his body was transported from Baghdad in a US helicopter.
Iraqi leaders say they are determined to punish officials from Saddam's Sunni-led regime, whose supporters are blamed for much of the continuing bloodletting. On Tuesday, 49 people were killed or found murdered in Iraq.
Sixteen people died in Baghdad violence, one police officer was shot dead in the north and 32 corpses of men killed execution-style were found in the capital, security officials said.
The US military also announced the deaths of two more soldiers in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad. Earlier Tuesday, Iraqi security forces killed 39 "terrorists" in a battle in the western Sunni province of Al-Anbar, a top interior ministry official said.
US President George W. Bush, facing growing opposition to the war at home, said it would take months to secure the violence-plagued capital and warned that a troop pullout now would be "devastating." In the four years since the launch of the "shock and awe" military campaign on March 20, 2003, Iraq has descended into a sectarian hell that has left tens of thousands of civilians dead.
Bush pleaded for patience on Monday with his unpopular Iraq strategy and Washington's revamped efforts to restore order. "The Baghdad security plan is still in its early stages and success will take months, not days or weeks," he said.
At 5:35 am four years ago on Tuesday, Tomahawk missiles and precision-guided bombs rained down on Baghdad targets as Saddam vowed it would be "Iraq's last battle against the tyrannous villains."
But on April 9, Saddam's statue in a central Baghdad square was torn down with a rope around the neck, in a premonition of his own hanging. With the war going into a fifth year, a new poll showed US public opinion had soured further, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they favoured the war, compared to 72 percent on the eve of conflict.
A BBC survey said some 55 percent of British people feel the country is less safe now, with only five percent feeling safer since the toppling of Saddam. Overall, 29 percent backed the decision to go to war, with 60 percent saying it was a mistake.
And despite claims by the Bush administration that the month-old US troop surge in Baghdad was beginning to work, another poll by Western media organisations told a story of deep Iraqi pessimism.
Only 18 percent of Iraqis had confidence in foreign troops, just 38 percent said the situation was better than before the invasion and barely a quarter said they felt safe in their own neighbourhoods. Baghdad Shiite housewife Umm Fawzi echoed their views.
"There were no killings between Sunnis and Shiites before the occupation. It is the occupation which brought all these crimes," Fawzi, a resident of southeastern Zafaraniyah district, told AFP.
Protests have been staged across the United States and in several European cities and Japan against a war that was originally based on a premise of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Commanders are now pouring 25,000 reinforcements into Baghdad to try to quell Sunni-Shiite fighting, the bloodiest element of the conflict and one which even the Pentagon admits amounts to civil war.
In western and northern Iraq, Al-Qaeda pursues its insurgency against the US-backed government, while in the south and centre Shiite militias jostle for supremacy and control of oil resources.
The launch of the Baghdad security plan has driven some sectarian death squads from the streets, but car bombs still explode every day. Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties over the past four years vary wildly, with the Iraq Body Count website figure of 58,800 among the more conservative.
Two million Iraqis have fled the country and 1.9 million have been displaced within the country's borders, according to latest UN figures. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said nearly 50,000 Iraqis flee every month to escape the violence.
At least 3,222 American, 133 British and 124 other foreign soldiers have also died since the invasion. Iraqi officials point to a constitution and the creation of a national unity government by an elected parliament -- with 25 percent of its members women -- as signs of progress.
US commanders also point to reconstruction and economic development efforts as the great untold story of the war. Nevertheless, violence and corruption have dogged Iraq's post-invasion reconstruction.