Charles Johnson at LGF links an article describing how many Iraqis felt shocked and ashamed by the image of Saddam Hussein, alive and looking like a homeless guy in the custody of the Americans.
I personally think that Charles may be misreading the article, as this precise reaction was discussed the other day by Zeyad. As he himself described it:
The images were shocking. I couldn't make myself believe this was the same Saddam that slaughtered hundreds of thousands and plundered my country's wealth for decades. The humiliation I experienced was not out of nationalistic pride or Islamic notions of superiority or anything like that as some readers suggested. It was out of a feeling of impotence and helplessness. This was just one old disturbed man yet the whole country couldn't dispose of him. We needed a superpower from the other side of the ocean to come here and 'get him' for us.
I think that what Zeyad is describing, and perhaps what other Iraqis in the article are feeling, is that here was a man who had terrorized them for decades, who had set himself up as being practically a god over their lives. And yet here he was now, being examined by a foreign doctor, having been captured by a foreign army, and looking like a normal man, albeit one who needed a bath and a shave. The shame is probably rooted in a feeling of having been deceived all those years -- If this is all there was to him, why did we let him do this to us?
It is, when you really think about it, an understandable state of mind.
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