Goodbye 2006, hello 2007

After a rest over the festive period, I'm picking up my metaphoric pen ready to face the new year. And what an end of year it was. Saddam Hussein's death was a most remarkable event on so many different levels. In my lifetime he is the only world leader that I remember who has had legal proceedings brought against him in this way and been held to account for them. In my simple lay-person view Pinochet got away with it, nothing happened to Clinton's perjury, the Shah got a holiday to Egypt, Sharon shirked off the massacres of Sabra and Chatila, Idi Amin sought refuge in Saudi Arabia to name but a few.

Most disappointing and eyebrow-raising for me though was the fact that the thousands and thousands of hideous crimes and murders he committed were not, and will never be brought into the public eye. What of the justice that his victims deserve? Why was his horrific record brushed over? For example, why was Halabja never mentioned? I was a child when it happened, but it marked me indelibly. The horror of burnt, half destroyed bodies, eaten by inexplicable chemicals and strewn in mid-life through the streets that the people had walked only minutes before cannot be forgotten so easily by the international community. Just as the reign of terror and all the other vile crimes that were committed cannot be relegated to a closed chapter.

All of this was not committed by the single man Saddam Hussein. Who was it who provided him with the tools and chemicals? Who supported him in power? Who turned a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Why will we never hear the answers to this?