December 13 is the anniversary of Operation Red Dawn in 2003. An event much celebrated in the US, this operation led to the capture of a foreign leader, where he would be tortured for 3 years, and finally executed after a show trial.

The leader of course was Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The US had invaded his country two years prior, because in the words of US President George W Bush, “He tried to kill my daddy”. Those might be the only true words he ever said about the war, although whether Saddam was actually behind the assassination attempt or not is in question. It’s now known that planning for the war began immediately after the attack on the World Trade Centres in New York, even though none of the attackers had links to Iraq. Eventually, he came up with some nonsense about “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, which sufficiently terrified the home of the brave enough to manufacture support for the war.

So, on December 13, they finally captured him, after eight months of unrestricted war crimes in Iraq. After 3 years of “enhanced interrogation”, they put him on trial without a hint of irony, for war crimes. This wasn’t done in an international court of course, but on a US military base in Iraq, with US puppets overseeing the trial. The UN Human Rights Commission stated that it was a clear violation of human rights law. But of course, they ensured the results that they wanted, and executed him for killing 148 Shi’ites. Interestingly enough, this is the exact number of women killed by NATO forces in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2014. I wouldn’t hold your breath on sending US President Obama to Afghanistan to face trial for war crimes.