Tuesday, January 02, 2007

JASON BURKE at the Guardian:

In 2003, back in Sulaymaniyah, I sat down in a prison cell with a captured Baath party torturer. 'How old was the youngest person you ever tortured?' I asked him. 'Oh, about two or three,' he said unapologetically. 'We didn't torture the kids themselves obviously, but holding a toddler over a boiling saucepan is a very good way of getting their parents to talk.' Why do I return to all this? Because I can't help but be happy that Saddam has been executed.

Exactly.