Views on Saddam's execution.

In the Independent, Robert Fisk is at his most sanctimonious.

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq.

In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore struggles to reconcile his liberal conscience with the necessity to execute Saddam and manages some common sense.

In the case of Saddam, I find it hard to believe that many people are really outraged, except about the taunting and the unauthorised filming. I suspect that they are using it as yet another way of attacking Blair and Bush.

In the Times, Graham Stewart has an interesting little piece on historical examples of execution.

Tags: Iraq, Saddam Hussein