In response to Maka Fairman’s letter concerning the execution of Saddam, you could not be more wrong. He received a fair trial by his peers, received an appeal then according to Iraqi law was hung from the neck until dead, much like the nearly two million people he is responsible for killing.

The United States, in fact, tried to have his execution  delayed. I would also like to remind her that this is a United Nations activity not just the U. S. There are 30-some odd countries here right now in Iraq working together to bring human rights and freedom to the Iraqi people. Further, this is an extension of the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait, not some unprovoked attack by the United States.

I’m not sure where her number of ”Iraqis slaughtered” came from but it is flatly untrue.

The Iraqi response to the execution has been a positive thing. Few are upset and many are very happy to see this madman gone for good. Saddam was a Sunni which make up only 20 percent of the population of Iraq and less than half of those supported him. Few IEDS are being found right now and the small pockets of secular violence have hit a lull. This may have taken some of the wind out of the few who wish to control many.

I know these things not from sitting safely at home reading a small town newspaper but from being in Iraq. I am currently in a Sunni-controlled area of Iraq working with both pro- and anti-Saddam supporters entombing tens of thousands of tons of CWMs that we never found so they will not contaminate the world further and so that insurgents can not use them against those they wish to harm.

This is my second tour of Iraq. I have traveled all over the country working side by side with all sides on a daily basis. I ask the questions and I get their answers first hand.

What is going on in Iraq and what the media reports are so far apart it is sometimes hard to believe it is even the same war. I come here not because I have to but because I believe in what we are doing. I have seen it first hand, we are mking progress and at some point in the near future, control of Iraq will be handed from the United Nations back to the Iraqis.

  Brian Howard