Facing gallows, Saddam offered "sacrifice" for Iraq

On December 27th, three days before his hanging, it was reported by Reuters that Saddam Hussein said his execution should be "seen as a sacrifice for the nation" -- "Here I offer myself in sacrifice," Saddam wrote in a letter obtained from his defense lawyers in Jordan last Wednesday. The defense team said he had dictated it shortly after he was sentenced to death in November.

And so Jeremiah recounts the sentiment: "'They will roar together like young lions, they will growl like lions' cubs. When they become heated up, I shall serve them their banquet and make them drunk, that they may become jubilant and may sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake up,' declares the LORD. 'I shall bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams together with male goats. How Sheshak has been captured, and the praise of the whole earth been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!'" (Jer. 51:38-41).