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).

Four days of Eid-ul-Adha

Saturday marks the start of the Muslim's four-day (for the Sunni, anyway) holiday, Eid-ul-Adha, the "festival of sacrifice." According to various internet sites, the celebration marks Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael -- that's right, Ishmael, not Isaac as the bible recounts -- in God's test of his faithfulness. God stopped him and gave him a substitute, a sheep, to sacrifice in Ishmael's place. Muslims typically sacrifice a sheep or goat, and then share the meat among family, friends, neighbors and the needy to eat that day. This sacrificial animal is called a Qurban -- a consecrated gift to God (equivalent to the Corban in Jewish ritual).

In recent weeks, Saddam Hussein referred to himself as a "sacrifice", in apparent reference to his imminent execution ostensibly scheduled to coincide with Eid-ul-Adha.

The first day of Eid-ul-Adha is a holiday when everyone dresses up in new and beautiful clothes to attend Salat (prayers) in the morning. The service is followed by socializing at the mosque, and then people visit each other's homes and "partake in festive meals with special dishes, beverages, and desserts."

According to ReligiousTolerance.org, Eid-ul-Adha is a time when Muslims "pray for forgiveness from God and strength of faith. They, in turn, forgive others, releasing any feelings of enmity or ill feeling towards others. Many Muslims exchange greeting cards at this time."

The web site goes on to dispel a notion that the Day of Sacrifice is a time when Islamic passions and violence are fueled. The site instead claims it is a time when Muslims "concentrate on spiritual matters and their forgiveness of those who have wronged them. To claim that many Muslims will resort to violence on this day would be analogous to claiming that many Christians will become violent at Christmas time, or Easter."

Eid-ul-Adha... a time when Muslims everywhere release any feelings of enmity or ill feeling towards others. A time when they send each other greeting cards instead of mortars.

At least for four days.

Hussein is dead -- executed by hanging

cnn.com

Adviser: Saddam to be executed before 10 p.m. EST Friday

According to the Associated Press, the official witnesses to Saddam Hussein's impending execution have gathered in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging.

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, which is 10 p.m. Friday Eastern Standard Time (EST). The location of the gallows was not disclosed.

If the cities do not burn, then I got it wrong. We'll see.

"God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"

The Jeremiah 50-51 prophecy of calamity upon "Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans" (Jer. 50:1) includes a "great nation and many kings (being) aroused from the remote parts of the earth (who) seize their bow and javelin; (men who) are cruel and have no mercy... marshalled like a man for the battle against (the) daughter of Babylon" (Jer. 50:41-42).

The passage continues: "Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thicket of the Jordan to a perennially watered pasture; for in an instant I shall make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen I shall appoint over it..." (Jer. 50:44).

So, according to the prophecy, the leader of the "great nation" and its coalition of "many kings" which are aroused from the remote parts of the earth -- "foreigners (dispatched) to Babylon that they may winnow her and may devastate her land... in the day of her calamity" (Jer. 51:2) -- had been "chosen" by God himself to perform this deed.

One would think if God himself had actually chosen someone for some special assignment of that magnitude, that someone might have been let in on the special commission, as if having been given a word directly out of the heavens. That would be my thought, anyway.

And so we read the headline in the Guardian Unlimited (UK) of Friday, October 7, 2005: "George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'". This article cites a senior Palestinian politician who claims when President Bush met with a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he told them, "I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

The Palestinian official who recounted this was Nabil Shaath, who was the Palestinian foreign minister at the time. According to the report in the Guardian, the BBC persuaded Mr. Shaath to go on the record for a television series on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.

The Jewish newspaper, Haaretz, reported Bush's words on their web site, Haaretz.com, this way: "According to [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas, [...] Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did[...]'"

Saddam must be hanged within 30 days

Iraq's highest court has upheld Saddam Hussein's conviction for the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail in 1982, and has ordered he be executed within 30 days. The Associated Press report can be read here.

"From tomorrow, any day could be the day" Saddam is sent to the gallows, the chief judge said.

According to the prophecy in Jeremiah 50-51, once "the arrogant one" meets his "time of punishment," the cities will burn. And because of the fire, the "nations become exhausted," and the call comes, "forsake her and let us each go to his own country."