In the Name of the Compassionate, the Merciful

An old friend of Margaret Thatcher's apparently surfaced recently in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, who was one of the old bag's most favoured trading partners, was dug up eight months ago and relocated because his tribal allies were afraid his grave would be vandalised. Their fears appear to have been justified: after the body was moved, some forces of democratic virtue broke into the grave site and set it on fire. Saddam was executed in 2006 for the killing of a hundred and forty-eight Shia Muslims, which took place in 1982 and became a crime against humanity in August 1990. According to Reuters, he was "defiant until his last breath"; according to camera footage taken at the time, the forces of democratic virtue strung him up in the middle of his last prayer. They did have the decency to taunt, abuse and hate him while they were doing it; which may or may not be more pleasing to God than the cool professionalism of the lethal-injection functionaries now at work on the other side of the civilisational clash.