All Honourable Men: Eulogy for Saddam.

Friends, Readers, citizens, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Saddam, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Saddam. The noble Bush

Hath told you Saddam was dangerous;

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Saddam answer'd it.

Here under tutelage and cooperation

Of CIA was a dictator set up and empower'd

To enslave a people, lest they disturb the wealth

Of many corporate oligarchs. But he would not be bound,

and so brought down in Shock and Awe,

Along with 650,000 innocent people.



But yesterday the word of Saddam might

Have stood against the world; now he lie there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.

O readers! If I were disposed to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,

I should do Bush wrong, and Cheney wrong,

Who you all know are honourable men.

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,

Than I will wrong such honourable men.

But his voice was silenced for a purpose;

Lest the complicity of Washington and

Many other capitals should lie reveal'd,

In the crimes his regime committed.


O! what a fall was there, my countrymen;

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.

O! Now you weep, and I perceive you feel

The dint of pity for the death of truth;

And loss of honour that we all were heir to.

Naked aggression used to steal the wealth

Of desert sand was all to our complicity;

And corruption of our laws in naked rendition

Were celebrated in Saddam as shamed captive

Carried to a faulty trial by vengeful enemies.

In upholding democracy and human rights,

Let us not overlook the wrongs done in our name,

And, on the eve of Eid, let us not forget

the crimes of those unpunish'd.