The science is how that art was applied so that an Iraqi court would give an American verdict, so that the Iraqi hangmen would execute an American prisoner, so that the American wrath would work through the Iraqi retribution. The hanging of Saddam Hussein was a ventriloquist's act, which was executed by the dummy.

Part of the rope which hanged Saddam Hussein was his own creation and the Americans gave him enough rope to hang himself. The defiant dictator walked to the gallows spitting curses against the Americans and the Persians, and reciting verses from the Holy Koran, until the trapdoor suddenly opened under his feet and the howling man was silenced like an interrupted music, hanging like a broken doll with a tilted neck, his head so close to the floor as if the ordeal had abruptly diminished him.

So the shell of the man was destroyed last week nearly three years after he was dead. In fact, Saddam Hussein died on the very day he had popped out of that spider hole, his matted hair, dirty clothes and spent looks conjuring the image of a defeated dictator who opened his mouth under the examiner's flashlight as if in the final act of surrendering his dignity. But then he was temporarily resuscitated in the farce of a trial which was preceded by its verdict. It is now clear that no matter what, Saddam's fate was already signed and sealed.

In the end, the former dictator died a feral death and how could anybody miss the irony that he vicariously suffered for the sin of Osama bin Laden. In the end, he would not die for keeping weapons of mass destruction or having links with the al Qaeda network or taking part in the 9/11 attack. In the end, he would be tried and executed for Dujail, where 146 villagers were put to death for allegedly conspiring to assassinate the president.

Everything else gets sideswiped and the background gets pushed into the background. Nobody talks about how Saddam was an American puppet, who, for years, got military and intelligence support from the Reagan administration to fight against Iran. Almost forgotten is how the US had encouraged Shiites to rise up against Saddam after the Persian Gulf War and then backed off and watched as he sent helicopter gun-ships to slaughter them. It is still shrouded in mystery whether the US had given the green light to the Iraqi dictator for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait via its ambassador, April Glaspie.

If anybody remembers, Dujail comes in the long tradition of that obscene complicity between Saddam Hussein and the United States and that the ruthless dictator had used American weapons to execute his enemies. But then if we assume that he who gave the gun is more to blame than he who pulled the trigger, then many US presidents including George Bush should have been hanged as well. A conservative estimate claims that more than 665,000 Iraqis have been killed since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado determined that the population of American Indians dropped from 12 million in 1500 to 237,000 in 1900 as a result of ruthless genocide.

David Model writes in How to Commit War Crimes with a Straight Face that President Nixon had ordered 3,500 sorties which killed 600,000 Cambodians. In Vietnam, the American troops committed indiscriminate atrocities and were responsible for the death of nearly 2,000,000 Vietnamese people. Countless black Americans were tortured and killed under the watch of several US presidents.

Like a gallinule is used to trap another gallinule, and a slave is used to exploit a slave, the United States has used a puppet to hang another puppet. And it shows that the horror perpetuates because the world has no shortage of victims who are willing to sacrifice other victims in the false hope of overcoming their own destiny.

May be Saddam had lived under the same illusion. He trusted the Americans and oppressed his countrymen because he believed that his joyride of power was never going to end. May be Moqtada al Sadr desperately wanted to avenge the death of his father who was executed by Saddam Hussein. May be those Shiite hangmen wearing balaclavas chanted Moqtada's name because they thought at last it was under his leadership that they were able to vindicate their revenge against a Sunni tyrant.

But then everything boils down to the ventriloquist's game as the dummies slowly play into his hands. And every time the video of the execution is played on TV, it reminds of how it is the destiny of men to infinitely repeat their mistakes. It was the Americans who invaded their country on false pretense. It was the Americans who captured their tyrant and held him in custody all this time because they could not rely on the Iraqis to protect their prisoner against lynching or escape.

If anything, the Iraqis only gave legitimacy to what the Americans have done, and took the blame for all its insensitivities and goof ups. The Iraqi law prohibits hangings during religious festivals. The law also stipulates that an execution must be carried out 30 days after the appeal court's decision, which was not followed. The only law that governed the dummy was the voice of the ventriloquist.

There are many rumours surrounding the last moments of Saddam Hussein. It is said that he was offered tranquillizers which he refused. They offered him a last meal of chicken which he declined. He asked for a last cigarette which was denied. The guards denied him a few moments of sleep during his final hours locked up in the dungeons of Iraq's military headquarters.

But one question will rise above the rest, and that question is why Saddam was executed in such a hurry. Perhaps it was destiny that he would die on a very special. It was an American slaughter done by the Iraqi hands. For others who watched, it was ventriloquy of death. The execution looked like a sacrifice.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.