Even Though Rocket Attacks Continue to Terrorize the People
Anyone who opposed the Iraq war should go online now and read the interim Iraqi constitution. For a summary of it, go to BBC's website, or read the whole thing here.
Compare this document, for instance, against this brief description of Saddam Hussein's "constitution":
"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents. This is a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a 2-year-old girl to force her mother to divulge her father's whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm's length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person's limbs off to force him to confess or comply. This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid, either to break their will or simply as a means of execution. This is a regime that applies electric shocks to the bodies of its victims, particularly their genitals, with great creativity. This is a regime that in 2000 decreed that the crime of criticizing the regime, which can be as harmless as suggesting that Saddam's clothing does not match, will be punished by cutting out the offender's tongue. This is a regime that practices systematic rape against its female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man's wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him. This is a regime that will force a white-hot metal rod into a person's anus or other orifices. This is a regime that employs thalium poisoning, widely considered one of the most excruciating ways to die. This is a regime that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her house and children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime. This is a regime that used chemical warfare on its own Kurdish citizens, not just on the 15,000 killed and maimed at Halabja but on scores of other villages all across Kurdistan. This is a regime that tested chemical and biological warfare agents on Iranian prisoners of war, using the POWs in controlled experiments to determine the best ways to disperse the agents to inflict the greatest damages. (Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 2002)."
Notice in the new Iraqi consitution, Article 15(J): (J)
"Torture in all its forms, physical or mental, shall be prohibited under all circumstances, as shall be cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. No confession made under compulsion, torture, or threat thereof shall be relied upon or admitted into evidence for any reason in any proceeding, whether criminal or otherwise."
This is a great day for Iraq. THIS is what the hundreds of Coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqis gave their lives for: Rule by written law, derived directly from an open public debate, and protecting the basic human dignity of all.
This is the same cause that 4435 young American soldiers died for over 200 years ago in the United States Revolutionary War. A year ago, a place where the very code of law originated, the people of Iraq did not have the freedoms that United Statesians enjoy. We should be proud to see that we still have a hand in this cause of independence and freedom today in the very place where modern civilization began. Today truly was historic.