Two moral zones

In today's Guardian Ann Clwyd:

"I thought I would never be able to write again after they came close to cutting off my fingers by burning, stamping or thrashing them with sticks," he wrote. "I was also caned and flayed until my feet were swollen. These rounds of hard group beating were interspersed by orders to leap and trot on the same spot I was in... they crucified me on the floor and nailed me there by stepping on my palms and arms... My thighs were ripped apart violently and they began to rape me."

The torture and execution of political opponents and the hunting down of dissident elements were to be a consistent feature of Saddam Hussein's regime for the next 20 years. And these abuses did not end with the first Gulf war in 1991. On a recent visit to southern Iraq, I saw evidence of the military campaign waged against the Marsh Arabs, which continued right up until the fall of the Ba'athists. Such a regime forfeited the right to be tolerated by liberal opinion.
.....
The regime cost the lives of at least 2 million people through its wars and internal oppression, and 4 million Iraqis were forced to become refugees. According to estimates from USAID, more than 270 mass graves have been found in Iraq. These alone should vindicate the war. That the world should have acted sooner, I have no doubt.

I recently visited the Palais Wilson in Geneva for a human rights conference. In the hallway was a reminder that the most translated document in the world is the UN universal declaration of human rights. The failure to intervene when genocide raged in Iraq, or in Cambodia, or in Rwanda, or in Bosnia, is shocking. The UN and its security council need to be reformed to reflect 21st-century reality...

Iraq now has a chance for a better future.

If, on the other hand, instead of moral seriousness, you want an account of the morally obtuse, try this - Michael Billington on a new song-and-dance satire on the war on terror: 'Blair... Bush's tragic poodle'; 'We're sending you a clusterbomb from Jesus'; 'Bush celebrat[ing] American global dominance by leading a star-spangled chorus of "Welcome to the new world order"'. You can see how many Guardian readers, how many of the war-we-couldn't-stoppers, and dinner-party tongue-cluckers, and right-onners-for-leaving-the-regime-in-place, will just lap it up. Billington:

But, as someone who opposed the war but has since been appalled by the left's apparent indifference to Hussein's hideous cruelties or the problem's of Iraq's struggling democrats, I am struck by how much Beaton leaves out: only one fleeting reference, for instance, to Hussein's gassing of the Kurds.

... To quote John Reid confronting Jeremy Paxman, I wish I were as certain of one thing as Mr Beaton is of everything.

Yes, they'll definitely lap it up then. Or, if you want more of the same, there's also this.

Alternatively, you can read about the ferment on the campuses of Iraq:

After years of oppression, Shia revivalism is sweeping the universities; young men and women are experimenting, for the first time in their life, with things such as freedom of religion, freedom of expression[,] sit-ins, elections and riots.

On Baghdad university campus, pictures of the martyrs are posted on the walls, young men in their early 20s, absent during the past two decades, hang around wherever you go, and there are confusing edicts from the ayatollahs, denouncing the great Satan who liberated them from the great tyrant.
.....
A year ago, none of the couples I spoke with would dare discuss openly their sexual life - or "it" - but with satellite dishes the taboos are falling down one by one.

Two zones.