I can't say I was a big Saddam fan, as his Hitlerian tactics certainly didn't win anybody over, and though I'm anti-death penalty, to a certain extent I believe you reap what you sow.

The problem I have with his execution stems from a different kind of unease. His hanging came at the end of what was clearly a show trial, put on by barely competent judges at the beck and call of their American overlords. There was no jury. Three of Saddam's lawyers were assassinated; in the U.S., the first death would have resulted in a retrial. In short, Saddam did not, as Bush claimed after the execution, get the kind of justice denied his victims. He got the same kind of hasty, civil-rights-violating treatment that supposedly moved the U.S. to invade. American forces, we were being told, were going to be like the democracy fairy, bringing fairness and impartiality to everything they touched.

Saddam's stage-managed trial and execution were a laughable display of corruption and U.S.-controlled ventriloquism. What the process should have been was a public model for what imported democracy could look like. Saddam should have received the carefully applied full due process of law to demonstrate to all Iraqis (and by extension the Arab world) that things could be different. If that process also resulted in his execution, then so be it; the end result was not the point, but the process -- a glaring truism that has been absent from the entire invasion. Process matters.

As it is, Saddam's trial is merely a reflection of the parody of "justice" that ordinary Iraqis are getting. As reported in last week's NY Times, the judicial system in Iraq is broken and overburdened. Most defendants don't even get legal representation, and are convicted with scant evidence. Trials are held without juries, and sentences are long and typically unduly harsh.

So now the tyrant is dead, through direct action of the Bush administration; though they've been careful to publicly stay away from the process, there was never any question who pulled the levers of power. And Iraqis now have reason to feel even more cynical than before, since the version of jurisprudence we've given them isn't any better than what Saddam himself dispensed to his long-suffering countrymen.

America has sold Iraq a lemon, a limping wreck sprayed with canned new-car-smell to disguise the stink of old blood staining the seats. And as it breaks down to the point of stopping altogether, they're realizing the extent of the shameless rip-off they've endured.

Is it any wonder they're angry?