See the whole cartoon at Cox and Forkum with commentary. (I didn’t have enough time to re-size it)

It’s official.

BAGHDAD, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein will hang at dawn on Saturday, Iraqi officials told Reuters, setting a dramatic end for a leader who ruled Iraq by fear for three decades before a U.S. invasion and his conviction for crimes against humanity.

“They just called to tell me to be ready to attend the hanging at 5:30 a.m. (O230 GMT),” said a court official whose presence is demanded by law. The execution was planned by 6 a.m., he added, although he did not know where it would happen.

A senior politician in the Shi’ite Muslim majority behind Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he would also attend: “It will take place by 6 a.m.,” Bahaa al-Araji told Reuters

Reportedly his personal effects have been picked up and he’s been turned over to the Iraqi authorities. In his ‘letter’ that was posted on a Baathist website, he talked jihadi rhetoric, and said for Iraqis not to ‘hate’. In the meeting he just had with his half brothers, he said he was glad he would die a martyr and not languish in prison.

Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt says “Hang Him High (No Matter What the Times Says)”

If you’re in the mood for a classic example of where the mush-minded left stands these days, be sure to check out today’s New York Times editorial that laments the imminent neck-stretching of Saddam Hussein. Risibly titled “The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein,” the piece bears eloquent testimony to how certain elements of the left reflexively side with America’s malefactors, even when common sense, decency and logic dictates otherwise.

Michelle Malkin says that Ramsey Clark and the rest of his legal team is working feverishly to get a stay of execution by refusing to allow his being turned over to Iraqi authorities. But I thought he was already handed over.

Allah Pundit forecasts this will all be over by 9pm Central, 10pm EST.

Rick Moran with his usual poetic eloquence “A Sad Ending to a Sad Chapter in History”

Saddam may have been a particularly brutal tyrant. But the difference between his regime and the regimes of dozens of others around the world is only a matter of degree – thousands dead or tortured instead of hundreds of thousands. It says a lot about humanity at this stage of our evolution as a social species that we can be so sanguine about the murderous depredations of a Robert Mugabe or a Islom Karimov simply because the body count hasn’t achieved the elevated status of a Saddam or a Kim Jung Il. We in the civilized world can tune out the cries for succor from the oppressed rather easily – international law, free flow of oil, international commerce, even the War on Terrorism – take your pick. One excuse is as good as another.

I wish I could believe that hanging Saddam will make other tyrants pause and clean up their acts, hoping to avoid suffering a similar fate. But you and I know that is wishful thinking. What is more probable is that the dictators will redouble their efforts to stifle opposition thinking it will guarantee their security – at least from their own people.

Update: From Al-Arabiya television as per Fox News, Saddam Hussein is dead. They are now waiting for confirmation from the Iraqi government. The witnesses gathered, the preparations were made, the deed is done, by the Iraqis themselves.