Saddam to hang within 30 days.

Saddam Hussein's desperate last ditch appeal to avoid the gallows has been rejected when Iraq's highest appeals court rejected Saddam's appeal, and confirmed that the former tyrant's death sentence must be carried out within one month. In an interesting twist, the hangmen have yet to be appointed, so the Iraqi government is offering up the position to the public. Given the countless families in Iraq devastated by Saddam's bloodthirsty police state, applications from would be volunteers have been pouring in, especially from Kurds and Shiites, two groups hit hardest by Baathist brutality.

The bleating from anti-death penalty advocates has begun, and naturally, few of them have experienced a fraction of the state sponsored horrors that were the norm (not even the aberration) of Saddam's Iraq. Iraq is not Belgium or Norway, but even the Belgians and Norwegians did not object when the Nazis who brutalized their countries, for a much shorter period of time, were marched on to the gallows. Iraq is looking to punish Saddam, not comfort flinchy European and American death penalty opponents, and in less than a month, the tyrant from Tikrit will be nothing more than a bloody smudge in the footnotes of history.