So former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, the Baghdad Butcher, was hung till he died for his gutless persecution and hanging of almost 150,000 Shiite men and boys in Dujail in 1982. And that's not counting the thousands more he has tortured and murdered elsewhere in Iraq. When he was caught hiding like a sewer rat in a hole in the ground near Tikrit, his hometown, in December 2003, Saddam would've known his end was near.

That it took another three years before Saddam fell through the trapdoor with a heavy noose around his neck is in itself remarkable. The bloodlust of the Shiites, who now dominate the once dominant Sunni minority, and the Kurds, in the pro-American government led by the hugely incompetent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, is well known.

al-Maliki wasted no time in consigning Saddam to history's dustbin. Forty-eight hours after the appeals court upheld what is effectively Iraq's kangaroo court, the Iraqi High Tribunal's death sentence on Saddam, sanctioned by Washington and London, the former tyrant went to the gallows on the morning of the Muslim Id holiday, amid pusillanimous chants of Moktada, Moktada, Moktada by Shiite members of the witness gallery. One or two of whom stupidly, as uneducated as they must be, took pictures of Saddam's hanging with the cellphones, which swiftly found their way to the internet.

Saddam is dead, and he deserved to die even by hanging. Former Malaysian autocrat Dr Mahathir Mohamad has scowled at the conduct of Saddam's execution. He is right. It was putrid and disgusting. But the undignified nature of the killing of Saddam is to be expected. The Iraqi government has fundamentally caved in to lawlessness in a country that is rapidly balkanizing under the growing weight of sectarian violence, and rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the broader Middle East are financing Muslim brethren bloodletting.

But Mahathir is wrong, dead wrong, and yet again, when he typically, mouths off that Saddam's hanging had the conspiratorially imperial designs of the United States and its Western allies. This sadistic act broadcast to the whole world is a travesty of justice [of Saddam's hanging], and was meant to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States, Mahathir was quoted as saying by AFP.

Well, prove it.

It has been immediately clear that Washington had firmly questioned the wisdom of al-Maliki's decision to rush through Saddam's hanging. Then it found itself hamstrung, politically, between upping the ante, on principal, and backing off, as Washington did, the latter so as not to undermine the hopelessly inept and corrupt al-Maliki government which has a shortened lifespan

Creating bogeymen

If hanging is such a heinously barbaric way of executing a criminal such as Saddam, why then did Mahathir, in his 22-year reign as prime minister, allow his regime to hang Malaysians and foreigners in Malaysia by a court system that is equally incompetent, whose judges were politically handpicked by his administration, and who are equally corrupt?

Indeed, is Malaysian hanging more merciful than Iraq's or, for that matter, Singapore's or the United States, or Indonesia's and China's execution by firing squad, or the insidiously barbaric death by stoning found in many Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia? Why does Mahathir not criticise these countries but only the United States?

Let's be clear: Mahathir's old nationalist, anti-colonialist staple has never been convincing in the past. It is even less so now. He subscribes to ridiculous conspiracy theories when none can be proved.

Mahathir's always creating bogeymen, a favorite pastime whenever he has no facts to back up his ludicrous claims. He's like a leopard which can't change its spots just as he did when he jailed scores of his critics during Operation Lallang in 1987, using his dictatorial powers to impel the Gestapo-like Special Branch to do his political dirty work.

If Mahathir is such a great Muslim, where was his sense of mercy, principals and morality when he had his former deputy prime minister and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim jailed, then protected as far as he could the crooked rogue cop who beat up Anwar in jail, and then had the gall to say Anwar's beating was self-inflicted?

Where was Mahathir's virtue of righteousness when he jailed Anwar on charges that could not be proved, that were, in the end, based solely on his hunch and on the hearsay of those whom he had cowed by questioning them in person of Anwar's alleged guilt and who then cowed the politically pliant High Court to submit to Mahathir's findings of his one-time protege?

Mahathir's unchanging spots can be useful in some cases, but they are awfully profane when he's merely in it for criticism's own sake. Undoubtedly Mahathir is desperate these days to stay in the political limelight through the media, especially at a time when much of the mainstream media in Malaysia, who once were his ardent sycophantic fans have turned their backs on him.

But this stultifyingly insular class of pretenders who are meant to uphold press and democratic freedom, have become ardent sycophantic followers of the next pitiable and bungling Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. And it is only because this is how the Malaysian media can keep its Printing Press license from being ripped up by the Umno-controlled government.

There comes a time when somebody has stand up to barmy bamboozling spin merchants like Mahathir and tell them to shut up. This is just one more time, unless Mahathir is so moved to again display his banality and idiocy. Only fewer and fewer folks listen to people like him.

MANJIT BHATIA, an academician and writer, is also research director of AsiaRisk, a political, economic and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. He specialises in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific.