This first-person account by N.Y. Times Baghdad correspondent Marc Santora, appearing in Sunday’s edition, about Saddam Hussein‘s final hour of life is historic, essential reading — tight, terse, riveting. (The eyewitness observations apparently came from Ali Adeeb and Khalid al-Ansary.)
“At 6:10 a.m., the trapdoor swung open. [Hussein] seemed to fall a good distance, but he died swiftly. After just a minute, his body was still. His eyes still were open but he was dead. Despite the scarf, the rope cut a gash into his neck.”
Wait…”he died swiftly” but his body wasn’t still until “a minute” had passed? Doesn’t sound that swift to me. My idea of swift is the way Slim Pickens‘ Major Kong dies at the end of Dr, Strangelove.