I want round-the-clock 24 hr news coverage of this beamed into every household in the Middle East -

Saddam was the worst BUT, every klepto-crat in the Mid East recognizes that his crimes are theirs as well - at most the difference was one of degree.   The thing that must scare the bejesus out of them is whether their respective populations recognize it as well.

This story is too big to be swept under the covers by Al Jazeera or even BBC.  Will it receive as much coverage as Laci Petersen or even OJ?  

For the most part, I'm pretty fundamentally opposed to the death penalty.  While I recognize that it's a very likely outcome here (and possibly the appropriate one given the extraordinary nature of the case) -- there's a part of me that just wants to wire up a mike in his cell and let him keep his trap going.  The Kuwaiti's, for example, are beginning to recognize the type of leadership they've tolerated up north.   Perhaps other Arabs will turn the microscope on this situation and eventually their own leaders as well...

I personally like VDH's take on just how far this indicates we've come -

Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.

Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.

A Democracy, not quite yet.  But something far far far better than what's come before.