No one ever accused Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi of good taste or mental stability:

With much of the Arab world up in arms over the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Saturday, it didn't take long for Libya to jump into the fray. The government in Tripoli announced on Thursday that it was planning to erect a statue of Saddam, depicting him standing on the gallows. He will join a similar monument to the Libyan freedom fighter Omar Mukhtar, a national hero who was executed in 1931 after fighting against the Italian occupation.

"The revolutionary committees have decided to erect a statue of Saddam Hussein standing beside Omar Mukhtar on the gallows," the government said in a press release.

Following Saddam's execution, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi declared three days of mourning and flags on government buildings were flown at half mast. One day prior to Saddam's death, Gadhafi had said that the former Iraqi leader was a prisoner of war and should be tried by the United States and Britain instead of in an Iraqi court. Saddam was hanged for the massacre of 148 Shiites in the village of Dujail in the 1980s.

I wonder if the monument will include a live-action trap door, where anyone who visits can re-enact the entire event. They could make the dancing around the corpse optional, or perhaps provide music for it. If so, that would make a fitting memorial for a genocidal tyrant who got infinitely more mercy and justice than most of his victims. After he and his sons spent the last few decades torturing, maiming, raping, and murdering Iraqis of all stripes in the most horrid and violent ways possible, Saddam got taunted a bit before his short drop. What a martyr!

Perhaps it should surprise us that a barely-repentant old terrorist would erect monuments to a dead butcher, but it goes right along with Gadhafi's history as the Middle East's leading weirdo. Unfortunately, Gadhafi has plenty of company for that title. When we start seeing monuments in the region to the hundreds of thousands of Saddam's victims instead of all these crocodile tears over the end of Saddam, then we can start taking the "Arab street" seriously.

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