As if murdering thousands of people was not enough, Saddam is now justifying his regime on the grounds that it was “working in the public interest and did not mean any harm.”

Deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is depressed and has begged the Iraqi government for mercy, Iraq’s Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published Monday.

“He is distraught and depressed,” Allawi said of Saddam, the man who was Iraq’s president for 24 years and is awaiting trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

“Saddam and his colleagues are not the giants that the media sometimes talks about. Saddam sent us an oral message in which he begged for mercy. He said that they were working in the public interest and did not mean any harm,” Allawi said in an interview with the pan Arab al-Hayat newspaper.

Let’s hope that Allawi realizes that the banality of evil neither new nor a reason for mercy. In any case, I suspect that Saddam will have a hard time proving that he was “working in the public interest and did not mean any harm” in any court of law.