Saddam is Dead

[Adaptus]

.........What do the masses think?

 

I have to say, I have a little feeling that he was wrongfuly killed for some reason. As if, he should not have died when he did. But what about the rest of you?

[Suverina]

It's never right to kill anyone, not even a murderer.

[Tagmatium Rules]

I'm against the death penalty, in any and all cases, although I do feel that it sometimes can be more satisfying to see some sorts hang.

 

Saddam should have been handed over to the Hague for a war crimes trial, rather than held by the Iraqi Government and their American allies (or dare I say puppeteers?). Some people feel that the whole trial was orchestrated by Washington, and I feel that there is a fair bit of truth in this matter. I also feel that Britain should have protested harder, rather than give up and say "oh, well, Iraq's a sovereign nation an' all. We tried our best".

 

What has amused me the most recently is that, in the British media, the reason for the Iraq war was to get rid of Saddam, and not the threat of WMDs that were apparently a direct threat to the UK. Magically, such weapons have never been found. It's also funny that you get a hell of a lot of back-pedalling. Recently, a New Labour spokeswoman said that Mr. Blair had never said that Iraq was a direct threat to the UK, yet he clearly had said it was whilst attempting to drum up British public support for his master's attempt at clearing up Daddy's mess.

[Renposa]

I never had nothing against Saddam....I Agree 100% With The Death Penalty *CHARGE!*

[Mongol-Swedes]

And the fact that we're talking about this right now means that the American media is WINNING. This is a pointless issue, we already know the war is shady.

[Tagmatium Rules]

So: is that MS's official censure on this?

 

Yep, we do all know that the war is shady, ever since it turned out that Saddam didn't actually have any chemical or biological weapons, the pretext for war in the first place.

 

But I don't see why us discussing this issue is evidence of the American Media winning. This is a discussion board, so we can discuss anything that we like, whether or not it doesn't have your approval, ta very much.

[Tamurin]

Even the worst enemy of democracy should get a fair trial. Saddam didn't.

 

On the other hand: There is no doubt that he was guilty of installing a tyrannical regime, killing tens of thousands of Kurds and Shiits with poison gas, starting two devastating wars (1980-1988: First Gulf War with Iran, many million dead; 1990/1991: Second Gulf War, many thousands dead), etc. etc.

 

I don't think that the execution was a mistake. You got what he deserved and what he did to many, many, many people.

[Mongol-Swedes]

Bah, if you really wanna get technical, his death was far more merciful than his own victims got. But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

 

Come to think of it, the media pretty much ignored this. I had to scoure the internet before I found a video of his execution. More or less, though, it's been a tradition of the past six years for the media to conveniently shift the talking points around at critical moments, like when Congress and the President are passing outrageous legislation that would never get through if people knew what was going on.

 

Tag, I'm at the point where I don't need to hear about the issues to get motivated to do something about them, because I've already become active and such. Please, please, please PLEASE don't call me a censor.

[Miiros]

Normally I am against the whole death penalty thing, but I am finding myself feeling pretty good about Saddam's execution. (Hypocrisy on my part? Not really sure.) His trail was more of a technicality than anything; most of us all knew what would become of him in the end.

 

So now he is dead. What will this change? In all reality, probably very little. It is a symbolic death more than anything. The old order is now officially dead. He will never rule Iraq again and there is no turning back now. Iraq can now look to the future, however bleak it may be. To count this as some great turning point or milestone is a mistake though. Iraq still bleeds. Show me an end to the death and destruction and then I will truly celebrate.

[Vocenae]

Ha! Democracy actually doing what it's supposed to do, there's a laugh.

 

But MS has a point, the media sells itself out to the highest bidder these days, and over here, most local news channels are nothing but human interest stories about some old lady saving a cat from a tree.

[Cabarria]

I'd have to say I'm not sad to see the old dictator go, but I'm not jumping for joy at his execution, either. I think this would have been the outcome regardless of how any trial was conducted, and though it may not have been the smoothest of trials, at least it was conducted by the Iraqis in a relatively decent manner.

[Mongol-Swedes]

Right, the Iraqi 'Unity' government.

 

I will say this. At the moment when Saddam is dropped and hung, you hear his executioners shouting 'MUQTADA, MUQTADA!!!', clearly in reference to Muqtada Al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric and leader of the Mahdi Army, a militia which has infiltrated virtually every security force in Baghdad (apart from some private contractor forces, obviously).

 

So we basically just handed Saddam, an identified Sunni, off to a Shiite lynch mob. Sectarian violence has infiltrated the Green Zone. Har har har!

 

Just as a side-note, here's some intriguing artwork which has caught my fancy.

[Damak Var]

I doubt the outcome would be any different in any other legitimate court.

 

 

[Tamurin]

Well, MS, if we're talking about the surroundings of Saddams trial and execution, we would start the whole Iraq-discussion with every aspect about it.

 

I was just referring to his death and in my opinion he deserved it. His death was much less painful and cruel than the deaths of his victims, true, but the result is the same.

 

I think that his execution will change nothing in present-day Iraq. Other problems and issues are much more pressing. But it's the symbolic end of the Baath-era in Iraq. Baath is forbidden, Saddam is dead, his sons are dead and his 'paladins' are dead or in prison, possibly facing the death penalty.

[Suverina]

I was just referring to his death and in my opinion he deserved it. His death was much less painful and cruel than the deaths of his victims, true, but the result is the same.

But it's never right to kill a man, not even a murderer.

[Akiiryu]

Way to make a martyr. The US and, indeed, the new "democratic" Iraq have just lost the last inch or moral highground they occupied. Christ all mighty, what a bunch of fools!

 

I doubt the outcome would be any different in any other legitimate court.

 

Really? How about in countries where there is no death penalty? Oh, and how are we defining legitimate courts here?

[Mongol-Swedes]

Tam, this WILL, infact, bolster the Sunnis to further distance themselves from the Shiite-majority government of Iraq, increasing the liklihood of an ongoing civil war. Saddam Hussein will be seen as a martyr, like Aki said, to anyone who opposes the Shiites controlling Iraq.

 

I guarantee that the outcome of the trial would have been substantially different if the State Department and the Department of Defense, the Bush Regime, etc., had nothing to do with it. Rather, he should've been tried at The Hague.

 

This entire sham of justice was, infact, victor's justice. The Shiites threw off the shackles of the previous Sunni government and declared that they had taken revenge by chanting Muqtada's name. And the neo-cons, who found that Saddam wasn't playing by their rules anymore, were just as eager to be rid of him.

 

And don't think for a second that Baath is over. Hell no, man, they still have major influence in Syria, and many Baath members have been reinstated into the Iraqi government (and are now the targets of Shiite assasination squads).

 

But many of you always ask me what my solution would have been...

 

 

 

 

Did we really need to be in this situation in the first place?

[Vanarambaion]

Oh pipe down for one second. Do any of you hear that? That is the sound of business as usual. There've been no reprisal killings, no more so than is already going on, anyway. Saddam's execution came and went without any of the bloody fanfare anyone was expecting. He's not a martyr, and there is no popular uprising to get him back. The only people still fighting are those being paid to do so by the pundits on the various sides like Muqtada Al-Sadr. And if his troops are included in the security forces, that gives him at least a passing interest in seeing the government, clumsy and inefficient as it may be, succeed. Sounds good to me.

 

And as to his execution, which after all is the topic of this discussion, I'm glad it happened. Maybe they should have made it more painful, to repay him in kind for what he did to his own people, but at the end of the day, I'm mostly satisfied. And the media has less to do this than alarmists would like to believe. There was no moral high ground to hold, as we haven't had any from the start of this war. There was only business to take care of, and Saddam sitting in jail for the rest of his life would have been one more unnecessary concession in an already loosing battle. And furthermore, the media in America is a crock of sh*t and everyone knows it, so the idea that some super-governmental organization is brainwashing us is not only ludicrous, it's a crass generalization and a gross underestimation of the average American.

[Akiiryu]

Have to disagree with you Van. For one, the Iraqi prime minister is doing some fancy footwork at the moment in an attempt block the possible sh*te that will come from the events at Saddam's execution. Fact is, MS is probably right, all that "Muqtada" stuff that was chanted at Saddam is only going to stir theings up. He will become a Sunni martyr...or at least a martyr to his clan (Tikrit was closed down the day of the execution and no one was to be allowed in or out for four after the execution...think about that for a minute).

 

Moral highground? You're right, perhaps I chose the the wrong words. Saddam's sham trial and his execution only make the US look worse. If the US was truly interested in justice Saddam would have been tried at the Hague, rather than in a kangaroo court. Then again, if that had happened the US might have had to explain why it supported Saddam in the 80s, even when it knew he was using chemical weapons on the Iranians and his own civilian population...

 

 

 

[Vanarambaion]

Saddam was given the trial he deserved, plain and simple. How many sham trials did he put his own people through? How many never had a trial? No, I think the only sham would have been if he'd been removed from the Iraqi court system. The new government got a chance to repay Saddam's treatment of them, and I'm glad they did. If they hadn't, they'd be looking for someone to blame this on, and the US is all too tempting a target. As I said, the only thing I regret is I think he got off with too little pain.

 

As to the possibility of explaining itself to the Hague, the US wouldn't have to explain anything it couldn't handle, given the international hostility to Iran recently. No, Saddam got exactly what he deserved - a poetic taste of his own medicine.

[Vanarambaion]

And let's talk about this - is there the possibility that Saddam would not have been killed? No, the US and Iraqi governments wouldnt' have allowed him to be tried in a court where he couldn't face the death penalty. Too much pride was at stake. Saddam had no real chance of defending himself in any other court, so the decision was a foregone conclusion. The Sunnis, would be pissed at that anyway. There's no way for either government to let Saddam live, so this whole thing was a necessary evil, and the Sunnis are either going to have to put up, or shut up, since fighting a 60% Sunni majority is not an option any sane people would take (I'm assuming a lot here, perhaps).

 

I think the greater question here is, why are we standing in the middle of two (or three) rabid groups who want nothing better than a chunk of the other group? THAT is the losing situation, not killing some half-retarded psychotic dictator.

[Akiiryu]

Oh come on Van! Two wrongs don't, as the saying goes, make a right. By not giving Saddam a fair trial, the US and the new "democratic' Iraqi regime simply lowered themselves to his level.

 

As to your second comment. The US has refused to recognise International Criminal Court because it fears it soldiers may end up before it. Care to guess the other countries who voted against the Rome Statute of the ICC? China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel. Yes, that would be Saddam's Iraq.

[Akiiryu]

I think the greater question here is, why are we standing in the middle of two (or three) rabid groups who want nothing better than a chunk of the other group? THAT is the losing situation, not killing some half-retarded psychotic dictator.

 

Because it was the US (and, to a much more minor extent its coalition of the "willing" ha) that set these groups loose when they invaded Iraqi and overthrew Saddam.

[Mongol-Swedes]

Not to mention the criminal elements that have sprung up with the complete disbanding of the Iraqi military during that bastard Paul Bremer's 'deBa'athification'. Brilliant job. When General Gardner proposed that we keep them around to stave off unemployment and help maintain national security in Iraq, he got sacked, and the Iraqi troops found work with the likes of Muqtada al-Sadr and Al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as other AIF. And to think Bush said that he's listening to the generals, although that was after the General got the gas.

 

Saddam was a neo-con pet, his usefulness to the neo-cons ran out, and Iraq was invaded. For more on the motivations of the war, Greg Palast pretty much got it right in his book 'Armed Madhouse'.

 

If Saddam didn't exchange Food for Oil plan from petrodollars to petroeuros, the Stars and Stripes would not be flying over places like Ramadi or Baquba. At this point, it's all about that dolla-dolla bill. Energy independence is not profitable for the Houston/Saudi cartel that is at the forefront of the military-industrial complex.

[Pirilao]

The murder of Saddam Hussein

Never forgetting the declaration of war of the Al Qaeda to the United States in 11 September, the truth is that I had to believe the private information that the North American governing had divulged to the World. To the light of this become reality public, I started to assent in the military intervention in Iraq on the part of the coalition one that it was obtained to form. Still thus, never having had doubts on the results of the intervention in same itself, also never I imagined that the lack of quality of the American administration was to the point to lead Iraq to the state where if it finds today. But this military intervention in Iraq still came to show the enormous load of lie that if acolita for detr?s of the democratic ideia and the concept of Rule of law.

The reply it is contained in how much it has been able to see to the long one of the last years, since the revelation of the crimes of Abougrahib.

Being Portuguese, ruled in the thought and the share for the Catholicism, I am clearly against the death penalty. I doubt exactly that it obtained to fulfill an order of military nature, in the direction of the murder of the convict, since whom the price to pay for such disobedience was acceptable in the human plan. It wAlso never I doubted more than evidentes criminal liabilities of Saddam Hussein, of who always would have a terrible distrust to be for close, in its time to be able.as an almost absolute tyrant, if he is that he was not really. But what already I cannot leave to make it is to recognize evidentes and simple realities.In first place, the clear lack of legitimacy of the court who judged Saddam Hussein: it was, in the way most evident, the court of the old ones oppressed and pursued. In according to place, the unquestionable interference of the current one to be able politician in the functioning of the proper court, who thus became in an instrument of vindicta and without real independence. In third place, the fact of if still having proceeded to the execution - assass?nio, clearly - from the old dictator of Iraq before being concluded the remaining judgments where he was male defendant! Finally, the horroroso espect?culo, proper of people with a barbarity culture, around the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Fortunately, possible foiz us to see the humiliation barbarous the one that the old dictator was subject, and until the very worthy way with that it faced an only moment in the life of who wants that it is. The recent revelations of the North American nurse who folloied it, show as well as, in a certain aspect, Saddam Hussein until consegiu to have reason: but where they are the such weapons of that they walk to the search! With these recent images, the lowermost one falls for land that still it could save the appearances of the politics of Bush for Iraq: there it does not go to supervene no democracy, but the continuation of a regimen of barbarity in all fellow creature to that it was knocked down. E if Saddam Hussein until obtained to write poetry and to league the nature to it simplest, giving a little of the little that had, is because, bad grado everything, the conscience never abandoned it. Exactly having been a tyrant, it obtained to understand the life, its tragedies well, and to face the death with a dignity rar?ssima. I believe that Gerald Ford was the best one that America always had, but does not doubt, as that it is, of that George W. Bush is, of this same America, necessarily worse. It is enough to remember the disgusting texana Saga of prison murders.