OT... Saddam is executed. Right thing to do?

glu · Post by **glu** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 5:26 pm

systematic killing sucks

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 5:32 pm

"Saddam Executed"......sounds like saddam.exe was run....wonder what that virus will bring?

News flash : everyone will die. What is accomplished by hanging the man? We'll see....in the meantime, the leaders we have chosen sink us ever deeper......

If the government is going to murder someone, they should at least give them a good strong dose of high-grade ecstasy the morning before....for the sake of juxtaposed opposites...

I just woke up....

Didn't know Saddam was using Live, now that he's dead....last I heard he was on decks...

earthloop · Post by **earthloop** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:28 pm

LOL...'Lives of the Rich and Famous! At Home With Saddam!'

Sorry to be flippant. I have strong views on this topic but gave up trying to write something shorter than an essay...for which you should all immediately express your gratitude!:lol:

ethios4 wrote: Didn't know Saddam was using Live, now that he's dead....last I heard he was on decks...

earthloop · Post by **earthloop** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:42 pm

Actually, I still like the former Iraqi Information Minister.

Could anyone forget his optimistic, even humorous, street interviews expressing how the war was going well for them...with regular pauses as the earth literally shook with the force of a nearby cruise missile hit!

That guy had more courage than Saddam! I wonder what happened to him? There was talk of him being signed up for his own TV show after the war!

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:04 pm

Let me see if I can word this to make sense to those that think this was a good idea.
Every regime that lasts for twenty odd years has people who benefit from that regime. Those people will boil with hatred now.
Iraq did not attack the USA, we attacked them, and deposed a standing leader. Whether or not that leader is a good person has no bearing whatsoever on the repercussions of that action.
In many ways, this is the worst action to take, the fact is Saddam is not, and was not on trial at Nuremberg. This was not a trial set up by a government that was democratically elected in the purest sense of the term. There are supporters of Saddam, they don't get airtime. How many political candidates do you think ran that opposed US intervention, and were running on the promise of getting rid of the US military prescience?

bOunce's pit bull analogy is correct in the sense that we, the west don't even see that mid east as worthy of the same amount of respect we show other nations. Saddam as pit bull, a dog, trained badly, and to be put down, and the owners scolded, or maybe something of consequence, maybe.
the hangmen didn't even wear uniforms, it looked no different than the Al Qada snuff videos.... great.

a girl I know thinks this is the turning point in American history, that we crossed a line here, I agree.

It's not about Saddam, and whether or not he's a bad man, it's about our own actions, and what that says to the rest of the world.

earthloop · Post by **earthloop** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:17 pm

Machinesworking wrote:Let me see if I can word this to make sense to those that think this was a good idea.
Every regime that lasts for twenty odd years has people who benefit from that regime. Those people will boil with hatred now.
Iraq did not attack the USA, we attacked them, and deposed a standing leader. Whether or not that leader is a good person has no bearing whatsoever on the repercussions of that action.
In many ways, this is the worst action to take, the fact is Saddam is not, and was not on trial at Nuremberg. This was not a trial set up by a government that was democratically elected in the purest sense of the term. There are supporters of Saddam, they don't get airtime. How many political candidates do you think ran that opposed US intervention, and were running on the promise of getting rid of the US military prescience?

bOunce's pit bull analogy is correct in the sense that we, the west don't even see that mid east as worthy of the same amount of respect we show other nations. Saddam as pit bull, a dog, trained badly, and to be put down, and the owners scolded, or maybe something of consequence, maybe.
the hangmen didn't even wear uniforms, it looked no different than the Al Qada snuff videos.... great.

a girl I know thinks this is the turning point in American history, that we crossed a line here, I agree.

It's not about Saddam, and whether or not he's a bad man, it's about our own actions, and what that says to the rest of the world.

I agree...I feel betrayed by my own government's small part in this! Thanks for saving me the typing, Machinesworking!

BassTooth · Post by **BassTooth** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:18 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpO6nbuChLg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5zjtLmR6nE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrw-ycvZB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qp4MtQ9aMY

BassTooth · Post by **BassTooth** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:36 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_vSg5eX_4M

so strange.... she gets all choked up and then they cut to commercial. wonder what it all means? odd.

telekom · Post by **telekom** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:59 pm

A few self-evident things.

1 Capital Punishment is wrong.
2 Executing Saddam will not make Iraq a better place tomorrow.
3 Capital Punishment is wrong.
4 Saddam is now a martyr for the extremists.
5 The terrorists who hated the West before today will really have an axe to grind now.
6 See points 1 and 3.
7 The Iraqi people deserve better than this after the US/UK have destroyed the country they live in (regardless of whether it was run by a dictator).
8 b0unce = eyeknow

Honestly, hanging someone is so sick. This is wrong wrong wrong and things will only deteriorate because of our thirst for revenge. Iraq is already in flames but it's nothing compared to what is likely to be unleashed now that Saddam has been martyred in this horrible way. And there was always a part of me that wished Saddam dead, but that's just vengeance creeping in to cloud one's judgment. At the end of the day execution can never be justified. And it will definitely only make matters worse.

A bad day for humans everywhere.

muscleandhate · Post by **muscleandhate** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:02 pm

I actually think it's quite unprecedented that the US, in the public domain, supports that style of execution.

M. Bréqs · Post by **M. Bréqs** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:51 pm

OK...

Just to dispel a few myths here.

Telekom is way off the mark. he said:

4 Saddam is now a martyr for the extremists.
5 The terrorists who hated the West before today will really have an axe to grind now.

Nothing can be further from the truth. extremist muslims hated Sadam just as much as anybody else. Maybe a few thousand Tikritis still give a shit about him. And anybody who hated us before today still hates us, nothing changes.

Ohhh, now they're REALLY mad. Well what the fuck were they yesterday? only mildly annoyed? please.

Saddam's execution will make no difference in Iraq. Not for the better, not for the worse, and idealogues on both sides (fantasy blinded doves and culturally ignorant hawks) are making a mountain out of a molehill.

FYI, I disagree with capital punishment for fundamental reasons. But to go doomsaying about the insurgency in Iraq is to attribute an effect to a non-cause.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 9:18 pm

M. Bréqs wrote:Nothing can be further from the truth. extremist muslims hated Sadam just as much as anybody else. Maybe a few thousand Tikritis still give a shit about him. And anybody who hated us before today still hates us, nothing changes.

Adding fuel to the fire ALWAYS changes the numbers. Whether they hated Saddam or not doesn't matter, he was still arab, and we are not! Every time a foreign presence is responsible for regime change, and advocates capital punishment for the deposed leaders, you create more teenage extremists. I simply cannot fathom how you've managed to avoid that?

Ohhh, now they're REALLY mad. Well what the fuck were they yesterday? only mildly annoyed? please.

Like I said above, new ones are created by actions we take today, that justify the extremists in any way.

Saddam's execution will make no difference in Iraq. Not for the better, not for the worse, and idealogues on both sides (fantasy blinded doves and culturally ignorant hawks) are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Totally disagree, Saddam is now a martyr, he was, as you said earlier, a neo fascist socialist PITA to the fundamentalists before, now he is not. People are flexible in their thinking, and an enemy becomes an ally when faced with a greater threat, USSR and the USA against the nazis for instance, (and NO that shouldn't count as a WWII reference! )

FYI, I disagree with capital punishment for fundamental reasons. But to go doomsaying about the insurgency in Iraq is to attribute an effect to a non-cause.

I agree, capital punishment is an idea that looks good on paper, but in practice it creates more problems than it solves.
That holds true to Saddam, just as it holds true to some guy who killed his boss, but was decent enough to his kids to have his murder by the state drive them into a life of crime, or depression etc. Actions have consequences.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:14 pm

Machinesworking wrote:
M. Bréqs wrote:Nothing can be further from the truth. extremist muslims hated Sadam just as much as anybody else. Maybe a few thousand Tikritis still give a shit about him. And anybody who hated us before today still hates us, nothing changes.
Adding fuel to the fire ALWAYS changes the numbers. Whether they hated Saddam or not doesn't matter, he was still arab, and we are not! Every time a foreign presence is responsible for regime change, and advocates capital punishment for the deposed leaders, you create more teenage extremists. I simply cannot fathom how you've managed to avoid that?[/qoute]

The islamist insurgency/invasion in Iraq hates Saddam more than "we" ever did: He ran a secular regime and had Christians in his cabinet. The al-Qaeda and that lot, he was more Western than anything else... perhaps even an "example" to them of why non-Islamist rule doesn't work.
Killing Saddam might further polarise four of the six pan-arabists still alive today, but to be honest, I'm not even sure of that.

Saddam's execution will make no difference in Iraq. Not for the better, not for the worse, and idealogues on both sides (fantasy blinded doves and culturally ignorant hawks) are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Totally disagree, Saddam is now a martyr, he was, as you said earlier, a neo fascist socialist PITA to the fundamentalists before, now he is not. People are flexible in their thinking, and an enemy becomes an ally when faced with a greater threat, USSR and the USA against the nazis for instance, (and NO that shouldn't count as a WWII reference! )

His execution is about as important to the future of Iraq as when he was first caught... ie., not really.

This post, however, marks a turning point in history... a Breqs-Paws agreement on a political issue... maybe there is hope for peace after all:)

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:21 pm

Bush and Cheney to this day say Saddam made a collaborative effort with Al Qaeda
to bring down the twin towers. Our soldiers fight and die in Iraq for that very reason.
This distinction is front and center. How convenient for Bush to execute Saddam for a crime Bush gives two shits about.
Now "our" collective justice will never see the light of day for the most important crime ever,
and the most important justice needed. This point is lost. Bush has no problem sacrificing a perpetual open wound
for hundreds of millions. I really can't believe this douche backwash is our president. A few men and so much destruction.

Come January, the Iraq oversight committee better do what's needed. It's time to nail these asses to the wall.
They've got what they needed regardless, and now they should pay with their dishonored lives.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... ddam&hl=en

.

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 3:17 am

Article posted by Robert Fisk today in the independent if anyone cares to read.

--------------------------------

A dictator created then destroyed by America
Published: 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

Robert Fisk

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fis ... 112555.ece