http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/05/...ddam/index.html

How come other leaders have slaughtered way more citizens and not even got a parking ticket?? Could it be the oil??

Life can be unfair at times...

Hmmm. How convenient that the verdict just happened to come two days before the US elections.

Hell, Iraqi's are happy but he ran that country better than the US can ever will. Yea, its probably the oil as well.

He is sentenced by his own people because of what he did to his own people. Don't mix what the trial was about. His sentence does not justiofy the US led invasion, nor does it bring support to the Bush led Republicans.

Life really can be unfair at times, like how unfair it was for most Iraqi's under Saddam. May he rot in hell along with Miolsovic and any other leader like that.

Yell out if you're surprised

(Silence)

When it comes to killing people in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was an amateur. George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all were able to kill way more Iraqi people than Saddam could ever imagine. Even for Saddam's biggest massacre that solidified his infamy as a tyrant - the slaughter of countless thousands of Iraqi communists, he still required the CIA to help walk him through it. Hey, speaking of which how many CIA heads are due to be hung with him since they had a hand in it?

One last thought to munch on. After Saddam was deposed, guess what happened to large swaths of his security forces top to bottom, that were responsible for much torture, executions and general human rights abuses? Well they were all hired back by the Americans to back up the new U.S. puppet regime. Ah, sweet justice! It's okay though, the American's made sure they thoroughly purged one Iraqi state ministry. The one responsible for public planning (hey when you're forcibly and unpopularly privatizing everything from their healthcare to oil, repressive thugs are useful, planners and managers of a public sector? Who needs them!)

Oh, I'm sorry. We should let him live because he was only an amateur at it. The thread is about how Saddam was sentenced. Rather than hijacking every thread to remind us of your opinion of the imperialist US regime, how about speaking on topic. THen again in your opinion I guess you are.

So - umm what are we do do with his security forces who were following his direction? Kill them all? Hiring them back is not as bad an idea as you think. I guess you and your morality would be strong enough in Saddams army to defy him.

Here is a question, where would Iraq be right now if there never was a Saddam or any other ruthless dictator to take charge. Forget talking about how the west would have been all over the oil. Tryu speaking just about the wonderful Iraq on its own as a member state of the planet

One simple question for you 2008RapsWin...

Do you think George W. Bush should be hung for what he has done to the Iraqi people?

Hmm - hung? Lets put him on trial first. Then we can all have a look at whatever evidence supports it (if we can ever get it out) I am no George Bush fan despite how everyone says he is Israels defender. He is just posturing for the Christian right who believe that the Jews have to be in Israel for he messiah to come.

By the way, I love the way you answer a question with a question. One would almost think you were Jewish too.
There Linc - I have answered your question. Now answer mine- A people with a cuture as rich or as ancient as Iraq or Iran - where would they be without the likes of a Saddam. We are talking about civilizations that contributed to medecine, science......
Where would that part of the world be if there were no dictators or religious fanatics.

The US should get out of Iraq, period.

I am not sure what type of evidence you are thinking of that isn't readily available? He ordered the war, manipulating intelligence info and over 100,000 Iraqis are dead because of it. Assuming those facts to be true, should he be hung?



I'm not sure which question you want me to answer? The one about what Iraq would be like if there was no Saddam? Or the much broader one about religious fanatics and dictators?

Here's my answer to both...

I assumed you were being rhetorical. No one could predict what Iraq would be like. Probably some other faction tied to the military would have deposed Abdul Rahman Arif. The Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi Communist Party were both big time political players, potentially one or the other would have rose to power. Perhaps both (assuming a different faction of the Ba'ath Party consolidated its hold than the Saddam one, and the revisionist faction remained the dominant one in the ICP). Assuming the latter scenario (as it seems likely), Iraq's governing National Front would probably look a lot like Syria's today.

As to the much broader question, it is really impossible to answer. I also think it is a loaded question, as I suspect that you mean to imply that these are the chief sources of all problems in the mid-east (unconnected to foreign machinations). I suspect the region would look quite different, yet possibly be in much the same situation. Dictators simply represent social forces. Remove them as a form of political organization in the state, and you still likely have all the same social forces and conflicts between them. They'd just give rise to different political mechanisms to yield the same result. This is really true of religious fundamentalism as expressed in politics as well.

i think what 2008rapswin was questioning/suggesting is what if the middle east continued its developmental curve that it displayed until the year 1000 or so. the middle east used to run the show and then it stopped. whether you could blame that on religion or not, i have no idea. as a guns germs and steel reader, i would think that the middle east reached it's potential and then the west caught up.

i am of the opinion that religion, while being socially useful in some aspects, is the reason we are not flying around in jet cars right now.

as for saddam, he was the face of a regime that did terrible things. regardless of what role you think the US is/has played in the whole affair, saddam was a huge piece of crap. a friend of mine whose family pretended to be going on a trip to jordan to escape saddam's regime told me about some of the things that went on when saddam was in power... not good. i am not one for the death penalty, but that's what goes over there, so at least it is a way of punishing someone for things they played the main role in orchestrating.

also, if we are hanging people for wars that result in people dying, shouldn't most national leaders be getting hung? i AM NOT saying that i support the iraq war or bush or anything like that, but shouldn't there be a difference between blatant atrocities and human rights violations vs wars with questionable motives? i'm just putting it out there

Bush is a propped up war criminal puppet for a very evil force that lives in the world. Forcing a form of a shaky democracy was premature for the region. The US should get out of Iraq right now. If their goal was to oust a dictator that was supporting terrorism then that was accomplished a long time ago. As the thread states, that dictator is now sentenced to die. It could have been a nice story, instead, the US wants to protect its interests and vulcan mind meld its ideaology into everyone out there. Very evangelical, very missionary, very ummm religious.

I don't think relgion is the only cause of the problems in the region but its exclusionary nature and inability to evolve stops everything. It really is a pity that the continued flow of oil and christian fundimetalist agenda affected what could have been a positive result. Now the Middle East as less reason to trust the west. All this makes me thing of is my children. Wouldn't it be great if they could grow up in a different world.

Back to your bush cmment Lincoln - I know what happened, you know what happened, lets the the courts decide, like they did with Saddam. All of the evidence of wht he did was there as well and they still bothered with a trial.

So the US gets out of Iraq- then what. Is democracy a good thing for he region? Is equality, religious freedom and tolerence what the region wants? There are going to be those unhappy wth any change to the idealogy of the day. 9/11 through to today ( and the events that led to 9/11 on either side you sit) has not build up a lot of trust. What do you do now.

Guns, Germs and Steel wouldn't account for the mid-east decline. That would be considered the result of "proximate" causes. Jared Diamond wrote Guns, Germs and Steel to cover what he called "ultimate" causes.




At this point in history I would say that the massive diversion of human and material resources to military research and production and away from other areas of development is probably the single largest contributor to other areas of development being neglected. But if you're talking about stem cell research, then hey, you got a point. (but all of this sort of missed my point on religion)




I don't see where you think the distinction is.

Why is it okay when Bush does it? But not okay when Saddam does it?

Don't kid yourself, both have their reasons. Both George Bush and Saddam Hussein used ruthless methods to impose a vision on Iraqi society. So again where is the distinction?

In means?

The US is responsible for atrocties and blatant human rights violations as well. They destroyed civilian targets, poisoned the country with depleted uranium, their soliders use arbitrary detention, conduct extra-judicial killings, torture POW's. They dissappear people with no trial or accountability. They have violted everything imaginable from Geneva to UN to even the very laws of the puppet government they've established. I can't think of a legal or ethical standard the US has not blatantly violated in spades and on a massive level.

In scale?

The Americans are responsible for more deaths than Saddam!

In ends?

At least Saddam was able to consolidate the unity of the state and impose a developmental regime based on semi-nationalization of oil with a portion of the wealth going into infrastructure and social development. Iraq before the Gulf War was one of the more prosperous countries in the region, and no serious observor would dispute that the population was fairing far better under Saddam then under the Americans (both sanction era and Bush Jr. era). The result of the American invasion has been to exacerbate humanitarian disaster and to spark a civil war.

I don't see where the moral difference is.

Contrary to what RapsWin2008 said, the tribunal was in fact created by the Americans to be nominally managed by the Iraqi authorities they had installed. Given the "puppet" character of the current Iraqi state administration it would of course be very possible for the Americans to exert pressures.

I was listening to the CBC this morning on radio and there were a couple guests that were interviewed who follow both Iraqi politics and this trial (I got the impression each was quite sympathetic to the US puppet state and the verdict against Saddam). They were generally sympathetic to the aims of the tribunal but did note some points of interest.

One of the things the Americans made sure of when they were setting up the tribunal, was that it would only hold jurisdiction over Iraqi nationals. This was clearly a move to limit the possibility of US leaders and corporations as being implicated as accomplaces to many of his crimes, and furthermore for them to even be named as criminals in their own right for what they have done to the Iraqi people. This limited scope essentially ensured that the tribunal from the get-go was more about discrediting the Ba'ath Party in general and Saddam Hussein specifically, rather than seeing justice done for Iraqis that had suffered as a result of human rights violations and war crimes by ensuring that those who had committed these crimes against the Iraqi people between 1968 and 2003, would be brought to justice (such a genuine mandate would of course result in the trial of whole swaths of the US political-military elite.)

Furthermore, what Saddam was convicted of yesterday was supposed to be simply a trial run. It was in the deaths of (I believe, but double check) 148 specific persons. The idea here was that after this first run, the "real" trials would be begin for some of his larger crimes, that being the repression used against the Kurdish people and the suppression of the Najaf uprising during the first Gulf War. Now, it seems these latter trials, which were considered integral to delivering the symbolic justice we are hearing so much about, will not happen. Rather Saddam will be expedited to the gallows, likely by Spring at the latest. So now we have a situation, where we are left to ask, if this trial was really about seeing the record set straight and offering a public process of accountability and justice (some such as Evan Solomon on the CBC yesterday even went so far as to suggest "healing" and made a baffling comparison to the post-Apartheid process in South Africa), why is the main content of the trial being dispensed with? These guests suggested (and I think quite rightly so), that it was now apparent that Saddam would simply expose American involvement in his crimes should things proceed any further. Where he got his chemical weapons, why the airspace was cleared over Najaf to allow the suppression of the rebellion (it is now known the US double crossed the rebels of Najaf), the CIA assistance in the repression of internal dissent. This was all likely to come out should things proceed any further.

I also had a very interesting opportunity to speak with an Iraqi man this morning, who was from Najaf. His family had fled in the wake of the repression from the first Gulf War. He had two direct family members killed under arrest by Saddam's police and another that was simply dissappeared (which means killed). I asked him what he thought of the whole trial, and he felt basically the whole situation is a cynical hypocritical farce.

Great Lincoln. Now once again without drawing GWB into this.....
What would you do.
I admire your research, your knowledge and respect your opinions and arguments. But what would you do with Saddam? Is democracy good for the region?

I am not against the court's decision but i was thinking Would the Saddam loyalists now create a bigger insurgency and more chaos in the region? ALso the sudden decison makes it seem like it was an attempt to show that the administration is succesful in finally desposing Saddam before the mid term election and show the people in america that the republicans did do something in Iraq.

Assuming I am who?

You Lincoln - just you.
I want to know what you think of democracy as a go forward strategy in Iraq. Do you think it is a good think because you support the idea of democracy globally or do you think that it isn't necessary because adherence to religious doctrine as a way of life is sufficient and should bring about the same net results where it is the will of the (ruling/majority) people.
Do you think Saddam should be executed for his crimes as a separate issue from everything. Do not link this to GWB the CIA - just Saddam and his record
I tell you this, if you start a topic on whether or not GWB should be tried for his crimes you get my vote but what I want to know is what is your opinion on this topic in a vacuum. I know we don't live in a vacuum but it is easy to posture on behalf of others and I find you guilty of that as a way not to have to talk about how you feel and point your finger at the big bad west.

See I disagree there is even a "strategy" of democracy in Iraq (sort of a weird sounding notion). What democracy in Iraq? What there is, is an occupation by a foreign power that is the fruit of an illegal war. The elections are rigged. The Americans control who can and can't run, they finance who they want to win. They control who gets media exposure. They kill opponents. And that is just what you see on the surface. There can be no democracy without self-determination. Lots of colonies had parliaments of various sorts like India under the British or Algeria under the French. None of those nations were democracies. None of those nations were free and independent. What I believe in is the self-determination of Iraq. No good will come until that is respected. No limits imposed by the west. If they want an Islamic Republic, than fine (it doesn't matter, theocracies in this day and age won't last anyhow). I believe the right of nations to self-determination is a very important principle to uphold in these circumstances.





I believe in democracy. But probably not in the way you think. If the question is: "do I believe in the American or Canadian or British form of governance as a model for the world?" Then no. I do not. Do I believe in the rights of people? The elective principle? Yes, absolutely. But that can be realized under a variety of VERY different ways including many that I suspect are far more meaningful to the majority of the worlds people.




There are two circumstances under which I would find Saddam's demise legit. 1) If he had been deposed and murdered in a popular and indigenously based uprising of the broad masses of his own people. 2) Under circumstances of a genuinely independent Iraq, that held a fair tribunal the purpose of which was to bring justice to the Iraqi people and was not limited to indicting Iraqi Nationals.

Since neither of those scenarios is what we are dealing with, I find this whole thing a hypocritical charade. It was an illegitmate show trial that has set a most dangerous precedent. A precendent that can become more far-reaching and insidious in its consequences than any merit to hanging Saddam under these circumstances.



I am not avoiding anything. I am not allowing US imperial objectives to limit my scope of context when it is obvious to me that:

- The Americans established this tribunal with their money and control
- The tribunal was illegal as it was set up by a foreign power following an illegal invasion
- That Saddam never recieved a fair trial
- That the 148 people he was convicted of killing stemmed from an assasination attempt against him in 1982 by the Dawa Party (who are now in charge of Iraq), and that we actually have no idea of the guilt or innocence of those 148 people because their trial transcripts were not allowed by the Americans to be admitted into evidence at Saddam's trial
- That he is being rushed to the gallows to help the US save face and avoid american gov't and corporate implications in his crimes
- That his sentence was read before his verdict and the release of the reasoning was delayed (my guess is the judicial rational is no doubt still being translated from English to Arabic)
- When 3 of Saddam's defense counsil were assassinated
- When a previous judge overseeing the tribunal resigned because it was such a farce
- That there is no trial for those responsible in assisting Saddam when he killed Kurds or internal opposition (nor even for Saddam, save those 148 people)
- That there is no trial for those who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the first Gulf War
- That there is no trial for those who killed over 1 million Iraqis, mostly children under 5 through the sanctions in the 1990's
- That there is no trial for those who killed, by recent estimates in a major medical journal - 650,000 Iraqis from the recent war and occupation
- That those responsible for these crimes now claim the authority to discredit their opponent under any circumstances they so choose by expediting him through a kangaroo court in order to legitimize their far greater crimes