# A Sympathy Card for Saddam **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 22, 2003, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268 "2003-07-22T23:46:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blonde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@Blonde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blonde)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/21 "2003-07-23T02:29:41Z")
**Zenster** : Hear, hear! I had the same thought as **Guinastasia** - too bad we couldn’t have caught those bastards alive, so that we could find out where Daddy is hiding out. **jarbabyj** - what the hell are you talking about? Can you think of any other murderers more deserving of our disdain? I will dance on their graves if I want to - along with many others. ---
**Author:** ![fruitbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@fruitbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fruitbat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/22 "2003-07-23T02:42:22Z")
I have written post after post and then erased it in response to the entrance of the offenderati into this thread. I really am left speechless. Is it really necessary to poke your heads into every thread to let us know how offended you are? Collectively the Husseins and Amin left death tolls totalling at least several hundreds of thousands of people. Their being dead is a **good** thing. I can guarantee you Ugandans are taking great joy in the impending death of the man who destroyed their beautiful country. **Jarbabyj** and others resume trying to raise the taking of offense to an art form. ---
**Author:** ![king\_of\_spain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7cd45c/32.png) [@king\_of\_spain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/king_of_spain)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/23 "2003-07-23T02:49:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zenster \* > **"Monstrous?" “Brutal?” Get a fucking clue! Collectively, these beasts gleefully slaughtered HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE! They turned their nations into charnel houses. These rotters took pure delight in the abject suffering and humiliation of others. Yet, it is I who am “monstrous” and “brutal” to cheer their shuffling off of this mortal coil? Oh, woe is me!** Yes, you’re right. Your actions are not as bad as those of Hussein or Amin. Congratulations on your staggering accomplishment. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![MelCthefirst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@MelCthefirst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MelCthefirst)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/24 "2003-07-23T03:03:51Z")
Two young lives tragically cut short with so much rape, pillage and murder still ahead of them. ---
**Author:** ![fruitbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@fruitbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fruitbat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/25 "2003-07-23T03:05:46Z")
What action exactly did **Zenster** take. He posted to a freaking message board. Now unless there is a lobbying group for cannibalistic African ex-dictators I can’t imagine there is a group who is not relieved that the world is almost rid of Amin. Reading the newspaper every morning must be more than you can take. Shock and offense lurk under every headline. **Zenster** did nothing more than state the obvious. Only someone ignorant of Amin’s crimes or desperate to take offense would challenge that. ---
**Author:** ![fruitbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@fruitbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fruitbat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/26 "2003-07-23T03:08:54Z")
_Originally posted by jarbabyj_ > [@](#): > > I’m a bit too upset at the loss of their humanity BEFORE they died. In my opinion, their death releases them from some serious mental and psychological issues as well as sparing further damage to innocents in their countries. It is a shame isn’t it **Mel** , but let us remember that they would be suffering psychologically while they raped and murdered. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/27 "2003-07-23T04:02:56Z")
These are the people we’re talking about: > [@](#): > > A chef at Baghdad’s exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. “The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn’t let anybody out,” the chef remembers. “Women were yelling and crying, ‘What happened to her?’” The groom knew. “He took a pistol and shot himself,” says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin. > > Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday’s properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman’s white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday’s mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, “Don’t say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished.” If I had been given the chance, I would have gladly put a pistol to the head of either one of these monsters, pulled the trigger, and then done a little happy dance on his corpse. I’ll save my outrage for the poor young bride tortured to death on her wedding night. ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/28 "2003-07-23T04:27:58Z")
Thanks **Sam** and **fruitbat**. It is that one story, **Sam** , that sticks in my mind. All that sorrow and destruction, just to get laid. What sort of psychopath gets his kicks that way? The sheer horror of such rapacity mandates my glee at their demise. I too would have happily pulled the trigger on either of those two vermin. **king of spain** , please read **Sam Stone** ’s post one more time and then feel free to fuck off. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/29 "2003-07-23T04:48:35Z")
> [@](#): > > _from Zenster_ > Starting two threads at a Internet forum lowers me to the same level as some particularly vicious mass murderers? Once again, your reading comprehension fails to impress. **jarbabyj** never compared you to Amin and Hussein, but rather (in the part you quoted, no less) to the braindead yahoos who dance in the streets whenever one of “the enemy” is killed. ---
**Author:** ![Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boo_Boo_Foo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/30 "2003-07-23T04:53:38Z")
**Sam? Zenster**? Forgive a dumb question please - obviously I’ve been working too hard and minding the 7 month old daughter a dash too much. Was it recently confirmed that Saddam’s sons were killed was it? Was it a bombing? Or a shooting fight? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/31 "2003-07-23T05:03:42Z")
It’s all over the news. Saddam’s sons were trapped in a house, were asked to surrender, and a ‘fierce firefight’ broke out. Inside the house was a hardened room with bulletproof glass and such, and the two were in there shooting out. The military called in a gunship, which fired a TOW missile into the room and killed both of them. The identity of the bodies was verified by former administration officials. Also, old healed bullet wounds on one of the bodies matched those that Oday suffered in a botched assassination attempt some years ago, thus positively identifying the body. The U.S. military says there is no doubt as to their identities. Also killed was a bodyguard, and a teenage boy, assumed to be Qusay’s 14 year old son. ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/32 "2003-07-23T05:06:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sublight \* > Once again, your reading comprehension fails to impress. **jarbabyj** never compared you to Amin and Hussein, but rather (in the part you quoted, no less) to the braindead yahoos who dance in the streets whenever one of “the enemy” is killed. And evidently your reading comprehension is likewise unimpressive. Odai and Qusai were not merely enemies in some remote or even important US sponsored conflict. They embodied _genuine evil_. There are no political sides to their wrongs. There are no religious ramifications to the unacceptability of their misdeeds. They were rapists and murderers, not individuals on one side or the other of some territorial conflict. I realize that such a concept as overarching malignancy without borders or political alignment may be difficult for you to comprehend, so I’ll spell it out to you one more time; These were pond scum posing as hominids. They were slime molds in anthropoid form. They forfeited their right to live by dint of their abhorent and vile acts. Any questions? **Boo Boo Foo** : > [@](#): > > MOSUL, Iraq (July 22) - Saddam Hussein’s sons Odai and Qusai died in a blaze of gunfire and rockets Tuesday when U.S. forces, acting on a tip from an Iraqi informant, stormed a palatial villa in northern Iraq. The U.S. military claimed their deaths will blunt Iraqi resistance to the American occupation." ---
**Author:** ![Publius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@Publius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Publius)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/33 "2003-07-23T05:18:55Z")
I find myself 100% behind **Zenster** (even if he doesn’t seem to particularly need my support). Look at this from a utilitarian point of view. Who has been caused pain by the deaths of the Brothers Saddam\*? Perhaps their own selves, plus a handful of supporters who routinely inflict pain upon others. Contrast that to the multitudes of people who suffered, and would continue to suffer, because the brothers remained alive, and I think it’s clear that their deaths have dramatically reduced the amount of overall unpleasantness in the world. These are people who based their very existence on the pain of others; it is absolutely laudable that they’ve been eliminated. It’s absolutely proper that we celebrate this, as death for 'Uday and Qusay translates directly to a vastly better life for those they have harmed. There’s always bound to be winners and losers in life. Few losers were ever more deserving of that fate than 'Uday and Qusay. \*Iraqi naming conventions are interesting, but I _think_ this is more correct than the Brothers Hussain, even if it does make me look stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boo_Boo_Foo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/34 "2003-07-23T05:20:18Z")
Thanks Sam and Zenster. It’s 3pm in the afternoon here, and ummmm, well I simply haven’t turned on either the radio or the TV at all this past 24 hours. Amazing something so big could slip under my radar. Thank you once again. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/35 "2003-07-23T05:22:51Z")
Ya know, the US is supposed to pony up $15 million to the Iraqi who tipped US forces off to the location of Saddam’s sons. Once they do that, it might inspire a few more folks to come up with information on certain individuals we’re interested in, like Saddam and Osama. It’s really too bad the Iraqi people were deprived of the pleasure of extracting their revenge on these two skinwasters. Oh well, at least they’re gone and won’t be able to try to retake power years from now. A friend of mine and I were talking about this, and we both agreed that whomever was in charge of the operation must have been familiar with the [Evil Overlord](http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html) list. Specifically item number 38. > [@](#): > > If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/36 "2003-07-23T05:47:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zenster \* > **Both of your sons are now dead. It is hoped that you might realize how your own actions brought about their untimely (but highly satisfying) demise.** Might Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz’s actions also have had something to do with it? ---
**Author:** ![Fang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/96bed5/32.png) [@Fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fang)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/37 "2003-07-23T05:47:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sublight \* > \*\* the braindead yahoos who dance in the streets whenever one of “the enemy” is killed. \*\* 'Course, sometimes “the enemy” is a brutal sadistic mass murdering thug, and sometimes it’s a stockbroker who dared to go to work. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/38 "2003-07-23T06:00:35Z")
I think JAR’s point – if I might be so presumptious as to interpret for her, which she undoubtedly doesn’t need – is that any time any of us _rejoices_ in the death of another human being, our own humanity is reduced, if only slightly. And I agree with this. There’s a fine line between feeling grim satisfaction at a necessary job successfully done – no matter how unpleasant – and actively rejoicing in another’s demise. I would qualify that by saying that I do believe those who have suffered by the hands of the now-dead oppressor might indeed have reason to be jubilant in his death. But that’s not a POV I grant to most Americans. However, it’s not a point I’d chastize ZENSTER about. I certainly realize YMMV, and if death must be celebrated, these seem like two excellent deaths to break out the hats and horns for. Seeing as how I don’t give the single smallest shit about Saddam or his sons, I’d hardly take issue with a poster I respect (like ZEN) for feeling differently than I do about it. I can see his point. But I can see JAR’s too. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/39 "2003-07-23T06:32:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jodi \* > \*\*I think JAR’s point – if I might be so presumptious as to interpret for her, which she undoubtedly doesn’t need – is that any time any of us _rejoices_ in the death of another human being, our own humanity is reduced, if only slightly. And I agree with this. \*\* And I disagree. By standing against such craven examples of inhumanity, and, yes, even by rejoycing that they are dead and will torture noone else anymore, we a reafirming our humanity and enhancing it. Some things are so detrimental to “humanity” that they must be eliminated, forcefully, and we, as a race, can celebrate that they are gone. This supports the belief that “humanity” MEANS something and is not simply confired upon any individual who happens to have human DNA. Let me clarify that last. “Humanity” is invested in each and every individual as soom as they are born. By their actions, however, some people reject that inate gift and embrace … well, “beastiality” is the term that fits here, but that has another meaning in common useage. By their actions the sons of Saddam willingly shed any value and/or protection that their “humanity” provided them. I look at their deaths as no more consiquential than that of a rabid dog shot down in the street, and the people who shot them as no worse than one who kills a rabid dog. In both cases, “humanity”, meaning in this case mankind as a whole, is protected by doing so. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2003, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268/40 "2003-07-23T06:45:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fang \* > \*\*'Course, sometimes “the enemy” is a brutal sadistic mass murdering thug, and sometimes it’s a stockbroker who dared to go to work. \*\* Yep, and I have little regard for people who dance in the streets at the deaths of either, even if that means they think I fail to understand “overarching malignancy without borders or political alignment”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-sympathy-card-for-saddam/190268.md?page=3)