I heard on the radio this afternoon that Lybia’s Qadaffi (or however the hell you spell it . . . Kah-daffy?) plans to erect a statue of Saddam Hussein on the gallows as a tribute to someone he sees as a hero. Can he really be serious about this? Or is this a deliberate slap in the face to America, who made the destruction of that monster possible in the first place. I realize that there are Iraqis who still follow Saddam’s Ba’athist ideas, but for Muslims in other countries to actually laud that man seems to me to defy logic. Do they not know what he did to a large number of his own people?
Probably intended as a slap in the face to the West in general.
I wonder if the statue will show him standing with the noose around his neck, or mounting the gallows. Or even actually swinging. They could rig it up with a mechanism that opens the drop every hour or something, and have realistic-looking shit drop down out of his pants leg (to get pumped back up to the top and returned to the insides via the rope).
What happened? I thought he was out of there, and his son had taken over or something.
I think that in the Middle East it is understood that a bit of macho blustering is acceptable and not to be taken to heart. Mother of all battles and all.
I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. Saddam’s trial seemed like a kangaroo court, the hanging seemed peremptory and cruel, and I hate to say it, but Saddam seemed to handle himself pretty well at the end there what with the taunting he was given, and the fact that he refused the mask and acquitted himself with dignity, and, perhaps, even heroically.
I liked him a lot better as a pathetic joke, than as a heroic martyr.
I can only assume you’re thinking of Syria and Hafez/Bashar Assad, Lib; ol’ Muammar is still going strong. The only place Saadi Gaddafi (his son) is attempting coups is in Italian football, bizarrely.
He is a hero to some Sunni Muslims. Many have rioted in Iraq since his execution. It’s pretty telling that the Iraq govmt can’t even carry out an execution well. Maybe a surge would help.
Yep! :smack: Thanks.
The US is full of statues to people who massacred Indians and fought to preseve slavery. Much as I don’t like Saddam I can see how others may have a different take on him.
Well, Qaddaffi has always had what you might call a Sunni disposition.
I have to agree - we fucked up to an almost impressive degree on this. It was obvious from the start that he was going to be executed, but you’d think that we’d at least be competent enough to do it without allowing a video to slip out of him being calm and dignified in the face of death and insults.
I think a statue in Libya may be small potatoes.
That whole article is depressing. This war has turned Iraq into a magical country where everything turns to shit.
Gadhaffi is a frickin’ loon and I wouldn’t take this claim seriously. He may admire Saddam on a personal level but I this this is just posturing.
Especially since we’ve made Iraq a much worse place to live since we took over. For all intents and purposes, we’ve been engaged in a massive multibillion dollar propaganda campaign designed to make Saddam look better. That’s not what we intended, but it’s what we did.
Apparently under Iraqi law, the death sentence cannot be exercised on anyone over 70 yrs old.
On 28 April 2007 it’s Saddam’s brithday, and he would have been… yup, 70 yrs old.
Can’t imagine why it all seemed a bit rushed… :rolleyes:
There’s a Nissan manufacturing plant about 30 miles north of where I’m sitting. Guess what? They don’t allow CAMERA PHONES inside the plant.
Gosh, what a brilliant idea. You think someone could have thought of that in regards to a hugely politically charged execution.
-Joe
By “his own people” do you mean the Kurds and Shiites?
The more I read about it, the more I realize that Iraq is just tribes. They’re not political parties. They don’t share power; one tribe rules.
Libya is Sunni as is most of the Arab world, except Iran. Saddam was born a regular Joe in a hut on stilts and rose to be the leader of a country, eventually destroyed by invaders who aren’t exactly viewed as pro-Muslim.
Sure, he ruled terribly, but in his defense, it was in constant fear of Shiite uprisings, and in the context of his tribal mindset.
It actually surprises me that more countries wouldn’t put up statues in his honor. They probably would if it weren’t for how bad it would piss off America – something that has clearly never bothered Libya. What they’re doing to those nurses and doctors is a hundred times worse than putting up some statue.
They did think of that. The guy got the phone in illegally and is in a lot of trouble.
I think there were about 20 separate articles in the New York Times this week that mentioned it.
They had a fascinating exhibition on Lawrence of Arabia at the Imperial War Museum last summer - with the benefit of hindsight one can see the current tensions simmering from that point on.
It’s about time the West learned you can’t draw lines on a map and expect that to negate 100s of generations of tribal loyalties. :rolleyes:
I think it was entirely deliberate. Maliki can read the writing on the wall, even if GeeDub can’t: America is leaving. If Maliki and the Shia dominated government is to have an opportunity to use American troops and firepower to crush a Sunni insurgency, they had best do it sooner than later.
There can be no misinterpretation of the pell-mell rush to have this thing done, and have it done on a day that directly and pointedly insults the Sunni religious calender. A day earlier, and it would have had no such implications, a day later, and it would have been a Shia religious holiday as well. Saddam was executed on that day for a reason, it is impossible to imagine that no one was aware of such a provocation.
Maliki and his Sadrist supporters figure a showdown with the Sunni is inevitable, best to have it now, while American troops are still available to be sacrificed, and American firepower still available to be exploited.
Of course, ostensibly they are attempting to reconcile with the Sunni, outreaching. This is the pious public posture, and, like all such public posturing, it is a steaming load. So, they arrest a couple of fall guys and pretend to be shocked, shocked! Shocked and sickened!
Bullshit.