As both a lawyer AND a nut, may I be heard to urge that we beg him to take this mess off our hands…? Perhaps if we include a nice per diem and several cute secretaries, he could be induced to come out of retirement.
What a disappointment! Not a single liberal has chimed in to voice their support for Saddam Hussein as part and parcel of general opposition to the Iraq war.
Better luck next time kanicbird, you know that’s the real reason people criticise the President Bush. Support for Saddam Hussein.
Uh, I don’t think even the most hard-core anti-war type would admit to any great support for Saddam Hussein (OK, George Galloway, but this man does not represent us!).
I’m not saying that people support S.H., well I’m sure there are a few, but more like that since the war in this case is found illegal, the change of government is invalid, and the ability to try S.H. is also invalid.
There’s a difference between legal processes and protecting rights as established by law and supporting someone.
“Found illegal” how? By whom?
Different nations and different world organizations can pronounce anything illegal, but they have no power to enforce their wishes.
To use an absurd analogy, the World Court could rule that Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru were criminals and that India’s independence movement was “illegal.” But good luck getting India and Pakistan back under British rule!
However much some people want to believe otherwise, “international law” might as well not exist. An “illegal” government that actually holds power isn’t going anywhere unless it’s kicked out by force.
What body with the supposed right to declare the Iraq war “illegal” has the power or stomach to go in and restore Saddam to power?
astorian For the purposes of this discussion, I don’t want to go into the issue of how it will be enforced, just assume it is.
Absolutely not. The trial of Saddam Hussein is an internal issue, regulated by Iraki law, and the way the change of government occured is irrelevant.
Just to add : The war and the change of government isn’t the same thing. There are many international treaties, etc… covering the law of war, but how a governement is organized, picked, overthrown, replaced, whether it’s legitimate or not, etc… are internal issues.
Well… not purely internal, because what is considered to be the government of Irak is dependant upon it being recognized by other countries. But it certainly not dependant on how and by whom the precedent government has been overthrown. That’s not a concern of international law, though it might be for individual countries that choose to recognize or not the new government.
A last thing: From the point of view of international law, what happened is that the USA waged war on Irak. Not that Georges W. Bush, who happens to represent the USA overthrew Saddam Hussein, who happened to be Irak’s president.
Saddam should vow to patrol the golf courses of Florida, searching for the real genocidal dictator of Iraq.
I have a feeling these two statements are more strongly connected than you initially thought when you wrote this post…
May I presume to speak for the accused liberals? My very first thought when it was posted that Saddam should be dropped off somewhere in Iraq was “excellent - at what altitude shoud we shove him out of the plane”?
I think Saddam is a first class scubag. I also think about the same of Bush. It is possible to hate Saddam, be against the “war On Terror” with all it has meant, despise Bush, all at the same time. I expect Saddam will be convicted and executed. I will not mourn his passing.
Release him. Next day he goes to court, just say “Case dismissed!” and open the courtroom doors, returning him to the bosom of his people.
Even if he were to survive the next hour, he would never sleep soundly again.
y’know, luc, given how long he was able to stay on the run, he appears less univerally loathed than our press releases would have us believe.
In fact, the vp, izzadin (sp?) remains at large to this day, iirc. I bet he would do just fine in the right geographical confines.
I have in the past voiced my support for Saddam,
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7096466&postcount=70
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6415043&postcount=134
and will cheerfully do so again, here.
He was by far the most forward looking autocrat in the middle east, women did far better under his regime than anywhere else, (and better than they are doing in the “liberated” afghanistan and iraq). He was the implacable enemy of fundamentalist islamists, carefully guarded whatever stores he of chem and bio weapons the accumulation of which we facilitated, etc.
Personally, I miss the good old days when Iraq was not the playground of every nut with a kalashnikov and time on his hands.
please explain for me how the world is in better shape today than it would have been with an undeposed Saddam?
Great.
Let my voice be added to those who aren’t sorry to know Saddam is probably a dead man walking. There are very few people in living history who I wouldn’t object to having snuffed in summary fashion, and that guy easily makes the short list. A fair trial’s too good for him, though it may be better for his country to have have a go at it.
That said, we had no business fighting a war in a Iraq, especially under such demonstrably false pretenses. Given how wretched a leader Saddam was, I am abashed at my nation’s involvement in Iraq’s further ruin. It takes a rare kind of incompetence to make matters so much worse when they were already so dire. It should not have happened the way it did.
The thing that is so goddam freudian, is that George I looked into this abyss, (as the xpression goes) and said, “no thanks!”
so we get stuck with a thumb-sucking refugee from a 12 step program with nothing better to do with the world’s finest military machine than set out to show that his dick is bigger than daddy’s
Well, dammit, young George, you were not captain of the baseball team, you were not the youngest pilot in the air force, you got shitty grades, you were not the cia director, and there’s a reason why you weren’t, you miserable schmuck.
Couldn’t he have worked out his problems in therapy, instead of taking us all over the cliff?
And not to put too fine a point on it, (not a topic on which I have previously had occasion to speculate) I’ll bet GHWB does pack several more inches than junior…
I’m sorry, but this is the Straight Dope Message Board. “Unrealistically Stupid Liberal Caricatures” is over here.