Bit more ignorance fighting reading for those who are so inclined:
Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness
Continued at source.
So why didn’t Saddam’s trial bring up the most egregious charges against him, such as the use of (American-provided) WMDs against the Iranians and the Kurds? Why was evidence withheld from the defense attornies? Why wasn’t the defense allowed to question anonymous witnesses and test their evidence? Or is “justice served” as long as the pre-ordaned outcome is reached?
Yeah, but how can you give someone with hands as bloody as Saddam’s a “fair trial?” Is there a hint of doubt that he didn’t do some terrible things while he was in power? Okay, so maybe he didn’t have rape squads, does that somehow off-set the fact that he ordered the invasion of Kuwait?
Had he been put on trial at the Hague or somewhere else the only difference would have been how long it took the trial to run and the sentence (since, IIRC, they don’t hand out death sentences at the Hague). Saddam’s case isn’t like that of your average person accused of murder or that of GWB where it could be argued that he believed the intel that Saddam was close to getting his hands on a nuke. Nope. Saddam’s guilt of being a bad man is so clearly established that any “crimes against humanity” trial involving him would have been a show trial.
You posted someone else’s rant without any debate and managed to use “fuck” twice in the same sentence.
Huh.
Why wasn’t Saddam charged with every crime he committed? You need this explained to you?
Because he would have died of old age during the process. You only need to convict him once to render the remaining trails a dead issue.
Excuse me? Even if you don’t believe a fair trial is an inherent requirement of justice, a fair trial (and a professionally handled execution) would have done something to show the Sunni population that it was not merely revenge.
How so? At least a portion of the population of Iraq is so far outside of reality that:
[ul]
[li]They’re killing people for buying mayo (because it was made in Israel, they think).[/li][li]They’re killing people for selling ice on the streets (because there was no ice in Mohammad’s time).[/li][li]They don’t bother aiming before they fire their weapons (since it’s Allah’s will if the bullet finds it’s mark or not).[/li][li]They’re killing female family members that they think might have been raped (you know, to save the family from dishonor).[/li][li]They’re killing each other over events that happened several hundred years ago (or whenever the splits occured that created the various muslem sects).[/li][li]They think that if they strap a bomb to themselves and use it to blow up a bunch of people they’ll somehow be rewarded with 72 virgins in the after life.[/ul][/li]One trial, fairly conducted, is not going to convince these shitheads that what we call “civilized society” is better than what they have, it doesn’t matter who’s put on trial or what the outcome is. They’ll spin their various conspiracies, claim the Jews or Americans, or small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, were behind the verdict, no matter what the outcome is.
The rational ones have either already bugged out of Iraq or are probably planning to. What we’re left with is a clusterfuck which goes well beyond biblical proportions.
There are many other trials, and likely some more executions, yet to come. This is not a good precedent.
Nonsense. The rational ones with money, perhaps. The bulk of Iraqis, of whatever sect, simply want to live their lives in peace, raise their kids in peace, and make their living in peace. Everything that happens that makes it seem to those people who are Sunnis that they are in for nothing but trouble from the Shi’ites makes it more likely that they will support the resistance instead of urging them to cut it the fuck out. I expect that the rational Shi’ites wish that their murderers would cut it the fuck out too.
Umm, don’t think I’m going to argue with this one.
Professionally handled by whose standards? He wasn’t dragged out in the street and burned at the stake. He got a pretty nice send-off for someone who used a chipper-shredder on his enemies. Hell, he convicted himself on day-one when he videotaped the murder of his political enemies. This is what Saddam broadcast to the world, not some undercover resistance group.
It may not have been polite to mock him at his execution but given what he did to his own people I’d say they were pretty damn polite about the whole thing. They even put a scarf around his neck.
By our standards, of course. If we are bringing freedom, justice, and democracy to Iraq, then I expect to see results such as we saw in Germany and Japan.
Our own history is not free of similar mistakes. What seperates us from the Iraqis is that enough of us were willing to stand up and admit that it was a mistake. Given the things that I’ve heard about the Iraqis, I don’t think that they’re able to make that kind of step, and it’s not something that we can “give” them.
Even the poor ones are making such a bee line for the borders that at least one of Iraq’s neighbors is constructing a fence to keep out the Iraqis.
But not so much that they’re willing to organize peaceful demonstrations against those who perpetuate the killing. Notenough that they’re willing to turn in people they know to be helping the insurgency. Yes, it’s risky to do such things, they could quite possibly be killed, yet that didn’t stop the grandmothers in their silent protests in South America, the Russian grandmothers from heckling the tank drivers in Moscow when the Communists tried to reassert control in the 1990s, or Martin Luther King when he preached non-violence. If the insurgents can rally enough forces to be able to keep blowing things up in Iraq, then someone who opposes such violence could find ways to rally people to non-violence.
Then they need to do something about it, because by now, it should be planly obvious that we sure as the fuck can’t.
I realize that this might sound like I’m blaming the victim here, but it’s our fault that the Iraqi’s are in this mess. We screwed up big time, and so long as we don’t write/call our congresscritters to complain about what’s being done, we’re just as bad.
Your example does not parallel the situation in Iraq. We prosecuted the leaders of those countries for war crimes. Saddam was prosecuted by his own people for crimes he committed against them. Their laws were created and implimented by them. And yes we had influence on the process but their laws and customs were not a duplicate of ours. Are you suggesting they should be?
The Allies tried them, under a (then) new concept of international war crimes. The only reason the cases do not parallel is because our government is pretending that the government of Iraq is independent. A case could certainly be made that Saddam a) was a P.O.W., and b) should have been tried under international war crime rules by an international war crime tribunal. He was, after all, held by us, not the Iraqi government.
No more than Germany’s or Japan’s are. Are you suggesting that we invaded merely to allow a Shi’ite version of Saddam to rule?
Does anybody know why they executed him in such a place and atmosphere?
If it was in the United States I’m sure the room would look almost hospital like, or at the very least outside next to a clean brick wall with no rusty metal or random peple yelling and (in one case) holding up a cell phone camera or whatever that was.
A lot of the disgust felt by compassionate people about judicial kilings in the US is the pretence that it is a normal and clinical experience.
However judicial killings are carried out, they are disgusting and reflect more on the people involved (including those that vote for its continuance) than on the victims.
You cannot sanitize state violence.
But they could’ve kept out the camera phones and kept the chanting down…
Only if they agree to our terms for the oil. Otherwise we’ll treat them as the Diem brothers and wait for the new, “more responsible” leadership to assume control.
Was that my out loud voice?
The whole shebang smacks of provocation, its sticking the thumb squarely in the eye of Sunni Iraqis. The religious timing couldn’t be more flagrant. And reports indicate that such is precisely how it is seen in Sunni Iraq as well as elsewhere in the ME. And the Maliki government is busy shutting down dissent.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070101/D8MCNASG0.html
One is mindful of the dictum never to underestimate stupidity when judging human affairs. But I think the provocation is deliberate. al-Maliki, by all reports, went to extraordinary lengths to have this thing done, and done this way. He’s telling us that he is bending every effort for reconciliation with the Sunni, and with his other hand he viciously yanks their chain.
I think he is trying to provoke the Sunni into desperate action, forcing their hand while he still has American troops to exploit. Well, after all, they’re “insurgents”, aren’t they? Fighting against the duly elected government of Iraq, purple fingers and everything. Hes aiming to crush the Sunni resistance while he still has access to American firepower, and then he can declare that peace and security have arrived, the Americans can declare victory and run for the helicopters.
He can see the writing on the wall even if GeeDub can’t, America is leaving. If he’s going to use our people to fight his battle, he had better get it started toot sweet.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
More background material, too lengthy to cutnpaste, links, etc.
The execution video doesn’t exactly instill confidence that the new Iraq “government” is either competent or organized. This was the biggest thing they have done to date, they had months to prepare a site for the event. Yet judging by the hole in the ceiling where the rope was anchored, they seem to have hired Alf and Ralph Monroe from Green Acres as the contractors for the project. The fact that the executioners wore hoods doesn’t speak well for the government’s ability to maintain order- we all know that showing their faces is too risky and that there is no law in the streets whatsoever. Finally, the utter lack of order in the procedure made it look more like a KKK lynch mob than the execution of justice.