# Saddam Hussein-dead. What now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 30, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070 "2006-12-30T03:11:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/21 "2006-12-30T04:40:21Z")
[QUOTE=Mehitabel] His daughter wants him buried in Yemen but unfortunately for her she’s a wanted slimeball herself. [/QUOTE] What is she wanted for? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/22 "2006-12-30T04:40:26Z")
[QUOTE=Mehitabel] CNN is piously saying that they will evaluate any video or photos they’ll be getting; they’ll warn us about “what we are about to see.” But since it can’t be worse than **Brainglutton’s** link, or for that matter Saddam’s victims in Halabja, I’ll look. [/QUOTE] I can’t stand that pious shite! Despite my opinion of a certain percentage of The American Public, I don’t think we need to be ‘protected’ from ‘disturbing images’. Americans need a large dose of reality – and I’m not talking about _Survivor_. I wish that the small bit of reality that’s finally seeping in would have seeped in a bit over three and a half years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/23 "2006-12-30T04:41:10Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem] I presume the next step is that they bury him. Maybe a short commercial break in the civil war but other than that, nothing special. [/QUOTE] That’s the big controversy now according to CNN. Buried in Iraq or Yemen or ??? Buried in an unmarked grave??? Which I gather is an extreme insult to an Muslim, but since he was so secular I dont see as that big a deal. Or was he religious? Beyond the Easter/Christmas version of Islam (do they have that?) I think the saddest part is that they had to film it so that they could show people it was true. Though of course too many will not accept that evidence. For them, he is now dancing with Elvis, Kennedy and Marilyn at the Grey Interstellar Ballroom, guess. On preview, I could go along with **Mehitabel**. Embalm him with pig’s blood. How loud a fuck you that would be! ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/24 "2006-12-30T04:42:34Z")
[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan] On preview, I could go along with **Mehitabel**. Embalm him with pig’s blood. How loud a fuck you that would be! [/QUOTE] One that would echo through Iraq, i’m sure. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/25 "2006-12-30T04:50:49Z")
[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan] On preview, I could go along with **Mehitabel**. Embalm him with pig’s blood. How loud a fuck you that would be! [/QUOTE] Nah, let’s do something with a little more American flair. Cremate him, load his ashes in one of the sixteen inch guns of the USS Wisconsin, and fire him off over Norfolk Harbor on the Fourth of July. Ooooh, Aaaah, look at the pretty colors! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/26 "2006-12-30T05:09:07Z")
[QUOTE=Mehitabel] Well, no meathooks, but a witness said that as soon as he died most of the people in the room starting dancing around his body chanting Shiite slogans. [/QUOTE] That’s damned sick, and contiributes to the unseemly concept that these guys have democratically chosen to be ruled by a particularly silly religion, and are killing each other to decide which of the minorly different denominations of that religion it shall be. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/27 "2006-12-30T05:12:20Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] That’s damned sick, and contiributes to the unseemly concept that these guys have democratically chosen to be ruled by a particularly silly religion, and are killing each other to decide which of the minorly different denominations of that religion it shall be. [/QUOTE] I’m telling you, Cloister The Stupid wore a _red_ hat! ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/28 "2006-12-30T05:13:57Z")
Actually, the hats were intended to be green. Just so you know. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/29 "2006-12-30T05:21:46Z")
What now? Well, if we can just spare three hours of the President’s time, maybe we can work something out? [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061229/ap\_on\_go\_pr\_wh/bush](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061229/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush) Nope, wait: it might just take more than three hours. We’ll keep you posted! ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/30 "2006-12-30T07:08:36Z")
Well, I don’t think that they were killing him because of religion, but he had killed untold thousands of their co-religionists because his tribe happened to be Sunni. As for the daughter, Raghad, the new government wants her for [funding the insurgency,](http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,19664876-1702,00.html) , and the Jordanian people grumble about her government-funded lifestyle in exile that includes hair touch-ups that cost over $100. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/31 "2006-12-30T07:12:18Z")
Robert Fisk, as usual, sums up my feelings: [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece) "…But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men? No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don’t gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn’t invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality. In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created. Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam’s weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability. And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our “bunker buster” bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our “victory” - our “mission accomplished” - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement…" “…t first, those who suffered from Saddam’s cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman’s lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. “Handed over to the Iraqi authorities,” he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a “martyr” to the will of the new “Crusaders”.” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/32 "2006-12-30T07:31:46Z")
Where does the line start to piss on his grave? ---
**Author:** ![A\_qui\_profite\_le\_crime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@A\_qui\_profite\_le\_crime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_qui_profite_le_crime)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/33 "2006-12-30T08:27:53Z")
Funnily enough, on [this](http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/29/hussein/index.html) page the CNN headline states “Hussein executed with 'fear in his face”, and quotes Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie to that effect. According to CNN, al-Rubaie also said that “He was a broken man,” “He was afraid. You could see fear in his face.” Where’s the funny part? On the Le Monde site (a daily French paper) the same person al-Rubaie is quoted as saying that Saddam went to the gallows “resolute and courageous”. It’s in French, but you can read the article [here](http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depeches/0,14-0,39-29256354@7-37,0.html) . At least both sites agree that Saddam was hanged. That’s something. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/34 "2006-12-30T08:46:22Z")
Is there no end to the stupidity of Bush and cronies: “The White House issued a statement praising the Iraqi people for giving Hussein a fair trial.” I don’t see how any sane person with an understanding of justice could see was anything other than a kangaroo court. Better if he had been ‘shot trying to escape’ months ago. As above, my prediction is that within a decade he will be seen as a martyr to most of Islam, Sunnis because he was one of theirs and Shiites because they will forgive the terror in Iraq because of the perceived crusade against Islam. I can forsee a statue being raised to him in mirror image of the over spun destruction of his statue caused ‘spontaneously’ by the Iraqis after the invasion. Let us just hope that whoever gets elected in Bush’s place understands world and middle east politics a little better. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/35 "2006-12-30T08:58:01Z")
[QUOTE=Patty O’Furniture] According to Bill O’Really, we can expect a slight uptick in the insurgent violence. [/QUOTE] So has the blind pig managed to find a few acorns or is he wrong again? ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/36 "2006-12-30T09:09:49Z")
> [@pjen](#): > > Robert Fisk If it’s written by the much-discredited Mr Fisk, it can be ignored. As for Saddam, I don’t believe in the death penalty, but I will read his obituary with pleasure. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/37 "2006-12-30T09:25:41Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] If it’s written by the much-discredited Mr Fisk, it can be ignored. [/QUOTE] Discredited by whom, or do you just mean that you disagree with him? ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/38 "2006-12-30T11:06:42Z")
See [this Wiki article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking). ---
**Author:** ![clayton\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c57346/32.png) [@clayton\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clayton_e)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/39 "2006-12-30T12:28:01Z")
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.] …I don’t think we need to be ‘protected’ from ‘disturbing images’. Americans need a large dose of reality – and I’m not talking about _Survivor_. I wish that the small bit of reality that’s finally seeping in would have seeped in a bit over three and a half years ago. [/QUOTE] I think you’re right. In the time of Freedom Fries and emptied french wine bottles we were.. to put it mildly.. Friggin’ dumb as… Well, I can’t exactly write what I think here. My personal belief is that we made a giant mistake. We invaded a nation that did not in any way show a real threat to our country. Mistakes aside, though, an evil man is dead. An EXTREMELY evil man is dead. Now I would like to know, is everyone so pissed off already that his death is a minor benchmark or the spark to the powder keg? The only way to see, of course, is to look back in a week or a month or so. I’m just wondering, does anyone forsee a BIG bang in the days ahead? How about a minor “meh”? ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070/40 "2006-12-30T12:43:36Z")
I don’t like what has happened. Executing former dictators with a micron thick veneer of legality is not exactly going to encourage others to gracefully retire. Our ‘western democracy’ relies on both government and opposition doing quite nicely, regardless of which wins an election. I would have removed Saddam and kept him on standby, it would have been interesting to be able to release videos of him saying: ’ The savages behaviour justifies my regime’ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-hussein-dead-what-now/386070.md?page=3)