So a suspended sentence? I expected it.
While I can’t honestly say I’ll shed any tears when Saddam swings, my own opinion is he should have been given a life sentences to rot away in some room in isolation. Looking at the man, I can’t think he’s going to last for decades at this point in any case…and a caged old man is much less a threat than a hung former dictator…IMHO anyway and given the current mood in Iraq.
But then, its not really up to us here in the US in any case…the Iraqi’s decided that this was the course they were going to take. Hopefully they are doing the right thing here.
-XT
Probably. But that doesn’t make it self-defeating. The purpose of the trial is to achieve justice, not to pander to the prejudices of any particular demographic.
I’m anti-death penalty myself, so I would prefer to see him rot in jail. But this was an Iraqi court guided by Iraqi law, so my opinion is not relavent.
Almost! Good try, though.
I don’t mind the guy swinging at all - but is it worth 3,000 US dead and more Iraqi dead than Saddam killed, by a long shot? I don’t think so.
It wasn’t BG?
-XT
If he is dead, there will not be hostages exicuted when he is not released. Won’t stop the hostage taking, but I don’t see that a dead martyr is more effective than an imprisoned martyr.
I’m talking about the sentence, not the verdict. Justice would be just as well served by giving him life in a concrete box and it wouldn’t be as self-defeating (for a fledgling Iraqi government) as creating a martyr for the insurgency.
To paraphrase a wise rabbi…
Let him with no crimes against humanity cast the first stone…
“American policy” is not spelled I-R-A-Q-I-L-A-W.
No, its not…as the Iraqi’s have their own laws and their own courts, and set their own policies. Glad we agree.
-XT
He would still be a symbol as a prisoner. Besides, the most important message to come out of this is that the new Iraqi government is strong enough to execute the tyrant. That’s a message most Iraqi people can relate to. It’s closure. Hopefully, we won’t have to worry about leaked pictures. Becuase, hopefully, it will be a public execution.
Shame on you, don’t you know how soft and chewy he is inside? From the Beeb;
Absolutely, my thoughts on all such people. You can only kill someone once, unless you intend to slowly torture Saddam to death, hanging lets him escape the pain he meted out to his people. And it would be a calming measure perhaps to let people know that things were bad before the invasion too by having him in a cell somewhere in Iraq. (OK, not as bad or worse by any means, but bad nonetheless, no breeding nostalgia, that’s for sure)
Too good for him, spending the rest of his natural life on solitary confinement would be more appropriate.
Killing is very easy, on the other hand what better message of the strenght of a goverment to say “yup!, we still have the bastard locked up in a cage, and he´s staying there until he croaks”
Let him wither and slid down the depths of pathetism and oblivion, it´s the worst a megalomaniacal like Hussein can get.
Have you considered that he might not be a bastard ?
Holding Iraq together was pretty hard
Going off topic, Napolean apparently (and I cannot cite) was keen on doing a deal with the British.
As you have probably heard, Ba’athist party members are being offered a Persilschein (that is German for so called de-Nazification for competent and necessary state functionaries).
The trick is to invade a state, but keep the adminstrative infrastructure intact, gradually you can replace it, or it replaces you.
Supposedly the CIA (or OSS) learnt as much from the Abwehr as NASA learnt from Wernher Von Braun and his mates - can’t cite - no internet when told that.
My take is that if Saddam had taken English lessons he would still be running Iraq, and the daily death toll would be miniscule.
Napoleon once thought of joining the Royal Navy.
There’s a difference between necessary ruthlessness and selfish cruelty, and Saddam was well into the second realm. Also, if holding it together was and is that hard, it should have been/be partioned into more stable, smaller nations.