Can someone please explain to me the outcry over the treatment of Saddam by his U.S. captors?
I understand the concerns surrounding the Geneva Convention and public humiliation of POW’s. But now I’m hearing/reading that not only is the airing of the video a problem, but that the treatment of Saddam as depicted therein was somehow unjust.
Even the Vatican has chimed in to condemn his treatment.
I don’t get it. It looked to me like he was treated pretty well.
Last I checked, a dental exam is performed for the good of the patient and the people around him.
There’s probably some things happening to Saddam that could be construed as cruel, but making sure his toofuses aren’t infected isn’t one of them.
At very least, we didn’t require Saddam to look directly into the camera and tell us how wonderfully he’s being treated, which is more than he can say during the first Gulf War.
I’m actually pretty sure the Geneva convention (that one, at least) no longer applies to him. Once you break it, you lose its protection for the duration of the conflict.
Bottom line is no one really cares how he’s treated so its up to his “captors” to be fair. Frankly I think anything he gets will be better than what he’s had.
smiling bandit Sauron? Numenor? I’m playing this a hundred different ways but I can’t make the link between your quote & the OP…But I want there to be a link. 
I don’t really have a lotta love for Saddam either, but the description of his capture and condition (he is being portayed as an animal scurrying about in holes, gibbering to his captors, and essentially “unhinged.”) makes me uneasy. Its as if I’m being told to think of this man as a feral beast. He’s not an animal. He’s not a beast. He’s a very naughty boy who should be treated as we would have had him treat his own prisoners. I’ll stop short of admitting to a Geneva Convention violation by showing hs mug shot on TV after his capture because his capture is an important step in giving Iraq a future. It is wholly unlike putting abused and broken military personnel on TV to testify to the glorious treatment they are receiving. But we don’t need to see him getting a physical.
It would be more useful (if also humane) to show him as the defiant and ruthless leader that he was–still deserving the full penalty of law.
Do you people really not know the answer to this?
I accept that Saddam was a horrible p.o.s. and, frankly, deserves a bullet in the head only after the rest of the clip has been used on fun parts of his body.
However, you cannot with one breath say that POWs should not be displayed as it’s degrading and with another let people see the prisoner that you have in such a degrading way.
Uday an Qusay are fair enough. You need to show that they’re really dead to convince the Iraqis. However, it wasn’t necessary to show Saddam being probulated.
As I said, not that I personally care what they do to him. But you asked.
We didn’t need to televise his oral examination. They should have just shown a clip of a couple MPs frog-marching him into his cell. It’s proof we got him but without the humiliation. Not that he doesn’t deserve a little humiliation, it’s just not civilized. We are supposed to be the good guys, remember.
Pretty sure huh? care to tell us why you feel pretty sure? Better yet, quote the relevant part of the Geneva Convention which says that. I’ll be waiting here in the corner. . . . Um, no, I won’t hold my breath. Don’t worry.
I don’t think the Geneva conventions , or the hague conventions apply to Saddam, as he was a political figure as opposed to a common soldier.
Normally captured leaders are given the courtesy of their station and live somewhat comfortably , and had Saddam been captured in the fall of bagdad , he probably would have.
Last , it was important that the average Iraqi be shown that the man is in custody as fast as possible, to shortcut what ever propaganda the resistance could come up with.
Declan
hmmm televising Saddam Hussein’s oral examination. I am outraged that my govenment had the temerity to broadcast that humiliating treatment.
Yes, Iraq was such a treasure trove of human rights, with executions, electric prod tortures, gang rapes, etc. Now that “noble” leader must live his life in disgrace.
I don’t think he has been treated unfair to date.
The images of the lice and tooth check up were odviously released to insult him. Here we have a man who several months ago was very powerful. After capture he has to be checked for cooties by a man with a bald head and rubber gloves.
There was a ton of footage that could have been released that just showed him sitting there talking, but that’s not insulting enough for the Ministry of Propaganda. The HAVE to show Saddam in the same light as say a street hobo.
What the Vatican failed to mention is that now he’s getting three hots and a cot now – which is a lot better than he was doing last week.
There’s a very good reason for showing him like that. To help crush arab pride. That is, this ‘old school’ notion of male, mustachioed, shouting death-to-the-infidels while firing a pistol in the air, terrorist supporting type of arab pride.
And it worked.
They are seeing that Saddam was a complete and utter imposter. That without his billions of dollars (stolen from his people), his thousands of bodyguards, and his throngs of ‘bullets-in-the-head-if-they-stop’ cheering supporters, he is just a sniveling, selfish, worthless coward.
He is the perfect poster boy to show the results of this kind of arab posturing in the 21[sup]st[/sup] century.
Did you see how the Iraqi journalists reacted the instant his disheveled image appeared on the screens at the first press conference? They went absolutely nuts with joy and would not stop cursing him! And people here in America are whining about it?!
Not really whining. Just musing again at (arguably necessary)double standards: Have we violated our own standards of treatment & if so what does that make us?
It is pretty clear that the mystique of Saddam needed to be destroyed, and that this was probably the quickest way to do it. I shudder to think what would go down if we whisked him away to a Western country, tried him and execu…I mean, sentenced him outside of Arab lands.
Well, I disagree strongly with you. Two weeks down the line, you might say, “Here’s a picture of Saddam Hussein as we do a full cavity search (but that’s okay 'cause he’s a head of state of a state we didn’t much like).”
However, when you catch his scragely self, you do not parade him with a tongue depressor in his mouth looking like he’s been drugged (which I’m personally sure is not the case, but I’m not you’re average grudge bearing loon with a bunch of explosives). Unless you’re trying to make a point. In which case, and I mean this hypothetically rather than gloating over dead bodies, you deserve everything that you get when some terrorist decides that the laws of war don’t apply to any people that he catches.
It’s one of those “Do unto other” situations. Naturally, most people involved don’t give a rat’s arse and just want to kill Americans, but it makes it hard to take the morale high ground, IMO, if you’re willing to bend the rules for the victors.
Hail Ants. I agree completely. Which is what makes the US whining about dead/POW pictures so funny (except to the people that it affected, of course).
Still, think about it. Not that I believe that the majority of Iraq wants the firm but homicidal hand of Saddam on their necks again, but would you (a) choose a bunch of hysterical anti-Saddam Arabs or (b) a bunch of Baathist die hards to sit at the front of your news conference about Saddam’s capture. And that’s assuming that you’re not media savvy (anyone want to put money on this not being planned well in advance 
).
that particular clip was added to show saddam beaten and humiliated. A simple american medic was giving orders to saddam so he could prod his body was designed to humiliate Saddam and people picked up on the fact that the US wanted to show Saddam as beaten, cowardly, and helpless. Saddams beard was also shaven off (most likely w/o his consent) and i am guessing people picked up on the fact that Saddam had no say in whether that happened or not, and the fact that he reacted in a cowardly way when found hiding in a hole was also ran through the news about 40x an hour too.
Overall the US military is trying its best (IMO, of course, but i think its obvious) to make saddam look humiliated, weak, cowardly and powerless and people are picking up on that fact. Hence his ‘mistreatment’ is condemned.
Footage of an oral exam? Okay. Footage of an anal exam? Problem.
Was there anything shown in the released clips that can be called cruel, unusual, unjust, or unfair?
No?
Then he’s not being treated poorly.
There are pictures of me and several other people, getting dental exams, very similar to Saddam, in my USMC “yearbook”. They are surprisingly similar to other yearbooks across the years.
Apparently it is a conspiracy by the US and/or republicans against Marines and Foreign terrorist/dictator bastards to show their weakness by having Navy corpsmen check their teeth to show them as weak and pitiful.
Perhaps news footage of a big ass bastard beating the shit out of Saddam with a rubber hose would have been less subtle.
Hmmm, if a guy had been buried in a mine collapse, then rescued after eight or nine days, he’d probably get a looksee by a medic, footage of him might get on the news, and people would be happy to see he made it out alive.
This humiliation argument is bullshit. It was critical to announce that they had in fact got him, and that it was him. I’m somewhat indifferent to the issue of whether or not his (or anyone else’s) feelings were hurt in the process.