Havn’t they already done DNA tests?
BTW in the pictures I saw, Saddam is also wearing latex examination gloves.
I agree that the OP of said topic could have been seen as not inviting to a debate. My posts are sometimes a bit unclear and I explained already several times why that can happen.
Yet I had the feeling that I corrected that on a following post.
As you can read on this very topic, the “sadam supporter” and “US hater” labelling pops up once again.
It isn’t the first time people disrupt the discussion with such posts or even make a normal discussion impossible instead of adding to the intended discussion.
So maybe you can have some understanding why I have some regrets that said topic couldn’t remain on this board where all this disrupting labelling takes place whenever I post something that isn’t in line with some other member’s ideas.
Can we agree to shake hands and forget this issue?
Thank you.
Salaam. A
Salaam. A
I think you answer you question yourself. If you can’t find anything humiliating in these pictures, then there is nothing I can add to that perspective of yours. We have different opinions about humiliation.
My grandfather and my father were both doctors. Thus I think I have some knowledge about what doctors wear and don’t wear when in contact with patients.
I added this “glove detail” to underscore that it was indeed a medical examination. Which is a private mattter for everyone. Which underscores my case that it was specifically showed to humiliate him = showing him like some kind of slave or price animal. Or do you ask your doctor to examin you with some cameras and spotlights on you and ask the pictures to be shown all over the globe? If yes, I think you need professional help.
And if you want to know what the “debate” is, read the OP again.
Thank you.
Salaam. A
I think you are right that Saddam’s experience is humilating. I don’t see how going from being a world leader to just a guy in a hole (even with a pistol and $75 grand) cannot be considered humilating.
But I think the idea is that showing Saddam is a way to end the conflict, reassure the Iraqi people, and, yes, win some propaganda points.
So the questions are:
- Is he a POW?
- Could/should the U.S. have done it differently? Or do the point above overcome Saddam’s rights?
I think the answers are 1. No and 2. Probably, but showing a medical examination on world TV is probably unethical for at least the doctor, if not the government.
Also, people do tend to heap ad hominum attacks and inflammatory bullshit on you, Alde, because they don’t like your views. It’s too bad, and it reveal that they may not have reasoned out their own positions at all. I salute you for posting in the face of continued adversity. Salaam alakum!
These pictures were only showing to Iraqis and uncountable other people on this globe the hypocrisy of the US military and government and in addition to that their lack of any decent upbringing and there unawareness of any form of morality.
This shall not “end the conflict” at all.
And to reassure the Iraqis a report of the blood- and DNA testing and maybe some written details about this medical examination (like matching dental records) would do.
And if he was so cooperative as is claimed he was, he could have been asked to read some sort of statement which could be broadcasted on the radio and could have been brought on TV. Eventually while he was reading it or with a picture of him on the screen.
That is normal decent behaviour. All what goes beyond that is not.
alaikum assalaam. A.
Because being Arab, born to be a warrior facing bravely every opposition while slaughtering himself on the altar of martyrdom
These pictures were only showing to Iraqis and uncountable other people on this globe the hypocrisy of the US military and government and in addition to that their lack of any decent upbringing and there unawareness of any form of morality.
This shall not “end the conflict” at all.
And to “reassure the Iraqis” a report of the blood- and DNA testing and maybe some written details about this medical examination (like matching dental records) would do.
And if he was so cooperative as is claimed he was, he could have been asked to read some sort of statement which could be broadcasted on the radio and could have been brought on TV. Eventually while he was reading it or with a picture of him on the screen.
That is normal decent behaviour. All what goes beyond that is not.
alaikum assalaam. A.
Because being Arab, born to be a warrior facing bravely every opposition while slaughtering himself on the altar of martyrdom
I’ll agree with you somewhat 'possum stalker that Alde gets more than his share of abuse and invective. He certainly earns some of it, but not the level he gets. The problem is, he is very provocative in both his language and positions…and I suspect its somewhat intentional. However, like you, I actually admire him somewhat for continueing on through the abuse.
Salute, Alde!!
I agree btw, that what was done to SH WAS in fact humiliating to him. I don’t think anyone watching him sit there in his scruffy beard and disheveled state could say otherwise. I’m certainly sick of seeing them poke into his mouth over and over again. The most ironic thing of the day I think was a CNN report by an oriental reporter (I didn’t catch her name) who was talking about the abuse heaped on SH by the pictures of him being poked and prodded…all the while the video showed just that, for at least the dozenth time in the previous half hour.
So, it was definitely humilation. Now…the question is, was it deserved? What it necessary?
Deserved? Well, it probably was, though I for one wouldn’t have shown that medical exam on TV. To me, it gets more of the sympathy vote than whatever they were actually going for. It would have sufficed to merely show him in the stroking beard scenes where he is looking pretty pathetic. Showing him complaining about his teeth hurting I think was just gratuitous.
Was it necessary? I think it WAS necessary to show him, though again I think all the news stations over did it big time…and again I thought the medical exam was a bit over the top. But the Iraqi people needed to see him, and I think it scored big time to show the hole he was found in, and his own pathetic state. It showed them he wasn’t 10’ tall anymore…he was no longer the boogy man of their nightmares, IMO.
-XT
I do find something humiliating in the pictures, and I said so. Even if I didn’t, you could have simply answered the question I posed. Instead, as usual, you read the mere fact that I was questioning your meaning as some sort of personal attack.
What I wanted to know was what specifically you were objecting to. After the usual editorializing and insults, you finally got round to it, more or less.
In any event, as you can see from previous posts, just about everyone, your self-declared ‘enemies’ included, agrees that the particular selection of images, whether intentional or otherwise, show Saddam in a state of humiliation, although not in such a state of humiliation as if they had shown him, say, bound and blindfolded, or forced to his knees by gun-toting troops, as has happened in previous conflicts; and that there was a propagandistic nature to the images. What else do you want to hear?
Refreshing my memory of the Geneva Convention on POWs, (link), there’s a couple things that are readily evident:
-
POWs “must be at all times protected… against insults and public curiosity.” (Article 13)
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POWs, generally speaking, are members of a military force or civilians who happen to be accompanying members of a military force. (Article 4)
It is quite clear that the US soldiers were, in fact, POWs, and Iraq was obligated to protect them against insults and public curiosity. I think we generally agree that this was not done.
Saddam, was the former leader – not a simple member – of Iraq’s armed forces. From what I gather, he was hiding out with two other persons of no particular standing; certainly not Iraqi soldiers. Like Aldebaran, but for different reasons, I also think that Saddam is not a POW.
Not a POW, therefore no obligation to treat him any differently than a common – or extraordinary – criminal. I can’t see the wrong being done here.
I have about as much sympathy for Saddam being shown in a dishevelled condition as I do for Michael Jackson suffering the “horrible indignity” of being brought into the jailhouse in – gasp – handcuffs.
(That sympathy being absolutely f-in’ zero. In case I had to spell that out.)
And I just thought of another thing - how do pictures of Saddam getting a medical examination humilitate him? I think it’s pretty damn convincing evidence that he’s being cared for in an humane manner.
It’s not like they were showing him with his rear end hanging out from one of those little paper robe thingies. That would be humiliating.
Well since there was no declaration of War maybe the US soldiers shouldn’t have been treated as POWs as well ?
Not sure if Saddam is a POW of course… but the treatment seems the same.
We are the Good Guys, and should have waited for him to have a bath and a haircut before showing him on TV.
It does not matter one whit under international law. The laws of war apply to any armed conflict, not just declared wars.
I’d be happy to provide plenty of cites if you insist.
I agree, I’d be quite embarassed if someone aired a doctor doing a medical checkup on me to the rest of the world. I imagine part of the reason they filmed it was to ensure that he couldn’t claim he was abused if it ever comes up later. They didn’t have to show that particular film of him.
Marc
The obvious answer is that Iraqi’s want and need to see it.
And there is far more hypocracy in the Muslim world. Instead of sending suicide bombers in to kill a mass murderer they sent suicide bombers in to SUPPORT a mass murderer. Go figure.
I hope you don’t expect any more rescue missions like Kosovo, and Bosnia. Maybe France will step in and take up the cause. NOT
And while I’m thinking of it, how much Shia/Sunni problems are you having in Christian dominated Belgium? Pretty nice ivory tower you live in.
Magiver, if you have nothing useful to contribute why not just save yourself the embarrasment? Aldebaran’s invective is well known around here, at least over the last year, so replying with something even more insensate and blinder-restricted than his rant hardly reflects well on you. If you care.
In this case I don’t think our friend is without a point. I’d say Aldebaran is a result of the historical-political forces that have contributed to the often cited “humiliation” of Arabs and to a lesser extent Moslems at the hands of the West, chiefly the US, Israel, and the UK. This feeling is very real and, as mentioned before, not without its causes. The problem is not going to go away simply by throwing the sillier simplistic American points of view at it – that’s simply a masturbatory feel-good tactic, rather ask yourself how well one of the bigoted, simplistic, US-biased views of the situation will fare if introduced in a community that shares Aldebaran’s slant.
I don’t know if Aldebaran considers Saddam a hero. I know that many perfectly good people I have met do consider Saddam such simply because he is the only Arab leader who dared stand up against the perceived injustices of the West, and therefore earned a degree of dignity among the populations (not necessarily the elite, nor the rulers) of the Arab world ex-Iraq.
And, although he stated it poorly and deliberately antagonistically, Aldebaran has a point, one that many SDMB residents have made on these boards for the last year: the US invasion of Iraq, its addle-headed justifications, and the pachydermal machinations leading up to the event itself comprise one of the darker chapters in the history of the US and of internationalism; double-speak and hypocrisy have been the order of the day. All this material has been thoroughly covered on these boards; I trust all but the most obtuse realize there was no evidence of an Al Qaida network across Iraq, there was no link to 9/11, nor have the infamous WMD that were so confidently claimed by the US and UK proved to be more than scare-mongering.
When I caught the breaking coverage of Hussein’s capture on BBC World last night and saw the endless repeats of the inside of an old, dishevelled, dirty, tired man’s mouth, I had to wonder what the hell the point of showing these images was. Saddam looked bewildered and confused, perhaps he was in shock, and he was undergoing a medical check-up in front of the entire world for goodness’ sake. Is there anyone here who would like to have an image of them, apparently infested with fleas in ragged, unkempt head/facial hair and with a light shining down his throat beamed around the planet? Couldn’t the broadcast have waited until they trimmed his hair, cleaned him, did whatever they had to do?
I’m sure US personnel recorded every moment of Saddam since his capture, but they really didn’t need to broadcast anything before Saddam’s toilet and/or medical was over. Top US officials justly complained back when an Iraqi video of captured US soldiers was aired on TV. That was definitely against the Geneva Convention, since the POWs were not being protected from “insults and public curiosity” while held captive. Too bad that the US then immediately turned around and, over the next month, permitted the airing of countless videos of Iraqi POWs, thereby also breaching the Geneva Convention. This would appear to be hypocrisy plain and simple, of which the tape of unkempt Saddam is simply one more item.
I don’t quite understand the argument that Saddam is not a POW, since he is or was the commander in chief of the Iraqi military forces and not exactly a civilian bystander who happened to get caught for doing something wrong but unrelated to state and the war. Even then, I personally wouldn’t dream of broadcasting images of any prisoner in such a state of disarray and undergoing a medical, for considerations based both on affording everyone human dignity (at least in public) as well as how this would reflect on me.
I’ve been thinking that the tape of Saddam was deliberately distributed in order to bring about a demoralizing effect on his followers and punctuate the sense of victory for the coalition effort. A little bit of propaganda warfare, not unrelated to the rather childishly cowboy-like “we got 'im” with which the news was announced. Bush’s PR people have been quite keen on fighting their various Iraq-related battles on visceral as opposed to or in addition to often sloppy informational grounds, so this may all fit in the same general strategy.
BBC: What happens to Saddam now?
So as far as Rumsfeld is concerned he isn’t a POW but will have all the same rights as a POW. Except the rights that they want to ignore it seems.
All well and good as far as I’m concerned but it’s an easy hook to hang your resentment of the US on. There are millions upon millions who will look for any reason to argue with the US and their decisions. It seem the US likes making things easy for them.
Personally my only surprise is that he was taken alive.
I would say that there is an exception for war criminals. An average soldier or officer is not a war criminal in the vast majority of cases, but a head of state and his closest advisors is. He’s going to be on TV at his trial, might as well show him now just like we do any other criminal.
Not to mention the practical need to show the Iraqis that we have him.
BTW, I don’t fault the Iraqi government for showing pictures of our POWs. We weren’t totally believing that they had any of our people, so showing the pictures was necessary to prove it.
I’m not that surprised at that, Yojimbo. If he was laying prone in a hole dug in the ground, well it was pretty obvious he didn’t stand a chance, and he would either have been shot in the close confines of his hiding spot, or gassed out, neither of which are appealing choices. There’s a difference between the blazing firefight his sons and their guards went down in, and being shot in a small hole in the ground.
If anything, I’m surprised at his location. I would have expected him to have fled the country or headed for some mountains to try organize a resistance from a better vantage point not crawling with enemy forces – what he ended up doing seems to me taking the desert fox type of analogy a bit too far. Still, he’s caught and that’s what counts, there’s no doubt a weight has been lifted from those so brutalized that they feared he would one day return. But some improved management of the situation on the US side would certainly help things, instead here they go again engaging in the behaviour they are so often criticized for on grounds of hypocrisy. As you say, it’s as if the US is making things easy for their opponents on purpose.
“Afforded the protections of a prisoner of war” but not a POW? What the hell is that? Why would Rumsfeld say that? Are we supposed to be impressed with the humanity of it all, magnanimously treating him as if he were a POW? Or is his legal status being carefully defined at this stage?
Oh, and I’d like to think he isn’t guilty of anything until we’ve at least gone to the effort of a trial. Is’t that the idea?
Cheers.