Damn Saddam
I’m still on semi-retreat but thought I would toss in two
cents on the execution of Saddam. He now becomes the 2,140th Iraqi to die this month in that country’s war. It’s an obvious thought but one that bears repeating: his physical demise will contribute nothing to the resolution of the current conflagration nor will it in anyway diminish the human toll.
That said, it is grossly unfair to the people of Iraq to focus Saddam’s death exclusively through the prism of American politics or George W. Bush’s war policy in Iraq.
Alas, Saddam’s figure had multiple aspects beyond that of enemy (or one time ally) of the U.S. Let’s not make the mistake of denying the man his own and overwhelming blood-chilling historical agency.
The always salient David Hirst offers us a comprehensive obit on Saddam and reminds us of the absolute banality of evil:
He was commonplace and derivative. Stalin was his exemplar. The likeness came from more than conscious emulation: he already resembled him in origin, temperament and method. Like him, he was unique less in kind than in degree, in the extraordinary extent to which, if the more squalid forms of human villainy are the sine qua non of the successful tyrant, he embodied them. Like Stalin, too, he had little of the flair or colour of other 20th-century despots, little mental brilliance, less charisma, no redeeming passion or messianic fervour; he was only exceptional in the magnitude of his thuggery, the brutality, opportunism and cunning of the otherwise dull, grey apparatchik
December 30th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I find it strange when death penalty opponents (seem) to give a pass when its a war criminal being killed. The death penalty is wrong, period, especially after a trial that reputable human rights organizations like HRW, Amnesty found to be completely unfair.
If Saddam deserves the death penalty, then so do nearly every American president since the secon world war.t I’m not gonna call the guy a piker, but what he was found guilty of has regularly been a practice of the US (and Macedonia) since the start of the Iraq war. Do I understand Iraqis wnting him dead? Yes. Do I think its BARBARIC especially to show it on television, and in photos on blogs? Hell yes.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
salient comment on Saddam
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/12/dont-cry-for-me-mesopotamia-no-tears.html
December 30th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Very informative, insightful biographical essay by Hirst.
(I now officially know more about this vile man, not than I should but certainly than I ever really wanted to.)
December 30th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
I think that the buzzing news coverage this morning was yet another embarrassing commentary on the state of the US airwaves. Particularly ghoulish was Fox News, where they showed a split screen ALIVE, and DEAD; with the corpse of the Iraqi dictator on the right hand side of the screen. It made me want to gag.
December 30th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
The other day I made a semi-satirical comment that maybe FOX would televise the execution to make up for the loss of their OJ interview. Well the boys from Murdoch, once again, showed me that I should never underestimate the dirty digger (as PRIVATE EYE calls him) and his minions. Of course they did have the “decency” to freeze at the point where the noose went on – boy I bet they debated that!
Bread and circuses anyone?
December 30th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
I was concerned that thus might be off-comment but then I realized that it is all of a piece. Steve Benen reports that for the last three years a “Creationist” book claiming that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah’s flood and not Geological forces has been sold at the park’s giftshop despite protests from National Park Service Scientists. Now word comes that the rangers are been prohibited, by Administration appointees, from discussing geological evidence in order to not “offend” fundementalist visitors.
So in Iraq we show those filthy Moslems whose boss by executing leaders while at home we uphold the rock of ages over the age of rocks. Those are the people running the country now. Religious fanatics led by a dry drunk who thinks he speaks to God and gets the word from his “Higher Father”.
This is getting very serious. I think the “I” word is going to come back with a vengence as it becomes painfully obvious to all that these fanatics have no intention of giving up their plans to remake the Middle East as a tribute – as one Congreeman said recently – to the Lord Jesus.
I wish I would be shown to wrong but I don’t see any other explanation for Bush’s actions or his statements. We’re led by a madman.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
jcummings:
In a single sentence jcummings removes himself from the arena of rational argument and goes to the relm of Cloud Cuckoo Land. A mind is such a terrible thing to waste, especially when it seems to be a deliberate act.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
I think it’s already obvious that anyone who thinks this event speaks to anything resembling closure or an imposition of the rule of law for Iraqis in the foreseeable future is smoking crack, but the New York Times account of his hanging is particularly disturbing, in that his executioners are said to have invoked Moktada al Sadr in the last prayers. “Two of the witnesses exchanged a quiet joke, saying that they gathered the goal of disbanding the militias had yet to be accomplished.”
Let’s celebrate the death of this tyrant with some resounding choruses of “Bush Was Right!”
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-RightB.mov
More trivia…if any of those crack smokers mentioned above haven’t also smelled the putrid stench of the RightWingBlogosphere, here’s how the much-touted, “mainstream wingnut” Powerline (which I happened upon only because this post was a featured link at PJs) opens their commentary on the execution of Saddam:
“Echoing the recently deceased American President Gerald Ford in an interview with Bob Woodward, Saddam Hussein said before his death last night that he opposed the American war that deposed him…”
These people are garbage. Shameless scum. And frankly PJ Mogul Simple Simon also qualifies as a piece of shit for featuring stuff that embarrassingly juvenile and offensive.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I understand that followers of the late Gen Pinochet want to rename the street where Chile’s current President (and former political prisoner) live after the former dictator. Can Saddam’s followers be far behind?
December 30th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Naming streets in Baghdad that is, not Santiago. Course the Shia won’t like it but hey – Rock the Casbah!
-apologies to the Clash
December 30th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
And I have the perfect solution for Victor Davis Hansen. He can now end all of his Pajama clad screed “Iran Delinda Est!”
December 30th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Aristophanes makes a very disturbing point. Saddam was charged with killing 150 people in a village. America has done that hundreds of times.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Unfortuantly, Cummings, this death sentence was not signed off by a Democratic Gov., so chances are it’s going to get thumbs up around here. Funny, this blogs whole “let’s ask the soldier’s what they think” anti-war stance would view Iraq through an American prisim, now suddenly, as Saddam get’s strung up Cowboy style; it’s not right. Let’s not even speculate on who stage managed the discusting “trial.”
Anybody else watch the Saddam snuff on CNN and remember the days when we were supposed to be mad at Clinton for trashing up the news?
December 30th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
JCummings: So you cannot distinguish, to use your sort of terms, between a bourgeois democracy and a military dictatorship? There is a moral symmetry, say, between Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein? They are equally guilty of crimes against humanity? As are ALL American presidents? You indeed do remove yourself from credible debate with that comment. (PS… You do know, dont u, that by official counts Mssrs. Castro and Guevara subjected some 500 people to summary execution, without even the sort of sham trial offered Saddam. Are they also war criminals?).
For the record, you are also hallucinating if you are indeed suggesting that I indulge the death penalty for dictators. I do not. I hoped Pinochet would live long enough to do a stretch in prison. Saddam certainly deserved the same sort of more definitive punishment.
I shed no tears for Saddam, however. If someone is gonna get executed in spite of moral opposition to capital punishment I can’t think of anyone better than the likes of Saddam Hussein.
December 30th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
“Echoing the recently deceased American President Gerald Ford in an interview with Bob Woodward, Saddam Hussein said before his death last night that he opposed the American war that deposed him …”
Good eyes, reg. Somewhere on some Jihadi website, if we could only read Arabic, we might find something like this:
“Saddam went to his death clutching a Koran in a feeble and desperate attempt to elude history’s verdict of apostasy. Earlier, however, he echoed the words of the Crusader’s preferred prophet, Jesus Christ, telling Iraqis not to hate each other, nor even the Crusaders themselves ….”
December 30th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
For Sure, there is a Decent Left and the rest.
Saddam murdered over 2 million human beings for nothing except his personal aggrandizement. He served no cause.
Anyone who cannot unambiguously approve his execution is a moral pervert of the highest order.
December 30th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
“There is a moral symmetry, say, between Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein?”
Moral symmetry doesn’t have much to do with it, if you accept the concept of equality under the law, and apply it consistently. If an otherwise unexceptionable citizen commits first degree murder, it’s a crime. If a serial killer is proven innocent of one of several murders he is accused of, you can’t say he’s guilty of that one anyway just because it turns out he *did* kill a lot of other people.
“They are equally guilty of crimes against humanity?”
Not to defend every over-the-top comment from jcummings, but he didn’t say “equally”, and I’m not going to assume that’s what he meant.
Gerald Ford was told by Suharto that Indonesia would invade East Timor, heavily armed with weapons supplied by the U.S. And he apparently said, well, don’t do it until after Henry and I leave Jakarta, OK? The invasion started the day after they left. And the U.S continued to supply Indonesia with arms. That makes Ford guilty of *something*, I’m sure you will agree. However, it’s not the same level of guilt that Saddam might have had for the Anfal massacre, even if all Saddam said to his commanders, “use all necessary force, and don’t bother to update me on the details.” (Which, for all we know, is what Ford and Kissinger suggested to Suharto.) One could plausibly say it was beyond reasonable doubt that Saddam knew he was effectively ordering massacres, but that Ford and Kissinger couldn’t have known that Suharto would do that, and that they weren’t issuing orders to him anyway (Saddam being commander in chief of his armed forces, but Suharto being the leader of a sovereign state, not *necessarily* answerable to the U.S.)
We don’t think of Bill Clinton as a criminal for ordering a massive cruise missile attack on Baghdad (ostensibly because Saddam seemed uncooperative with weapons inspections.) But then, we tend not to think of *ourselves* as criminals even if we’ve cheated a little on our taxes, broken the speed limit here and there, and smoked a crumb of hash at a friend’s party last weekend. We might, in each case, argue to ourselves that the law isn’t very fair, or effective, and that it is applied hypocritically, so we’re justified in flouting it. Well, how do you think presidents and dictators think, when faced with decisions about how to wage war? They think the way we do: some of the rules are unfair, and are administered by the unfair, so what can I get away with?
If there’s a difference, it’s in what you can get away with — it’s that war crimes are adjudicated in a system where the rule of law is very weak, and in which the victors basically rewrite the rules at their convenience. Here in Japan, there is a prestigious university hospital that was run for several decades by a doctor who was known to have participated in biological warfare experiments in China, experiments erformed on civilians and POWs. He was never prosecuted as a war criminal, because the U.S. (at that point a much more serious war-crimes violator anyway) decided that it made more sense to try a few dozen top leaders, selected (and in some cases convicted) more on political criteria than anything else, than to try to conduct a comprehensive purge of Japanese society. This course was deemed to be in the service of the Greater Good, even though it also resulted in railroading an exemplary general who had intervened to prevent atrocities, and to discipline the perpetrators, at every opportunity presented to him, and also in the Emperor never so much as giving testimony, much less receiving an indictment, despite having considerably greater culpability than some on trial
In a utopian world, law, morality and politics would be perfectly aligned, globally. Alas, we live in this world. A world in which those three realms are so far out of alignment that we can expect war to continue, and not least because of contending utopian visions. After all, maybe somewhere in Waziristan, somebody is arguing that Saddam was bad, but not really a war criminal compared to Bush, and that to suggest otherwise is to invoke “moral symmetry”. And they might be saying that with their hand on the Koran.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
As I said, if you’re against the death penalty, you’re against the death penalty. Even for Saddam….I wasn’t suggesting that you were in favor of the death penalty, but you do seem to be not too concerned with what many human rights groups have said about the unfairness of the trial.
Crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity – like Gerry Ford’s greenlight to Suharto. Deaths are deaths, commited by “us” or “them” No one deserves the death penalty. It seems though even those who claim to be against it are still revelling in it, not caring about how its being used for propaganda points not to mention the points Juan Cole recently made about Eid, etc. No, better to revel in how evil Saddam was.
Where does anyone get this 2 million number? Is it a US government source?
As I said, I shed no tears for Saddam, and in lieu of my own views posted something from Asad AbuKhalil. He was a monster. But I prefer to look at how his death was timed, not to mention the ironic fact that he died cursing America’s rival Sadr.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
http://counterpunch.com/tariq12302006.html
December 31st, 2006 at 12:34 am
The obit Marc links and quotes is peppered with errors. Example:
“In March 1988, in revenge for an Iranian territorial gain, he wiped out 5,000 Kurdish inhabitants of Halabja; ….”
That makes it sound like Saddam just picked a random Kurdish city, in response to an enemy’s “territorial gain”, and only to immediately slaughter some Kurds to prove how tough he was to the Iranians. Actually, Halabja was turned into a propaganda coup for Iran, and by Iran. And that’s hardly the end of ways in which this capsule summary misleads.
Halabja had been taken over by Iranian troops and Pesh Merga. Nobody has pinned down the number of civilian deaths to “5,000″ — estimates range considerably. 7-8,000 is a frequently-quoted range, about 10% of its estimated pre-attack population but possibly a much larger proportion of its population at the inception of the gas attacks. The town was hit with conventional artillery for two days prior to the gas attacks. Since the town is ringed by mountains, and the artillery attacks were from those mountains, no inhabitant could rationally have presumed that the assault wouldn’t continue until the town was recaptured or destroyed, or that staying put was a safer proposition than getting out. Saddam’s army probably wasn’t blocking the exits, since tens of thousands of Halabja refugees ended up in Iran; mountain passes would have been easily blocked. If the intent was simply to kill as many noncombatant residents of Halabja as possible, it’s hard to see why Saddam’s helicopters didn’t just go straight in with the gas.
The attack on Halabja was criminal, several times over, but the situation was not as starkly simple as it’s often made to appear in brief (and usually ill-informed) accounts. Not even on the political level — after all, Pesh Merga shoulder-to-shoulder with Iranian troops against Saddam must have been an alliance of convenience, considering that Saddam *aided* Pesh Merga in Iran.
This writer then errs in the other direction — actually *understating* Saddam’s crimes against the Kurds:
“… from then, the war over, he wiped out several thousand more in “Operation Anfal”, his final, genocidal attempt to solve his Kurdish problem.”
“*Several thousand* more”? The lowest estimate I can find is 17,000, and typical estimates are in six digits, with the Kurds claiming 182,000. The truth, as usual with such figures, must be somewhere inbetween. There are millions of Kurds in Iraq, so killing a few thousand more wouldn’t have been part of any “final, genocidal solution”. In the aftermath of Anfal, Saddam actually offered a series of amnesties to the Kurds (arguably disengenuous in the case of identifiable Pesh Merga, but the fact remains that most displaced Kurds returned to the Kurdish north, if only because life under the quasi-autonomy brokered with Saddam was better than life in Turkish or Iranian refugee camps.)
This writer also repeats the canard that Saddam expelled the UN inspectors in 1998. He did not. They left Baghdad because Baghdad was about to be attacked by the U.S. (He had expelled them 1997, but readmitted them later.)
I doubt this guy started writing the obit just after hearing of Saddam’s execution. These aren’t errors made in haste. I think he had plenty of time to do his homework. But it reads somewhat as if he’d been told that there was a Pulitzer Prize for obituaries — he’s straining for effect when he should be straining for facts. Why, for example, does he omit CIA complicity in protecting Saddam after his botched assassination attempt on Kassem?
Much of the narrative will appeal to those with a warm place in their hearts for the ‘Great Man’ Theory of History (for even the very bad must be very great in some sense, right?). But that flies in the face of his more intelligible (less luridly expressed) conclusions: that circumstances would probably have given Iraq someone equally as bad in any event, and that those circumstances were very much a creation of the West.
It’s all rather sickly thrilling to imagine Saddam as a boy, Portrait of the Dictator as Young Beast, heating up iron bars red-hot so he could stick them into the bellies of hapless animals passing by. But it doesn’t shed much light on how we got here from there, that dark channel of maze corridors. Perhaps any more illuminated view of Saddam’s career would read more like an obituary for reason, compassion and humility (our own) than of a dictator. And that would be a drag, wouldn’t it? It would be too much like, well, doing your homework.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:39 am
“Anyone who cannot unambiguously approve his execution is a moral pervert of the highest order.”
Jeeezus! Stott really has it in for the Pope…
December 31st, 2006 at 2:23 am
“Saddam murdered over 2 million human beings ….”
He has a lot of deaths on his hands, but I don’t know where you get 2 million.
” …. for nothing except his personal aggrandizement. He served no cause.”
Are you sure? He could have arranged to park a large fraction of his ill-gotten gains (billions), go through a series of cosmetic surgery operations, and disappear forever to live in comfortable anonymity. Instead, he was found down a spiderhole in Iraq. Perhaps that’s an indication that not many still believed in him at that point, but it also clearly indicates that he believed in something.
“Anyone who cannot unambiguously approve his execution is a moral pervert of the highest order.”
Oh, sorry — should have read that first before replying. Who would bother to listen to me, a moral pervert of the highest order? Only another such, of which there are tens of millions if not more.
We might object because we’re opposed to the death penalty, or because we think he should be tried for all of his crimes while he still breathes, or perhaps because a man who could say, toward the end, “don’t hate each other, or even the Americans” might be more productively used if asked, “Hm, could you elaborate on that?”
My own take on it is a combination of the above factors, but is mainly pragmatic: we’re more likely to drain the swamp of dictatorship if we don’t corner them like rats, but rather keep pressure on them, while also persistently offering to ease their departure. Who knows how many more Idi Amin might have killed or made miserable if he hadn’t found a home in exile in Saudi Arabia? To execute Saddam under these circumstances sets a number of bad precedents, and ratifies some other bad precedents.
By the way, anyone who disagrees with me on this is a moral pervert of the *second* highest order. (Slot #1 is already taken.)
December 31st, 2006 at 6:48 am
Well the true colors of Cummings are shown here in bright Red. Commrade indeed. Talk about relativism, Jesus H. Christ. I find the Halabja canard disturbing. There’s no credible evidence Iran gassed the Kurds of that village. It was the other way around according to every investigtion except the speculation of Steven Pelletiere. And I mean speculation. I read the report. Good riddance to Saddam who preferred taken others out and shooting them to hanging, but one can’t help notice this is just a Shiite revenge with our help.
December 31st, 2006 at 8:51 am
Moral perversion of the highest order…(with a bonus footnote on Gerald Ford)
http://tinyurl.com/yzqghm
December 31st, 2006 at 9:12 am
People who are for the death penalty miss what should be obvious: It sends a message that it is okay to kill someone if you think you have a good enough reason. Saddam thought he had a good reason to kill people, so he did it. So did Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, etc etc etc. Doesn’t help that we think they didn’t have a good enough reason, because they had accomplices to help them do it and public support for doing it and the power to do it and so they did it. Maybe Samuel Stott will someday face someone who thinks they have a good reason to kill him. I wonder how he will talk them out of it.
December 31st, 2006 at 11:01 am
Though cowards cringe and traitors sneer, I’ll keep the red flag flying here, thank you very much. In fact, my position is the opposite of relativism. I apply the same standards to (our) monsters as to (their) monsters.
I agree that the story that Iran being behind Halabja is absolute bullshit. Iraq was behind it, using American and German weapons.
December 31st, 2006 at 11:02 am
The pope is a closet case.
December 31st, 2006 at 2:03 pm
First off – Happy New Years to all bloggers on this site…wish you all the BEST of the year to come!,,,,
Second, though no one knows me at this blog, as I post probably 5 messages a year, and am rather strident…I say this about Saddam, as it is my personality:
BS on his execution and most severly cutting through ALL of the rhetorical posts in this thread —
We, the US have executed him, period the end – after, as always USING every “Dictator, et al” to our advantage for awhile, then throwing them away, either by coups we in the background inflicted upon them, or by simply throwing them in jail, somewhere on this planet, or on our own turf.
C’mon folks this is a very bright collection of folks on this blog. Global politics has nothing whatsoever to do with being — for or against death penalties!
To say so is so very subjective and small….again…this is Global Politics, true giant politicos who rule all, and all the time playing with each other, like a true and honest chess board, there is NO morality…never was, most likely never will be…..
So for me having said that, as a pre-emtive prelude to this sentence — it was idiotic that Saddam was executed, and has no value, will have no value. It will be written that the US executed him…end of thoughts, as this is a novel in reality, true reality what will be written in the next 2 decades about all of this…
December 31st, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Good to hear on Halabja but perhaps “false equivalency” is the proper fallacy as to the monsters equation. The Iran-iraq War article on Wikipedia suffered from serious anti-US bias. Somehow two US supplied helicopters were used to spray gas according to the slanted sources. No one proved that, and certainly this use if true wasn’t known to the US a priori. Singapore was a the largest supplier of chemical weapons, but that was dusted under the rug. False equivalency my friend. Look into it.
December 31st, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Juan Cole puts the date of Saddam’s execution into perspective here
December 31st, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Faces of the dead:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20061228_3000FACES_TAB1.html
December 31st, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Thanks to Randy P for bringing to light that the date of the execution was even more important than who was executed.
Up until a few weeks ago I thought that the blunders of the US occupation were just another example of the Bush administration’s incompetence, much like thier handling of the aftermath of Katrina. It’s becoming clear, however, that thier actions (and inactions) are designed to render Iraq as unstable as possible in order to provide justification – however tenuous – for continuing the US military presence.
The recommendations of the Iraq Study Group were not a rebuke of the Bush administration, they were a cleverly-crafted obfuscation designed for western MSM consumption with the underlying tacit assumptions that our ‘interests’ are limited to leaving Iraq with a functioning government – which happens to be the opposite effect of all of the US actions in the past three years. Any mention of oil, as in O_peration I_raqi L_iberation, is to be found in the fine-print-continuation-page errata that surely doesn’t concern the Joe six-pack potential cannon-fodder that are expected to pay the ultimate price for decisions that are beyond thier scope.
Clearly, the last thing that the powers that shape US policy want is what at least 90% of Iraqis and 70% of Americans want: immediate withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq. Hence the tacit assumption of the ISG and the majority of MSM editorializing that our ‘mission’, installing democracy in Iraq, is un-accomplished but still attainable goal.
To my fellow bloggers who don’t think O_peration I_raqi L_iberation is an acronym that Democratic wannabes such as Hilary, Obama and Edwards are not willing to publicly demonstrate thier obsequiesence to in order to garner the necessary corporate funding of thier campaigns, did you, in the last several weeks, write a letter similar to this:
Dear Santa,
Please send me a candidate who values the lives and wishes of the 200 million or so ordinary Americans who don’t want to continue this insane occupation of Iraq…
PS: Happy New Year
January 1st, 2007 at 1:17 am
The way I see it, Saddam was lynched. Did he deserve to die? Of course. He was a despicable, bloodthirtsy tyrant. But his hastened timeline to the gallows (the only timeline we’ve ever seen), was at least in part designed to squelch embarrassing testimony about our role in his genocidal rampages. Read my piece at the Populist Review.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:07 am
“Clearly, the last thing that the powers that shape US policy want is what at least 90% of Iraqis and 70% of Americans want: immediate withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq.”
Not exactly.
From what I can see, immediate withdrawal is the favored option of 20-25% of Americans polled recently. However, a clear majority want a timetable for withdrawal.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.html
Clear majorities in Iraq favor an immediate pullout, with support for that option highest among Sunni Arabs (85%), not high at all among the Kurds. In Baghdad, almost 75% favored an immediate pullout.
http://tinyurl.com/mmm49
(From September; numbers might be higher now.)
Interestingly, in the above WaPo story, the theory that the U.S. is purposely stoking civil war conditions, to create an artificial need for itself as a stabilizing force, is popular among Iraqis.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:19 am
Oops – the above should read “a clear majority [of Americans] want a timetable for withdrawal, if you consider an immediate withdrawal a ‘timetable’”. Which you could — after all, even an “immediate” withdrawal will have to proceed on some kind of schedule — it’s logistically impossible to get them all out at once. If the goal were to minimize loss of American lives, it might take longer than a helter-skelter pullout.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:45 am
“Hence the tacit assumption of the ISG and the majority of MSM editorializing that our ‘mission’, installing democracy in Iraq, is un-accomplished but still attainable goal.”
I wasn’t aware that *most* MSM editorializing currently leans toward attaining democracy in Iraq as a realistic goal, and that’s not exactly in evidence if put “Iraq” and “democracy” into the Google News search term box. If so, it would certainly be against majority opinion in the U.S.; a record high 60% answered “never” when asked recently when Iraq might achieve democracy. That’s up from 31% in Dec ’03.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
As for the ISG’s “tacit assumption” of realistically achievable democracy in Iraq, see how Baker and Hamilton dance all around that question here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,235741,00.html
Peering down there between the lines, it’s not to hard to see their real conviction: that the goal is to give Iraq an actual government. Period. Any FOX News viewer who came out with the idea that Baker and Hamilton weren’t “surrender monkeys” after all was hoodwinked by their politician doubletalk.
January 1st, 2007 at 4:30 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,984 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans last weekend:
DONICA, Dustin R., 22, Specialist, Army; Spring, Tex.; 25th Infantry Division.
ESCKELSON, Christopher E., 22, Cpl., Marine Reserves; Vassar, Mich.; Fourth Marine Division.
GIVEN, Nathaniel A., 21, Pfc., Army; Dickinson, Tex.; Second Brigade Combat Team.
McCORMICK, Clinton T., 20, Pvt., Army; Jacksonville, Fla.; Second Infantry Division.
MESSER, Christopher P., 28, Sgt., Army; Petersburg, Fla.; Second Brigade Combat Team.
MILLER, Nicholas A., 20, Lance Cpl., Marine Reserves; Silverwood, Mich.; Fourth Marine Division.
SHAFFER, Edward W., 23, Sgt., Army; Mont Alto, Pa.; First Armored Division.
SPENCER, William D., 20, Lance Cpl., Marine Reserves; Paris, Tenn.; Fourth Marine Division.
January 1st, 2007 at 4:31 am
Awaiting moderaton: 8 names of the dead.
January 1st, 2007 at 8:21 am
“the theory that the U.S. is purposely stoking civil war conditions, to create an artificial need for itself as a stabilizing force, is popular among Iraqis.”
What is behind this?
January 1st, 2007 at 9:40 am
Montpelier.com looks like an interestng company. When did Mark York start working there?
January 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I my view, Michael Turner hit on the crux of the problem. What exactly is a war crime, and who should, or can, be prosecuted? At Nuremberg, jurists enacted a “law of complicity” which sought to balance the complicit nature of modern war crimes with the individual’s actions. They, too, realized that war criminals act in complicity with a vast network of international financiers, arms suppliers, diplomatic liaisons, and nefarious politicians, and sought to establish a standard by which war crimes could be judged. Today, the International Criminal Court carries on that legacy (at least in theory). The ICC differs from the “World Court” in that it prosecutes individuals rather than states. The ICC would have been the proper forum for this trial (if legitimacy was a concern). But then, legitimacy was never an issue. And that’s what I find disturbing, notwithstanding Saddam’s attrocities. Discussion of Saddam’s guilt or comparative guilt misses the point entirely. This was a show trial right from the start, with all the due process rights of the Salem Witch Trials. And, as adroitly noted by Randy Paul, the execution was timed to curry favor for Maliki in preparation for the next phase of the war. It was also timed to silence Saddam before subsequent trials could begin. U.S. culpability can’t be dismissed because Saddam was a ruthless tyrant.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
More moral perversity…
http://tinyurl.com/yhkmbt
(Also a dash of complexity.)
The most disturbing thing about the timing and conduct of Saddam’s execution – (which as an ultimate fate for this guy doesn’t bother me one bit, in and of itself) – was the way it was turned into a vindictive act steeped in Shiite fanaticism, both because it was carried out on a the day of Sunni observance and no doubt intended to offend that sect’s religious beliefs and because Sadrist crazies were able to hijack the very act itself. Unfortunately Saddam, who deliberately ushered his own country and his region into an era of terrible death and destruction, looked dignified as he approached death in comparison to his hooded Islamist executioners – who seemed typical of the figures we’ve come to know from various jihadist snuff videos. I’m not surprised by an aura of vendetta justice, but I’m disgusted that we’ve set the whole scenario in motion at the expense of many innocent lives, including our own soldiers. the vehicle for it.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
sorry – I was deleting and hit “submit”
January 1st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I’m not doing this to piss off Marc or reflect on him in any way, but I’ve been checking out the Pajamas Media link periodically and am finding it to be a steady dose of garbage dressed up to look less toxic than, say, the unfiltered crap from Charles Johnson’s LGF. Follow this featured link to “Gateway Pundit” through from the original inane post to the debunking in it’s comments to get some sense of the absolute lack of any standards – or perhaps even any point other than wingnut tendentiousness – over at Simple Simon’s Evening Wear Extravaganza…
January 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Ooops…
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/01/us_toll_in_iraq_reaches_3000.php
January 1st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
\”As I said, I shed no tears for Saddam… He was a monster… not to mention the ironic fact that he died cursing America’s rival Sadr.\”
Watch the video again, Mr. Cooper. Saddam doesn\’t curse Sadr. he repeats his name and sneers, then recites \”some spiritual words\”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6220087.stm
Yes, a monster. Now give us a definition of Bush and Cheney, who engineered this macabre farce, have already sent 3,000 U.S. soldiers to their death and reduced a couple thousand more to a miserable life as cripples — while a lot more await the same fate.
And tell us about the heroes who bombed and shred to pieces Iraqi troops on the road back home from Kuwait. Or those who turned to ashes hundreds of women, children and old people huddling in a shelter in Baghdad. And it goes on, on a much larger scale than the barbaric Haditha massacre would suggest.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Strange as it may seem, this last poster takes a quote from JCummings and attributes it to Marc…
January 1st, 2007 at 2:38 pm
More pissing in their Pajamas…
Their current featured post up-top contains this nugget:
“…the Iraq War, Jews and other bete noires the M(ain)S(tream)M(edia) hates.”
I guess they’re intent on providing plenty of fodder to justify the notion that the Blogosphere is dominated by a bunch of masturbatory, amateurish assholes.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Yes, I pasted the wrong excerpt because it has the same first sentence. Correct one:
*I shed no tears for Saddam, however. If someone is gonna get executed in spite of moral opposition to capital punishment I can’t think of anyone better than the likes of Saddam Hussein.*
But this is not a question of *moral opposition*. It\’s one of illegality, of a travesty of justice, of preventing the emergence of certain damning truths. The fact that Saddam was no Jesus does not exclude that Bush was at the very least Pilate.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I agree with reg that the execution was timed to curry favor with Shiite fanatics and offend the Sunnis. If nothing else, this should put to rest the ludicrous notion that our “mission” has been constrained by sectarian violence. The civil war in Iraq has been orchestrated from the beginning to justify our continued occupation. And with 3,500 troops headed to Kuwait, a “troop surge” in the works, and anti-Iranian rhetoric racheting up in the press, I somehow doubt we’ll stop there.
January 1st, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Death penalty opponents take heart:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1948755,00.html
Unmentioned I believe on this blog and it’s posters; and, seems to me,
impressively ignored across the board by right and left
bloggers. Salute, Liberty Dad!
January 1st, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I can’t go along wqith Andrea’s conspiracy theory at all. This is only another example of our cluelessness. That Americans engineered this is ludicrous. Our heads are still up are arse, and the timing of everything is bad. Not only are we not complicit, we don’t even know how to be involved in that way.
“Montpelier.com looks like an interestng company.”
Indeed it is. They call it the U.S. Constitution. It was born there.
January 1st, 2007 at 5:28 pm
“with all the due process rights of the Salem Witch Trials”
Ahem…. The “witches” weren’t guilty, but were killed anyway. When the Governor’s wife was accused invisible evidence was disallowed. By your logic we should be guilty of creating Hitler by helping to win WWI. What a farcical assertion.
January 1st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
It looks like Robert Kagan is going to be the American Niall Ferguson.
Dangerous Nation: America and the World, 1600-1898
January 1st, 2007 at 6:16 pm
By far, the largest suppliers [to Iraq] of precursors for chemical weapons production were in Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and Federal Republic of Germany (1,027 tons). One Indian company, Exomet Plastics (now part of EPC Industrie) sent 2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. The Kim Al-Khaleej firm, located in Singapore and affiliated to United Arab Emirates, supplied more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas precursors and production equipment to Iraq.[34]
Looks like there’s danger to go around.
[34]
January 1st, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Another interesting factoid is 71 percent of the 3000 deaths of American soldiers were white males mostly from rural northern towns. That’s not the image some critics paint.
January 1st, 2007 at 6:44 pm
What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88. It is a powerful indictment of the president Bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of his war on terrorism. It reveals US ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran.
From
Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement
Whatever his complexes, Khomeini had no qualms about sending his followers, including young boys, off to their deaths for his greater glory. This callous disregard for human life was no less characteristic of Saddam Hussein. And, for that matter, it was also no less characteristic of much of the world community, which not only couldn’t be bothered by a few hundred thousand Third World corpses, but tried to profit from the conflict.
From:
The United States and Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988
January 1st, 2007 at 9:01 pm
The very questionable Ynetnews (they ran a story or two suggesting that the Qana death toll was a hoax by Hezbollah) has a story about how U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad attempted to stall the execution on legal grounds.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3347208,00.html
Ynetnews says this is a Reuters story, and it turns out that it is: here it is at Reuters (but nowhere else except ynetnews, at this point, judging from searches with Google News).
http://tinyurl.com/create.php
It’s pretty interesting, since it strongly suggests that the Ambassador (if not the Bush administration) was sensitive to the legal, religious and political issues here. They wanted about two weeks more for Saddam (which, aside from being more legal, probably dovetails neatly with whatever “new strategy” script they are drafting.)
Apparently, Saddam was in U.S. custody almost up to the threshold of the execution chamber. Perhaps they had hints that the event would look a little like a Shi’ite death squad execution, and didn’t want too much of that kind of theater.
Honestly, it’s starting to look like Maliki had this administration by the balls on this one — if the U.S. successfully delayed the execution, Maliki could complain about infringements on Iraqi sovereignty. If the U.S. *didn’t* successfully delay the execution, the very fact that the execution could be carried out in this politically problematic and inflammatory way helps Maliki, by providing evidence to his allies and enemies that he can stand up to U.S. pressure, that he’s not a puppet. I would say that he still is a puppet, but a puppet who has the option of turning his puppet strings over to Iran. And he knows it. And so does this administration.
In any case, it’s not necessary to come to any solid conclusions about motives to conclude that the timing of this execution (or assassination, or lynching if you like) and the style in which it was carried out does not exactly bode well for peace in the short run. It’s not just a chilling neck-in-the-crosshairs message for Sunni Arabs, it also doesn’t play well with Iraqi Kurds, who are mostly moderately conservative Sunnis, and thus insulted as well, and who would have liked to have seen Saddam tried for the slaughters, dispossessions and dislocations visited upon them. 2006 may go down in Iraqi history as the year in which not only Saddam went to the noose, but also any future for Iraq as a unified country.
January 1st, 2007 at 11:12 pm
“By your logic we should be guilty of creating Hitler by helping to win WWI. ”
Not really sure what your point is, publius, but my analogy is dead on. Witness testimony was repeatedly read into the record during Saddam’s “trial” without allowing the defense access to those witnesses. That’s precisely what happened during the Salem Witch Trials. Whether the women were guilty is immaterial to the argument. It’s the proceedings we were discussing. And how WWI fits in I can’t imagine.
January 1st, 2007 at 11:23 pm
“Not really sure what your point is, publius …”
That can be a problem with him, Andrea. And with some other commenters here, sometimes. You compare the *due process* in Saddam’s trial to the Salem witch trials, and somebody will pipes up that you must think the trials were virtually identical. I’m sure that if you pointed out that apples and oranges are both fruit, somebody would accuse you of comparing apples and oranges. It doesn’t have much logic behind it. But since when was logic (or even reading all the words in a sentence) a driving force in the formation of most people’s opinions anyway?
January 1st, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Your point is well made, Michael. Happy New Year all.
January 1st, 2007 at 11:45 pm
When you count the people Saddam killed in cold blood along with the Iranians and Kuwatis his Army killed and then add to that the Iraqi soldiers who died prosecuting Saddam’s evil, pointless wars, I do believe that you get over 2 million, but certainly, I might be wrong about that. Perhaps Saddam killed only 1.69 or 1.87 million. Facts are Facts, and as such I will be the last to dispute them, assuming anyone cares to provide them.
Why should anyone would object to the idea that Saddam served no cause but his ego and lust for power? He was a Jew-hating, right-wing facist (Baathist division) who went on record for his admiration of Stalin, long before he thought to put a crescent on the Iraqi flag.
The idea that anyone who faces death with a defiant sneer on his lips (vide the prolific Michael Turner) must be serving some sort of ideological cause flys in the face of all available evidence. Read the papers in Lincoln, Nebraska or Accra, Ghana, or anywhere, for Christsake. Murderous sociopaths are highly predictable. They don’t value their own lives in the same that way shop stewards and full service insurance agents do.
Finally, the idea that the death penalty is wrong in every instance is a worthy subject of debate.
If you can in every case seperate a lawful (albiet objectional) judgement of capitol punishment from an ad hoc instance of extra-juridicial murder then, please, by all means, save the lives of all of the wretches who are being murdered even as we speak.
Explain your prissy theories to the Darfurians, all of whom will be suprised to hear that there is a Rule of Law, and a political body that can enforce it.
Explain to them that you had a very bad day because Saddam met the end of a rope. Explain to them that your distaste for BushHitler and your principled objection to Haliburton and Al-Sadr colluding on a rope burn is going to do jack-squat-one for THEM, because you concientously distinguish between acts of war and acts of juridical killing.
Perverts.
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:30 am
“When you count the people Saddam killed in cold blood along with the Iranians and Kuwatis his Army killed and then add to that the Iraqi soldiers who died prosecuting Saddam’s evil, pointless wars, I do believe that you get over 2 million ….”
If the casualties in a pointless, evil war count as “murder”, I guess Nixon “murdered” about 50,000 U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Not to mention all other casualties in that war, which would make him a “murderer” on par with Saddam, by your method of accounting.
“Why should anyone would object to the idea that Saddam served no cause but his ego and lust for power?”
Maybe because they think he might have been a trifle more complex than that? For all his rapacity and self-aggrandizement, he was also part of the process of building a modern, relatively secular state in the Arab world, the fruits of which are now in considerable danger: crime is rampant, and so is religious extremism; women are afraid to go out unveiled, universities are shutting down, and the trends toward interfaith and interclan marriage have been decisively nipped. From prison, he called for an end to the violence. Maybe because, from what he could tell, some good things accomplished under his otherwise-brutal reign were going to waste?
“… you concientously distinguish between acts of war and acts of juridical killing.”
Yes, I do. And so should everyone, I think.
By the way, if you’re so concerned about what the Sudanese government is doing (largely through proxies) in Darfur, you can’t be too happy that Bush recently tripled aid to Africa, with a lot of the increase going to Sudan.
“Murderous sociopaths are highly predictable. They don’t value their own lives in the same that way shop stewards and full service insurance agents do.”
Perhaps not, but it’s not like Saddam didn’t value his own life. He would sometimes only give an audience to one of his generals after the officer had been strip-searched, and his hands disinfected. He was very aware of the variety of ways he could be assassinated (perhaps having learned of a few under CIA tutelage.)
“The idea that anyone who faces death with a defiant sneer on his lips (vide the prolific Michael Turner) …”
I’m not one to deny the existence of residual virtues in those whose vices were extreme. Saddam went to his death bravely, defiantly, (apparently) piously, having called for an end to the fighting and the hatred tearing his country apart, and he said those things with no prospect that such pronouncements would help him return to power or even avert his execution. And, IIRC, Hitler was kind to animals right up to the end. Denying all humanity in those who have behaved inhumanly only plays into the perennial human belief in absolute evil. That’s a lazy and convenient belief — and one that ends up being used to justify all manner of evil itself. But it’s an understandable human tendency, too, and this is why the rule of law is good: it relegates personal judgments, which will inevitably differ, to a position lower than that of objective ones, about which most can agree. Even if I favored the death penalty, I would have opposed Saddam’s execution on the grounds that it was unjust to those at the receiving end of his criminal intent in other crimes. I didn’t have a “bad day” when Saddam died just because he was killed, and I don’t think people should be killed; I had a bad day because an opportunity for justice died, and the corpse of that opportunity will be soon be pushing up some very lethal daisies indeed.
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 am
Michael Turner makes a number of very good points, but the best is that Saddam was but a single human being.
If Saddam were really Satan’s evil twin brother, his capture, conviction and execution would benefit Iraq in concrete, measurable and important ways.
Instead, everything about the way the trial and his execution carries out screams that Saddam’s Iraqi critics shared his inhumane instincts. His country is now in far worse shape than he “left” it and the worst seems yet to come. Why is that people who normally reject overly tidy theories of blame feel so attracted to the idea that Saddam was the Great Man who single-handedly ruined Iraq, “murdering 2 million” along the way?
Saddam’s values were not far at odds with those of many in Iraq’s ruling class: he just gambled a lot bigger and got caught. As Michael Turner also pointed out, when you get beyond the ideological rhetoric and crypto-racism, you see that Saddam’s core attitude toward killing political opponents is more common than notable.
Saddam can never be forgiven or held up as some kind of example nor can he escape responsiblity for the war crimes he participated in.
We can at least hope that the failure of his execution to help Iraq in any concrete will be more widely noted as evidence that the “Evil Men” theory of history is bunk.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
Well, I meant the evidence against Saddam is certainly not imaginary not matter how you chose to bifurcate the process. Your assertion is we are as guilty as he. Saddam made himself and he used anyone he could along the way. When you indict Singapore for Halabja I’ll see your objectivity. Until then radical opinion is where you find it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 am
The Wisdom Of A Guy Named Fred (whose wisdom helped get us into this bullshit in the first place…)
AEI resident scholar Frederick Kagan, a leading proponent of escalation, told the WSJ, “If we surge and it doesn’t work, it’s hard to imagine what we do after that. But we’re already in a very bad spot, and if we don’t do anything defeat is imminent.”
Sounds like a Plan. And at least as good as the last Plan. Can’t help but hope Kagan’s got a couple of kids to sacrifice on the alter of his Having Been Wrong About Everything.
Remember not so long ago (months) when pro-war dead-enders still claimed that the whole damned mess was some kind of triumph for democracy and that anyone who thought it was an ill-concieved, counterproductive misadventure and/or totally crackpot hated America/Bush/idiots like them. Well, they got the last two right, even if they confused cause and effect. Can’t imagine any fellow citizens more deserving of contempt than the odd conglomeration of fools who rushed in and just kept the lies and wave after wave of denial coming…while spitting and throwing garbage at their critics like particularly nasty little children.
(I don’t have a link on this, because I’m a moral pervert…I mean because it’s from the WSJ…but in my moral perversion I ripped it from Steve Bennen filling in for Kevin Drum.)
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:54 am
“… when you get beyond the ideological rhetoric and crypto-racism, you see that Saddam’s core attitude toward killing political opponents is more common than notable.”
Yes, and “number of people killed” is at best a very approximate measure of his evil, because it wasn’t just propensity and opportunity, but, past a certain point, brute necessity. Paranoia has more survival value in certain situations.
Iraq is not only divided religiously, but clan/tribal loyalties (and animosities) are particularly intense. I found an interesting graphic here
http://www.consang.net/global_prevalence/map.html
that neatly illustrates this fact. Iraq is one of the most consanguinous nations in the world, on par with Nigeria and Pakistan, nations we might, until recently, have considered considerably more backward and tribally divided. It seems that Nigeria and Pakistan differ mainly on the surface with Iraq, which by virtue of its oil wealth was able to afford a fairly thick layer of cosmetics, enough to appear rather secular and westernized. Studies on general levels of social trust (a very useful form of social capital for purposes of secular civil government and a free flow of commerce) put Iraq somewhere on the level of Bolivia. It should come as no surprise that Iraq is currently in a three-way tie for second-last in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index, nor that nepotism is considered a virtue.
“Divide and rule” was the Ottoman way of managing this region, and more briefly the British way. The Ba’athists, for all their high ideals (they had a few) inherited all the old boundaries and divisions and blood feuds and hatreds that had been alternately stoked and damped by successive empires. In a way, it’s not surprising that post-colonial Iraq ended up being run by a crime family from a smallish town, headed by a man who, as a kid, ran away from home to escape beatings and sheep-herding duty, but also to move toward the chance to go to school in Baghdad; and who then scrambled up every route of upward social mobility, whether that was law school in Cairo, or becoming the Ba’ath party’s intelligence chief, killing enemies whenever they got in his way. It took someone living by the mantra, “I’m smart enough, I’m evil enough, and darn it, people *fear* me. Or if they don’t, it means I’m losing momentum.”
How many subjects a tyrant kills may be less a function of how much ruthlessness is possible up to some saturation point, but more a matter how much may be required simply to survive while moving up. Iraq would seem to require a lot, by the very nature of its social fabric. The more things change there, the more they remain the same.
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:42 am
For the history geeks:
Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
Well I see the comments here have really gone over the edege. So, in no particular order:
Publius
So near three in four of the dead are northern whites. Oh, then I guess its all right then. Let the carnage continue!
Marc
jcummings makes a valid, if overstated point. I seem to recall you used to regularly have Nat Hentof on your radio program and I recall the VILLAGE VOICE columnist wanted to impeach every President from Ike on. Its not hanging I grant you but a difference in degree, no? I don’t recall you disagreeing with him or did I miss something?
To all those who want to argue the severity of Saddam by counting bodies I can only say enough. What are we running here – a contest for “Bloodiest Dictator” ?
Saddam was evil. The question is was that enough to kill him under color of law. If you don’t believe in the death penalty (as is true of the civilized world – see the EU) then the answer is no. And when you throw in a proceeding that even Caligula would have problems with then it is doubly troubling. Maybe Bush would like to things this way but the rest of the world whose decent opinion we used to care for says an emphatic “No”
And finally for you pragmatists. How did whacking Hussain on the Holy Day help cool things off in Iraq?
And if we’re counbting bodies where does execution become manditory? Norieaga got forty years. I hear he personally offed several people. So why no noose for him?
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:58 am
Sure rlc. Nothing special there eh Watson?
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
Turner nails the essence of the issue in his last graf. That was what was required in the sort of place Iraq is by nature. Cousin marriage and a high birthrate, a fecundity staple in the region account for much of the trouble.
On the critic front we hear of how the minorites are sent to war by the rich white guys all the time. As we can see they remain the minority in that category too. No matter who they are they can’t fix this mess.
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Publius when people like Jenna and Babs join the army rather than tango with Argentine Race car drivers we’ll talk about who serves and who doesn’t OK?
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Faces of the dead. It appears it is only the faces of American dead. The grid for the Iraqi dead would of course require to be the size of a football field. You and the NYT seem to have overlooked this dimension. Nothing changes much in America.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Juan Cole has an interesting piece today on the myth that the CIA helped Saddam climb to power in Iraq. Seems the US was happy to see Kassim go but had nothing to do with Hussain as contemporary cables show. Just thought I’d bring that up for what its worth.
And for what it is worth Cole can find no good reason for either the method or date of Saddam’s execution unless we were deliberately trying to inflame things. It looks like a lynching by Sadr’s forces which suggest who is the power there now. Are we that stupid?
Don’t answer.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Saddam got the noose for 148 out of an est. 1.3 million deaths over 25 years, and Rumsfeld shook his hand not 2 yrs after the crime that condemned Saddam to death.
Bush has caused the death of an est. 600,000 people all in just under 3 years.
Of course the families of the Iraqi deceased bask in the comfort of knowing Mr. Bush had the Best of Intentions when he illegally invaded their country.
Saddam deserved the worst fate applicable under the rule of law. His farcical hearsay trial and subsequent tribal execution are a insult to the rest of his victims, those 1,299,852 men women and children deserve a process as rigorous and complete as Nuremberg. Those victims cry out for Saddam’s full story to be told, for his foreign enablers to be unmasked, and prosecuted in their own right. Those victims cry out for more than just a taunting gangland revenge lynching, they deserve a higher universal standard of law and human rights that will triumph over short sighted “national interests”.
In speeches Mr. Bush often cites UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and then does the concept of transcendent Human Rights mortal harm through the enactment of his misbegotten policies.
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Well we know how Dad served don’t we rlc? Look what happened to Kerry’s record under this smear campaign. Rich white guys send poor mostly white folks, and anyone else they can get to do their bidding whether necessary or not.
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Saddam certainly instigated wars, but the crimes he was tried for were for the punishment of uprisings during these wars – in any country such uprisings are always brutally punished.
However the facts are that:
a) many things about his past were totally exaggerated….one I recall was his convening a meeting and then walking around the seated table to arrive behind the back of a traitor – and then personally crushing his head with a baseball bat – obviously a CIA story similar to the old ones about Castro having advanced syphilis.
b) that the curent war against Iraq was totally unprovoked, and as such was/is a war-crime. In its recent “Iraq Study Report” the US mandated group fails to use the expression War-on-Terror even once.
c) that he went to his death with astonishing fortitude – there is probably not 0.01% of the population that can stand on that trap-door without falling to pieces – and was executed by a mob of the insignificant.
I believe that we will never know now who Saddam really was – the picture is murky, the emotions too, the interest too deeply vested.
I do suspect that he acted within the limits of a war-mongering absolute leader that he was, and that he wanted a greater Iraq, but history is full of such leaders and some are revered today while others are not considered monsters.
Most of all though I believe that his strong-arm rule, while guarenteeing the Sunnis the ascendancy, was a completely secular one that guarenteed the interests (a half-million christians included) complete religious freedom, and as such his will bound the country together.
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Wait, isn’t a) from The Untouchables?
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
Oh we know who he was quite well.
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:37 pm
As the 2940th Iraqi to die last month Hussein is merely another example of death on parade. The U.S. hands over the one time “biggest threat” in the middle east to a band of shiites who the administration claims are part of a soveriegn government. We can go on all day and night discussing how we we are no fans of Saddam or anyone like him. Were we ever really sympathetic to the interests of Iraqis before the war or even now? This is a bloodbath with human pinatas on display for the mob of the world to applaud. What difference does it make that we don’t feel pity for a man like Hussein….? We will always have to confront the likelyhood of more men like him and his executioners (be that Iraqis or the U.S.) to take the front stage for ages to come….and that’s what tortures me.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
All The Best To Everyone:
Had Some Good Luck With A Site Today
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See What I Mean:
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