Who cares now?

The West (the UK and the US) is about to get a control on what was the real reason of this war.

quote:

Originally posted by Purple Saddam was not executed, he was lynched to death.

lol. As opposed to lynched into a coma? Lynched into an epileptic fit? Lynched to partial death?

The Economist had a good piece on this. Don't let any lack of decorum in the procedure of his execution take away from the fact that he was a brutal and ruthless dictator. His fate was decided in a courtroom according to the law. He had a fair trial--something he denied thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of civilians while he was throwing them in meat grinders and killing for sport.

quote:

A BOTCHED war, a botched trial and now a botched execution: Iraq obstinately refuses to behave in accordance with the script its American conquerors have written for it. Bringing the loathsome Saddam Hussein to justice should have been a propaganda victory for the United States. But his execution on December 30th looked less like the meting out of justice than like one of the sordid snuff videos circulated on the internet by al-Qaeda. Had the Americans hanged him themselves, the condemned man might have been treated with a modicum of dignity. His Iraqi executioners had other ideas. Some preferred to tease and taunt him to his death, and then continued to taunt his hanging corpse. In the end it was he who showed dignity—together with defiance and an utter lack of remorse. And it was his executioners who turned what could have been a moment of catharsis for Iraqis into something that looked primitively cruel, more likely to deepen than to heal Iraq's lethal sectarian divisions. It is only natural for decent people around the world to be repelled by such an execution. But neither the bungled hanging nor the many inadequacies of the trial that preceded it should obscure the fact that Saddam was a criminal and murderer on an epic scale. Although many people will condemn his hanging as “victors’ justice”, this was no miscarriage of justice in the normal sense of the phrase. There can be no doubt that the former dictator was guilty of heinous crimes against humanity, including the slaughter of scores if not hundreds of thousands of Iraq's own Kurds and Shias (see article). The megalomaniac who styled himself after Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin also launched two wars of aggression. The invasion of Iran consumed more than a million lives; the invasion of Kuwait set in motion a chain of events that led ultimately to his own country's occupation by America. The tribunal that sentenced him was indeed imperfect. The Iraqi judges squandered the opportunity to show a country emerging from dictatorship how due process ought to work. All the same, theirs was not a kangaroo court. The judges examined evidence and heard the case for the defence. They did not send an innocent man to the gallows. As for the sentence itself, many people believe, as does The Economist, that capital punishment is wrong in principle. This view is not, however, universal even in the rich and peaceful societies of the West. In Iraq, whose people have experienced decades of extreme political violence, a principled objection to capital punishment strikes many as bizarre. The millions who lost loved ones at the dictator's hands expected him to pay with his life, and would have felt cheated if he hadn't. It was not victors' justice but victims' justice that condemned him to hang. Disposing of a man is easier than disposing of a myth. In life Saddam had admirers and helpers even during his worst excesses. The Americans and the French supported him against revolutionary Iran. The Arab masses loved him for lobbing missiles at Tel Aviv. He was fawned over at different times by Donald Rumsfeld and by George Galloway, a left-wing British MP. The danger now is that the gloating of his Shia executioners will make him into a martyr for the Sunni cause. That would be a travesty. Saddam's legacy was blood and misery for all. It is a pity he was executed before the full extent of his crimes could be investigated and revealed in court. Iraq's government could make amends for the mistake of his over-hasty execution by making sure those investigations continue.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka lol. As opposed to lynched into a coma? Lynched into an epileptic fit? Lynched to partial death? The Economist had a good piece on this. Don't let any lack of decorum in the procedure of his execution take away from the fact that he was a brutal and ruthless dictator. His fate was decided in a courtroom according to the law. He had a fair trial--something he denied thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of civilians while he was throwing them in meat grinders and killing for sport.

If he had a fair trial, Bush Sr., James Baker, Ronald Raegan (who's already dead), Donald Rumsfeld and the likes would have shared the same fate.

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z If he had a fair trial, Bush Sr., James Baker, Ronald Raegan (who's already dead), Donald Rumsfeld and the likes would have shared the same fate.

Hardly. They have not been tried for anything. Saddam was. Now you're just being bitter. But hey, I guess you got Reagan, so it must be all square, right? I mean Reagan never did anything positive other than rape and murder innocent Americans.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka Hardly. They have not been tried for anything. Saddam was. Now you're just being bitter. But hey, I guess you got Reagan, so it must be all square, right? I mean Reagan never did anything positive other than rape and murder innocent Americans.

Yup.

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

"Rape and murder innocent Americans"? lol, did you mean
to type Americans Shakka?

I think the reason shaolin likes to accuse the military
of being a majority of child killers and rapists because
he didn't get a reach-around last time they had him. He's
just sore. Ha get it? Sore? Ahhh, I kill myself.

___________________

Electric Zoo 2010! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVE-RutexSE

The reaction in the Middle East has been interesting.

From Agence France Presse:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,1011...from=public_rss

quote:

AT least seven children worldwide have died in re-enactments of the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Television pictures of Saddam's hanging in Baghdad on December 30 were broadcast globally, and a more graphic and grisly bootleg video of his execution, shot using a mobile phone, spread like wildfire on the internet. The latest victim was a boy of 12, who hanged himself in north-east Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the daily Al-Hayat reported today. He stood on a chair and wrapped wire round his neck before attaching it to the door of the family home at Hafr al-Batin, the paper said. The boy had seen Saddam's execution on television. After the Baghdad hanging in which Saddam was executed for the killings of 148 Shiite villagers in the 1980s, Al-Iraqiya public television was the first to broadcast footage of the fallen tyrant's final moments. By December 31 a pirate video of the hanging was already available on the internet, extracts from which were also transmitted by TV channels. In Yemen bordering Saudi Arabia, police said two 13-year-old boys met the same fate as the former Iraqi president. Saddam Hussein – a widely used patronymic – al-Jaki wrapped a cord around his neck on Wednesday and hanged himself from a tree at his home in the capital Sanaa. Three days later, Mohammed al-Razami was playing with a group of friends in Syani village, 200km south of Sanaa, when he attached a rope hanging from a tree around his neck. The youth struggled to save himself but could not. In Pakistan, police said a young boy who tried to copy scenes from the execution video died in a similar manner. Mubashar Ali, nine, hanged himself while re-enacting Saddam's hanging with the help of his elder sister, 10. He tied a rope to a ceiling fan and then to his neck at his home in Rahim Yar Khan district on December 31. His father said the children had been watching the video on television and tried to imitate the hanging when other family members thought they were just playing in another room. A 15-year-old girl from eastern India also hanged herself from a ceiling fan after watching the execution, her father said. "She said they had hanged a patriot. We didn't take her seriously when she told us that she wanted to feel the pain Saddam did during the execution," the girl's father said. He said his daughter, called Moon Moon, had become extremely depressed after watching TV pictures of Saddam's death. "She kept watching the scene over and again and didn't take food on Saturday and Sunday to protest the hanging," he said. Moon Moon died on January 4. In the US, a 10-year-old accidentally killed himself after imitating the video clip he had seen on television, the Houston Chronicle reported last week. The boy tied a slipknot around his neck while on a bunk bed on New Year's Eve, it said. His mother told police her son had watched a report on Saddam's death on the Spanish-language Telemundo news broadcast before the accident. In Algeria, a group of schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old male classmate in a "game" imitating the execution two days after the execution. The incident took place in the village of Oued Rihou in the west of the North African country, l'Authentique newspaper reported. Also in Algeria, on January 3 a 35-year-old woman in the western coast town of Oran committed suicide by hurling herself from a window in her parents' third-floor apartment because she was "traumatised by images of the hanging", a family member said. She had been "depressed and hadn't eaten" since watching repeated TV footage of Saddam's gruesome execution, the relative said. In the week after Saddam's hanging, Algerian newspapers reported that several parents had named their children after the executed Iraqi leader.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by DevilDogUSMC "Rape and murder innocent Americans"? lol, did you mean to type Americans Shakka?

It was extreme sarcasm and Shaolin knew it. I got nuthin' but love for the man.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka It was extreme sarcasm and Shaolin knew it. I got nuthin' but love for the man.

EDIT: Oh wait, you mean Raegan

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z EDIT: Oh wait, you mean Raegan

Sure. Whatever floats your boat.

Haha!

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller