Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hanging...

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Indeed. Certainly illustrates just how badly 'infiltrated' the Iraqi government is; when the people executing Saddam (who presumably are considered trustworthy) are chanting al-sadr's name, it's not a good sign.

 

AMaster,
it illustrates something different IMO. That the Shia were taunting Saddam is unsurprising. That the US went along on this is what's remarkable. The US hand is looming large over all of this. The Iraqis know that very well. The US have been the indispensable ingredience making this spectacle possible in the first place. I just read someone saying very sensible about it, namely:

Saddam was a POW. It is very important to understand that. Just like Göring, Kaltenbrunner or Keitel before him. He was a former head of state, the Commander in Chief of the enemy army in the Iraq war, ultimately a soldier. Soldiers taken prisoner by an enemy army are POWs. What the US did with Saddam is quite a descend from the US stance at Nuremberg.
It is utterly irrelevant wether anyone thinks he deserved POW status or not, Keitel certainly didn't, as did Kaltenbrunner or Göring. Status is not a question of what you deserve. Nuremberg showed that you can execute a villain without making a thug out of yourself.
But then, Nuremberg also called war of agression 'the supreme crime'. Nuremberg also raises the question of universal jurisdiction. Maybe that are some of the reasons why the Bush men were hesitant adopting that template. As the saying goes, Justitia's sword is two-edged.

The man I quoted has it right about the legal options the US had at their disposal but refused to utilise, and he had it right morally. Call it Texan style, or maybe Bush needed to have another 'triumph', in the roman sense of the word. It reminds me of Vercingetorix' fate. In case of the latter, I hope someone's whispering in Bush's ear not to forget that he's not a god. Hear me, Barney? Bush's father had the good taste to limit himself to a confetti parade in New York. What a descend there as well.

The glee displayed in some of the posts and the whole spectacle of the execution make me sick.

[ January 02, 2007, 11:23: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

The Stupidityof the way it was done is staggering. This could have been done in a decent way, because face it, the man deserved to die, but the way it was done has turned him into a martyr.

everyone will remember his trial as a injust biased trial. a sham trial. and regardless of the mans actual crimes, this will be what is remembered.

the execution is even worse, what will be remembered is not the death of an evil dictator, its the Death of a sunni "hero", hell a muslim hero, in the hands of american lapdogs. sad but true.

 

In addition to the issues of the sham trial of a brutal tyrant, I thought it was considered 'harem' to execute someone on Eid al-Adha?

Edit: I was just thinking, would the Americans that are celebrating Saddams death, would they support similar punishment for the marines that gangraped a 12 yearold girl and slaughtered her family?

[ January 02, 2007, 14:11: Message edited by: Cúchulainn ]

 

As a postscriptum ... the little salient point that I didn't write down in my last post when I elaborated that Saddam was a POW, and as such, as a result of his status, under the rules and protections of the Geneva Conventions - was that that means that the US, that is the Bush administration, in actively helping to get him executed in the denigrating way he was very likely committed a war crime.

But under Bush's 'bold leadership' neither treatment of POWs nor adherence to the UN charter or Geneva Conventions have exactly been America's strong points. It has and will as long as it continues cost America dearly. What an idiocy.

 

... and your point is?

 

I thought it had spoken for itself. Its a quote from a blog I came across, criticizing anyone that speaks out against they way Saddam was executed. Sadly this is far from unique.

 

Two points here:

1. I think "celebrating" is much too strong a word. I don't know anyone (American or otherwise) who is celebrating his death. It is true that many people think he got what he had coming to him, but there is a difference between celebrating a death, and feeling that a death was deserved. To be honest, most people in the U.S. didn't even talk that much about his death. It had a one minute piece in the nightly news, and that was it. The fact is, as soon as the trial began, the outcome was fait accompli.

2. I don't know anyone who supports the soldiers raping that girl. As a result, since most places in the U.S. have capital punishment for murder, yes, most U.S. citizen would feel the same way about the U.S. soldiers being executed as they did about Saddam. However, that takes my back to my first point - most people would feel that the soldiers got what they deserved - but they wouldn't be celebrating.

 

I know no-one in the US supports the individual Marines that raped the little girl, but I just wanted to know if the punishment for Saddam, a brutal tyrant received would be too 'inhuman' for US citizens.

There are some religious idiots here that seem happy that Saddam died the way he did. I do not think they have the right to celebrate/be happy because Saddam committed crimes against his own people, not 'the West'.

 

exactly.. how can you have fair elections in a country run through religion?, the US knew this when they built the intrim government, fielding shia muslims in a country that was majorly shia, who would win in an election? the shia, the US's puppet government, this was planned from the beginning, making it seem like there was a democracy, when infact a new prediction system was put in place

also there were no foriegn monitors of the election, it was probably the easiest election to rig in history.

its also worth noting that many minorities boycotted the election knowing full well that it would be a fix

and as for how i wanted it to go? i didnt care one way or the other, all i wanted to see was a credible election.

 

I am not sure of the current breakdown of the states with and without the death penalty, but I did find this:
From January 1, 1977, to December 31, 2000, 683 executions took place in 31 States. Sixty-five percent of the executions occurred in 5 States: Texas (239), Virginia (81), Florida (50), Missouri (46), and Oklahoma (30).

Not sure how many of those were US citizens, but I would bet that the majority of them were.

Unless you meant the form of the execution? If so, the last hanging execution I could find was in 1996 in Delaware, so it has been 10 years since we rolled out the gallows...not sure much can be interpreted from that.

 

Yeah, that was a strange circumstance - the accused actually requested that the death sentence he received was by hanging, as that was how he killed his victims. Evidently, there is a law that if you are given the death penalty, you can request any of the common forms of which that sentence can be carried out.

 

Rags, it illustrates your point as well.

Correct. What's surprising--or at least noteworthy--is that some of his executioners were praising moqtada al-sadr's name.

 

I'm not sure what you are driving at here - usually the majority wins the election - that's the idea of having an election in the first place. First you comment that the shia are the majority, then you imply that the election was "fixed." In a situation where the majority wins an election, that's winning the election (in most cases); if the minority wins an election, like Saddam winning with just the Sunni vote, that would be a "fix." Perhaps it's just the "majority wins" situation that troubles you here.

That the Shia have won the election - and control the government - is actually bad thing for America. If what you really mean to comment on here is that the administration did not think this whole election thing out, then you are absolutely, 100 percent correct. If Iran was member in good standing in the "Axis of Evil" club, then all the Bush administration has accomplished is trading the Saddam regime for an expansion of the Iranian corridor right through the center of the Middle East. Smart guys, those Bush people.... And the Iranians are the ones (or close to having) the nukes; - "mushroom clouds" anyone?

[ January 03, 2007, 05:04: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

I'm getting more and more pissed off about this now. Honestly - how ****ing stupid do you have to be to not treat the leader of a large group of people that you are about to execute with some respect?

Yes, Saddam did some terrible things. You could at least let him finish his ****ing prayer.

 

It's bad for Iraq; the Sunnis are not going to accept a Shia-dominated government. Period.

For that matter, the Kurds won't either.

 

if they are not going to accept that the majority decides, in this case the shia, in a democracy, they ain’t really ready for it, are they?

now does guys have a couple of options that basically boils down, to start ignoring religion and race in politics. or keep fighting to either they wipe out each other or they get so tired of war, that they learn the first option.

 

The kind of democracy that we're inflicting on them is not the sort that they're going to appreciate. What works for Western nations has no chance of working in Iraq - the political climate there is so vastly different that the idea of doing a direct port of democracy to there is absurd.

There isn't a 'one size fits all' solution to the world's problems (or if there is - modern democracy is not it).

 

So what does this bode for a nation such a France? With an ever increasing Islamic population, and ethnic/religious violence seeming to be on an accelerating curve, does France need to change its form of government to accommodate it populace?

I heard on the news today that they are averaging 200 burned cars and 15 injured law officers a day all attributed to unrest in the Islamic community.