Saddam Swings (Updated)

Roadkill 119 Comments

Like a pendulum do….
Anyone know where a blogger can git one of them there fancy countdown clocks?

Bumped to top

Dec.29 Updates: Some of the response to this news is curious, if not downright illogical. “Executing Saddam won’t improve the situation in Iraq” would be one way to sum up the argument. The New York Times dives head first into the realm of absurdity, arguing the execution doesn’t “nurture hope for a better future” – as though allowing the spider-hole dictator to escape a legally delivered sentence to taunt his victims under state protection for the remainder of his days would signal some turning of a corner in Iraqi justice.
Well, executing Saddam has nothing to do with “improving” Iraq (though it’s hard not to argue that his demise would do so by default). Executing Saddam has to do with delivering justice to a mass murderer on behalf of his victims.
Jules Crittenden reflects on his time reporting from Iraq;

So now comes the part where a monster, reduced to a ridiculous cranky old man, will have a rope put around his neck and take his drop. For civilized people it is impossible not to feel some empathy with any man’s mortality in the cold moment of execution. In my house we have a joke. Saddam doesn’t like Fruit Loops. More for us. Now, No Fruit Loops guy is going to get it. Even more for us.
We all know the enormity of his crimes, and many of us know men and women who are dead because of him. But the only satisfaction I’ll feel with his death is to know that there is still justice that is carried to termination and not cynically subverted in this world. It is only more death on top of death after that.

More Updates – Word behind the scenes is that Saddam’s time is best measured in hours, not days.
Waiting… at Iraq the Model.
Post mortem note – And… the book is closed on one former murdering dictator. CBC made some noise about the haste of the execution, depriving the Kurds of their day in court. Apparently, nobody in their research department stumbled upon the fact that Hussein was nearing the magic age of 70, and the “get out of noose free” card that comes with that under Iraqi law.
Confederate Yankee’s source places the main event “at 4:22 AM… and every media source on the planet is wrong about the 6:00 AM execution.”
Video.
New- WMD found and neutralized, in Iraq.

119 Replies to “Saddam Swings (Updated)”

  1. George, when Hussein was a friend of the US they didn’t want to kill him
    It is a silly exaggeration to say that Saddam was ever a friend of the US. Less bad than Iran is probably more accurate at the time. I think it was Kissinger that said “It’s a pity they can’t both lose”.
    Also it was the Soviet Union, France and Germany who sold Saddam practically all of his weapons back then. The US barely registered on the scale.

  3. I’d feel better about this if Saddam was tried in the Hague, but….
    The same Hague, that useless, worthless entity, like the UN, that after four years of ongoing hearings let Milosevic, the Butcher of the Balkans, die peacefully in his sleep without a conclusion.
    Saddam should have summarily been executed right after they pulled him from his spider hole in keeping with the attitude of Winston Churchill at the end of WWII. He wasn’t enamored with the Nuremberg Trial as a necessary event. Who really was it meant to protect or comfort at that point? He felt that the identifiable high ranking Nazi scum should have just been shot on sight.

  4. IMO you are not ‘left’ of Stalin or Lenin or Mo tse Kate.
    The ‘left’ thought group kills/tortures people who threaten the absolute power of ‘the state’; the people of Iraq were at the mercy of Saddam and his thugs just as the people of Cuba are at the mercy of Castro. All tyrants are of the same ilk; they all rule by force; the people of such nations are subjects; their existance is dependant on the whims of the thug all of the time.
    Saddam Hussein was cruel and evil in the extreme and he preyed on his own subjects with impunity. The power of a person over the life and death of millions of people is intoxicating. Sometimes the brain of those who attain absolute power curls into an Medusa head – evil only and a feeling of immortality.
    People in North America have no clue of how life was in Iraq when Saddam ruled there because we have elected heads of state who are responsible to the citizens of Canada. We had a PM who robbed from us and lied to us about BIG things. We booted him out of power. In Iraq the people had no choice, they had to live in a atmosphere of fear and repression all the time with no end in sight. The people of Iraq did not have any rights at all when Saddam ran the show.
    IMO, hanging a man, who gleefully pulled the entrails out of living people, is a act of kindness to the people who had their souls torn apart while this monster (Saddam) was ruling their country. If he was allowed to live the people he destroyed and tortured would have no vindication. Saddam will never be a ‘martyr’ to the people who matter; just as Stalin is not a martyr in Russia.
    I cannot remember who said “Chaos is the absence of Justice” but IMO this statement fits the Iraq situation today. When Saddam hangs the ‘absence of Justice’ will be rectified to a degree and the situation in Iraq will take a sharp turn for the better for the citizens of that country. Saddam’s disgraceful death will send a message to the people of Iraq that Justice has returned to their country.
    You are on the side of Justice, IMO, Kate.

  5. I wonder if Saddam will scream for mercy as loud as his victims did? Or will he die for the evil crimes he commited (unlike his victims)?
    A day of days indeed. May he rot in HELL.

  6. Revnant Dreams / Greg In Dallas. Excellent comments. The execution of this tyrant is a duty. It is not a task that needs to be enjoyed.

  7. ‘They don’t care whether it is Eid or respect Eid as a religious day. They just want to carry out a wish which was made by [U.S. President George] Bush months and months ago.’
    -Najeeb al-Nauimi
    CBCpravda put this in bold just to make sure we knew it was GWBs fault.

  8. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm
    For Immediate Release:
    February 25, 2003
    For more information contact:
    Joyce Battle (202) 994-7145
    (Right: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.)
    Go to the Electronic Briefing Book
    U.S. DOCUMENTS SHOW EMBRACE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN IN EARLY 1980s
    DESPITE CHEMICAL WEAPONS, EXTERNAL AGGRESSION, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
    Fear of Iraq Collapse in Iran-Iraq War Motivated Reagan Administration Support;
    U.S. Goals Were Access to Oil, Projection of Power, and Protection of Allies;
    Rumsfeld Failed to Raise Chemical Weapons Issue in Personal Meeting with Saddam
    Washington, D.C., 25 February 2003 – The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980’s, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would “probably” include “an eventual nuclear weapon capability,” harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).
    The declassified documents posted today include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration’s decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats. The documents include:
    A U.S. cable recording the December 20, 1983 conversation between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, “In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things,” the document indicates there was no mention of chemical weapons. Rumsfeld did raise the issue in his subsequent meeting with Iraqi official Tariq Aziz.
    National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114 of November 26, 1983, “U.S. Policy toward the Iran-Iraq War,” delineating U.S. priorities: the ability to project military force in the Persian Gulf and to protect oil supplies, without reference to chemical weapons or human rights concerns.
    National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 139 of April 5, 1984, “Measures to Improve U.S. Posture and Readiness to Respond to Developments in the Iran-Iraq War,” focusing again on increased access for U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf and enhanced intelligence-gathering capabilities. The directive calls for “unambiguous” condemnation of chemical weapons use, without naming Iraq, but places “equal stress” on protecting Iraq from Iran’s “ruthless and inhumane tactics.” The directive orders preparation of “a plan of action designed to avert an Iraqi collapse.”
    U.S. and Iraqi consultations about Iran’s 1984 draft resolution seeking United Nations Security Council condemnation of Iraq’s chemical weapons use. Iraq conveyed several requests to the U.S. about the resolution, including its preference for a lower-level response and one that did not name any country in connection with chemical warfare; the final result complied with Iraq’s requests.
    The 1984 public U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons use in the Iran-Iraq war, which said, referring to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s refusal to agree to end hostilities until Saddam Hussein was ejected from power, “The United States finds the present Iranian regime’s intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims.”

  9. George:
    I don’t understand where you are going with your post. All of what you say took place 20 or more years ago under many different administrations. It’s past history. World events change and statagies must change also. Since 9/11 we are in a new era.

  11. “So Damn Insane” only had his minions kill over two million Iraqi’s of all backgrounds, he even had his two son in laws murdered. Does he deserve to swing at the end of the rope? Duh!

  12. I hope they are going to have the courage to bury this creep in pigskin. Otherwise, he may become a martyr to his tribe.

  13. Bazoo–but Hussein is being hung for the crimes of 20 years ago–you overlook US complicity in the crimes because it was under another administration? Has the former US administration(including Rumsfeld) been hung for their complicity in the crimes?
    BTW–Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11

  14. George
    You also need to check out the case of USS Stark, and its aftermath. Rather shocking!
    Cheers

  16. Executing Saddam won’t improve the situation in Iraq”
    Maybe not, but the world will suffer one less asshole.

  17. George,
    As far I can tell Hussein isn’t being hung by the Iraqi government for 9/11.
    But if it makes you feel better – it’s George Bush’s fault.

  20. Banner at the top of CNN.com:
    “Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is dead — executed by hanging for killings committed during a brutal crackdown nearly 25 years ago –- Iraqi TV stations report.”

  21. Yap, Iraqi media reporting he has been hanged…
    It would be fitting if he was buried wrapped in a pig’s carcass…no virgins for YOU, Saddam…

  23. So Saddam has joined the domain of the dead dictators with Castro (he’s still on ice) this year.
    Boo Hoo.

  24. It’s been a good year for dead tyrants. Saddam, Castro, and running a distant third, Pinochet. (I give Pinochet some credit for peacefully ceding power and leaving his country in relatively good shape – very unusual for tyrants.)
    Here’s hoping Kim Il-Dong gets terminal syphilis.

  25. JM Heinrichs–check out the story of the USS Liberty–then ask yourself why that was OK when it was Israel that killed the US sailors?

  26. Saddam Hussein ‘Red Carded’ by his own people!
    Exactly as it should be.
    CBC’s Neil MacDonald notwithstanding.
    The George Bush anti-American CBC spin is on full bore, even before Hussein is removed from the gallows!

  27. I hope Dan Rather and Eason Jordan feel proud today, for having primped their own careers on the backs of the victims of this rotting piece of meat.
    Rest in Pain, funnyman…

  28. The Iraqi ambassador to the UN was just on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show for about half an hour (and is still on the panel of “experts”), and he was brilliant in describing the situation in Iraq right now. I have to give credit to CNN for giving him so much airtime when his message doesn’t really fit in with the usual leftie groupthink about Iraq.

  29. George, don’t be a bozo. It was never “okay”.
    Israel paid six million dollars in reparations.
    You and -the Tribe- always refer to the Liberty but for some reason never talk about the Pueblo.

  30. Somewhat OT: I just looked at cnn.com and english.aljazeera.net. At CNN there is a story “Somali prime minister arrives to cheers in Mogadishu.” On Al Jazeera there is a story “Anti-Ethiopian protest in Mogadishu –
    The Somalian PM arrives as thousands protest against Ethiopian presence.” Interesting.

  31. Anderson Cooper is doing his dammdest to blame Bush and the US for this hanging. Will chretain go to his funeral, to protect his oil interests in Iraq. AC can harldy wait to post the pics of the hanging. Saddam killed over 2 million of his own people, and caused massive hardship on the rest of them. Oil for Food comes to mind. I want someone to tell me why they say the US has killed over 600,000 Iraq civilians. Where are the bodies. If that many have been killed, it is by muslims killing muslims.
    OT, but I have complained to the cbc for showing that black rock all those pilgrims are going around, it offends me, as it is a religious symbol glorifying some religious holiday in mecca. Wonder if all the muslim terrorists have made their pilgrimage to mecca. Burn in hell saddam and your brothers with you. May you meet your sons and grandson there.

  32. Uhhhh George:
    I have read a lot about the Liberty. It remains the most exhaustively investigated incident in US Naval history (between the US and Israel – total of 10 formal inquiries, if I remember correctly).
    Yes not all answers are satisfying…yes, there are still reasonable people who feel that there are unanswered questions…but no one has ever said that it was all “OK.”
    concrete is correct, Israel paid reparations, apologized up the wazoo…what else can be done?
    And even if you still think that forgiveness came too easily and that there was some sort of cover-up…what would satisfy you? The President at the time was LBJ (Democrat)…and almost ever US senator that has since vowed to take up the cause to investigate further – a list that includes Ted Kennedy – have been Democrats. And they always come back saying that there is nothing more to uncover.
    I’m sure someone has some reason as to why this is a Republican conspiracy that somehow involves George W. Bush…but I don’t see it.

  33. George made the following unsubstantiated and prejudicial statement,
    “but Hussein is being hung for the crimes of 20 years ago–you overlook US complicity in the crimes because it was under another administration? ”
    A handshake does not equate to complicity. If it did then Canada is complicit in Castro’s crimes.

  34. Anderson Cooper is doing his dammdest to blame Bush and the US for this hanging.
    Rubbish. I have been watching. You must have the channel on some other network or inhabit some alternate universe. You have lost credibility in my opinion.
    AC can harldy wait to post the pics of the hanging
    And I can hardly wait to see them. If you are squeamish change the channel.

  35. We know him well
    He cannot tell
    Untrue or groundless tales-
    He always tries
    To utter lies,
    And every time he fails.
    The Mikado

  36. Anderson Cooper continues to have the Iraqi UN ambassador on for comment. The “worst” thing that AC did was ask him whether the Iraqi gov’t leaking info to Al Hurra (the US backed network) showed that they were a “puppet” of the US. Faisal dispatched this easily and they went on about Saddam and his horrors, and the painful period Iraqis continue to go through. Mary T you are too paranoid.

  37. Ambassador Faisel on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN:
    “Today is a day of reflection on what evil can accomplish, given time and resources.”

  38. CNN coverage was atrocious, up until the point they had the Iraqi ambassador on. He very effectively laid waste the ridiculous commentary that preceeded him.

  39. listening to 101fm in Vancouver and the announcer sounded like he was ready to cry, made me want to give him a good slap upside the head. ‘course what can you expect living here in the land of fruits and nuts?

  40. Also it was the Soviet Union, France and Germany who sold Saddam practically all of his weapons back then. The US barely registered on the scale.
    Germany was the main chemical supplier for Saddam. However, the 3 main suppliers for arms to Saddam’s military were:
    1) USSR – 57%
    2) France – 13%
    3) China – 12%
    These 3 countries supplied 82% of Saddam’s arms. The USA? A whopping 1%. And guess which 3 countries on the UN Security Council did everything they could to halt the liberation of Iraq…
    My source? A Swedish Peace Institute–SIPRI. The original SIPRI link has expired, but here is a copy of SIPRI’s findings:
    http://www.command-post.org/archives/002978.html

  41. CNN, click ‘ Muslim Americans dance in the street’
    Reporter; All the Muslim Americans here in Dearborn are jubilant that Saddam is dead. They made comments such as ‘now the Iraqi people, and we here in America, can get on with our lives knowing we are now safe, thank you, thank you.’
    And the apologists, like The UN’s (Canadian) Louise Arbour ??, ahh, maybe he should have a chance.
    I bet the Leftstream Media is hoping and praying there is at least one bombing in Bagdad tomorrow. “Bringing Saddam to Justice is making the terrorists kill innocent Iraqi’s, Blah Blah”. Sick.

  42. Maz2, thanks for the link to “Victims of Saddam’s Regime”.
    I couldn’t help but go through all 74 slides of pictures. I was left with the overwhelming thought that Saddam’s reign of terror is exactly to the Iraqi people what the Holocaust is to the Jews. The sheer density of death in the pictures from the link shows the zeal in which Saddam’s butchers carried out the carnage. It was hard to stomach but the pictures put Saddam’s execution in vivid context…a job the lefty media is incapable of doing.
    IT IS a new day in Iraq. Saddam’s death will be celebrated…and rightly so – justice has finally been done to one of the world’s most vicious murderers in a place where lefties fear to tread. The Iraqi people have a real reason to hope for a better future now that Saddam can’t come back. Good job and god bless, G.W.B.

  43. Saddam Insane stretches –
    Can’t wait until Our Lady of Perpetual Misery’s avatar Peter “Cluck” Mansbridge puts on his best shocked, disbelieving and
    angry face on The National.
    The America hating Terrorist lovers that infest the CBC and the Toronto media in general will be in full squeeeel.
    Stuck Pigs of Canada – Unite!!!!!!

  44. the equivalent to roadkill, he thought he was headed for virgins, lots ‘n lots o’ virgins. I wonder if the virgins wear birquas

  45. The trial/execution of the ex-dictator/ruler of a Muslim state, Saddam Hussein,
    is a first in history. …-
    Does medieval Islam have lessons for today?
    Excerpt:
    “the only instance where a Muslim ruler was put on trial was in Samarkand in 1095 when Ahmed Khan was put before a panel of jurists and judges who ultimately charged him, not with bad government, but with apostasy.” …
    According to the classic Islamic view, she said, it is religion that creates the state and the government belongs to God. If God is taken out of the equation, medieval Muslims thought it would leave only individuals whowould do what they pleased. All Muslims also believed themselves to be slaves of God, not man. The rights and duties of a Muslim were set out in the Sharia, it was believed. — Khalid Hasan
    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_8-5-2004_pg7_50

  46. As for the pundits predicting a civil war as a result of Saddams hanging, do you mean to tell me that the Sunnis have been keeping this insurgency thing at an idle awaiting the outcome of the trial?
    `Moderate` Sunnis who happily benefited from the terror parsed out by the Saddam loyalist Sunnis, are realizing any chance to regain their day in the sun has just come to a close.
    Saddam died for his crimes and symbolically for his governments and peoples crimes. If there is to be forgiveness and conciliation between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, my thought is that Saddams hanging will help, not hurt.

  47. I actually tuned into CBC Newsworld this morning for coverage of Saddam’s execution. Silly me.
    The young, female talking head was dour, dull, and spoke in a monotone. But the spin was very lively: that the execution would probably provoke islamic extremists–as if they aren’t always provoked by the most minor of events–and cause lots of violence and bad things in Iraq–as if that’s not “business as usual”. Only problem? There was no evidence of a huge backlash in Iraq. I couldn’t take this propaganda for more than a few minutes. Damn CBC.
    So I checked out Fox News. There, many Iraqis were saying how pleased they were with the execution of this tyrant. (I wonder if CBC ever got around to such interviews.)
    I keep up a lively correspondence with the CBC ombudsman–for documentation only: do I expect fairness? No way! The CBC ALWAYS says I’m mistaken in my criticism. Does the CBC actually make a compelling case? No. It simply proclaims its “correctness”: “We’re right [left!?] and you’re not. So there.”
    The sooner CBC “news” is history, the better.

  48. Randlal. You obviously did not see all the coverage on cnn thruout the day. Almost everyone questioned or interviewed was asked some question trying to implicate the US. The ambassador did put AC in his place with his stmts. The body language and facial expressions of AC said it all. Sort of reminded me of his horrible coverage of Katrina, which again was very biased. And for those complaining about the trial, human rights violations etc, this trial took place in Iraq, under their laws and customs. Canadas laws and customs and human rights had no place there.
    Terrorist muslims have just killed more civilian muslims with 3 car bombs. The biggest problem with all the leftist wackos in Canada is they think that when they travel, they are subject to canada lax legal system. Will taliban jack go to the funeral in Iraq and offer condolences.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation