Well, the Iraqi's rang in the new year early by letting Saddam drop and swing. Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday, Iraqi state-run television reported. Good riddance.
Thats one down and still one to go, cant they just make something up about george bush and get rid of him to. Then we can all breath a little easier. Maybe they can get him on war crimes or something.
About time. They said on the news they will be showing the footage but stopping just before the hanging.
Then they'd have to go after every nation in the UN that kept saying Saddam Hussein is a threat...The evidence given AT THE TIME showed Saddam as a high threat. We had this little thing happen on September 11, 2001, so he might've been a little touchy. Also, unlike some people seem to think, Bush is not king, and requires Congressional approval to go to war. Congress gave him aproval to go to war. If they go after Bush, any Senator or Congressman that voted for the war, regardless of a change of heart afterwords would have to go on trial too. If Bush knew what he knew now, I don't think he would've called to go to war in Iraq. I like how Bush is supposed to know the future, y'know... Oh, and I didn't even vote for him in 2004...
The fottage will eventually get onto Youtube of him been hanged, infact its allready been on youtube, been removed tho. Its good that he got hanged, he deserved it :good:
See, i just dont get the saddam iraq thing, he was no more a threat than the koreans but they are allowed to do what they want without any retaliation and we invade iraq on the same grounds. it just doesnt make sense. The US and UK tell korea that they cant make nuclear weapons and they just go ahead anyway and nothing is done but Iraq do the same and the country is turned into a warzone. Also Iran wanna make nuclear fuel and there told they cant, who are we to tell other countries what they can and cant do. We have nuclear power and nuclear weapons so it seems very hipocritical for us to say anything. On the 9/11 front, what happened on that day will never be forgotten and it definitely shook my world but having reflected on what happened that day ive come to the conclusion that if you piss someone off enough they will go to extrordinary measures to make there point. So what did America do to the middle east that caused them to react in such a way. After all they could have chosen any country in the world.
The USA or the UK aint gonna start a nuclear war, the reason they dont want North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons is because they will most likely use them on western countrys and start a war and kill us all. Saddam deserved his punishment, unless its ok to go around killing hundreds of people?
The reason we don't like having Iraq, Iran, or NK having nukes is because we don't believe it's simply for self-defense. We believe, based on the way they've acted, they will use them aggressively against us and/or other nations in their region. Sure, we have nukes, but we don't go around waving them as negotiation tools. We're not "Do as I say or we'll blow you up." Actually, the way Iran's been acting, we probably should've skipped Iraq and bulldozed them. You have to understand, a lot of these terrorist groups hate the US, UK, and other parts of Western culture to start with. They hate our way of life, way of thinking, the religions we accept...basically, they hate everything about us, and that's why they attack. You can't negotiate with an enemy that's only condition is wiping your civilization out. Our only "crime" is existing. Iraq, has been a problem in the past, and likely one of several countries that could've been selected for an invasion. Remember, at the time, they were kicking out and/or hindering UN weapons inspectors who were making sure they didn't have WMD's (however ambiguous that is). I think it got awfully suspicious after repeated blocking. Now, WMD's wasn't the only thing on the list, but it is the most prominent. Why don't we want Iran with nukes? They come out and said that they want to nuke Israel for starters. Secondly, their president has come out and said that the Holocaust is a myth. So, for starters they hate Jews. However, they also have a distinct hatred for western culture. Along with countries like Syria, they actively support terrorists. We don't have faith that these elements simply want to make a nuclear reactor to power their country. The problem with these terrorists is that they are more than willing to kill themselve to kill the enemy---which is basically anyone who is part of Western culture. They have no qualms about purposely killing women and children---who really don't have rights in extreme Muslim areas. You have a very dangerous enemy that's not afraid to die. Hell, if it meant getting their entire country nuked just to kill half of America, they wouldn't flinch. NK is a country we can play with, as, unlike the terrorists, I believe that they would like to not die. NK is like the child with the BB gun who thinks he can run things. If need be, we've got submarines close by. If things really get out of hand, Pynongyang would just be a smoldering ruin. As it is, we're just doing import restrictions on stuff Kim Jong Il likes.
No one else was really saying it. The US were the ones who gave that long presentation to the UN about how Saddam has chemical weapon labs and all that. Most of the other countries didn't agree, some just go along with it to stay friends with the US ... look at how crappy the international support was for the Iraq war. Only the Brits really supported and still support the US in the Iraq war, that's pretty much it. All the others' support hardly counts. Hmm, I disagree with that. From what I gather, that evidence they gave at the UN presentation, that Colin Powell did, was spun too much. There's lots of stuff reporters have dug up from insiders in the gov't about how the administration basically looked for and hung onto any evidence they could find that made Saddam look like a threat, and simply ignored counter-evidence that would argue against it. People have written books on this topic. The administration basically didn't consider Iraq objectively, they just had a mindset to invade, and simply tried to construct a case for doing so. Yeah so bottom line is I rather dislike the Bush administration too. Even though, yes, it's true that Congress did authorize the war... well, at least many of them openly regret it now -- unlike the administration.
If you fight fire with fire the fire only gets bigger and so nothing is achieved. I know it is a very difficult situation to be in, i would feel alot better if we had the backing from the rest of the countries within the UN instead of the current stand-off between US, UK V's everybody else. We could find ourselves up the big brown creek without a paddle, as we have seen already in the UK with 7/7 the people who came to Britain as immigrants and then plotted against us from within our own country. Surely we should be looking at our middle eastern policy and our policy with other religious cultures to see what part offends so many. I don't take the view that they hate our way of life. Why would they care? the only way it would effect them would be if their way of life was affected in a big way by our way of life which seems to be more the case. This issue cant be religiously motivated especially in Britain as we are the most unreligious country in the world apart from Russia. I think the best way for me to know what the real reasons are is to listen to both sides of the argument and make an informed decision based on fact. I trust the western media to report on sensitive issues in the same way that i trust middle eastern news agencies. You are shown on the news what they want you to know, not what is the truth. Trust me, ive been in the forces and the reality is different. Happy New Year by the way if i dont manage to get back and reply
Hmm, I disagree with both of those statements. I would say that in a sense they do indeed hate our way of life, and that it's also very much religiously motivated. To my understanding, there are two main points which are at the centre of the radical Islam movement. That would be the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. First, not only the extremists but many muslims in general are sensitive about the obvious state of reduced power and "success" of the muslim countries. They look back to the Middle Ages, when the Islamic world was more "civilized"/"successful" than the Europeans. The Arabs then were flourishing intellectually and stuff like that -- you know, what people generally attribute to "civilization". Then the contemporary muslims look around them now and ask: "What went wrong since then?" "Why is the West so rich and powerful now and we're not?" Second -- and this is where the extremists and the more moderate Muslims disagree -- the extremists think that the solution to the first point is to create better Islamic states. In Muslim religion, there is really not much justification for a separation of church and state, which liberal democracies value so highly. They have the Shari'a laws (err I think that's right?) which basically prescribe how a muslim nation should exist and function. So the extremists want to push this to the max. They feel that the reason why point #1 happened (that is, why the Muslim world fell behind, so to speak) is that the Muslims have strayed too much from God. Earlier in the 20th century, many Muslim states made moves to become more secularized, to more closely resemble western democracies in some ways. The extremists hate that. They want it to go the exact opposite direction. They want extreme Muslim theocracies. It is obvious, then, that the whole Western thinking about democracy and governments is a complete contradiction to everything they believe, pretty much like the ying to the yang. Furthermore, they see this Western thinking as very pervasive. Western (especially American) culture really does infiltrate everywhere with stuff like movies, music, clothes, etc. Also, as I said above, many Muslim countries have been making changes like more secularization, and many Muslims want to go further in "modernizing", which really means making their countries look more like ours. Therefore, the extremists see the West as a huge, evil, insiduous entity that is slowly creeping in and corrupting and destroying all of Islam. That's why they call the US things like "the great devil". To them, we're much more than simply an annoying or creepy neighbor with whom one wouldn't want to be friends with. They really interpret the situation as an apocalyptic struggle of good vs. evil. This is how I understand this stuff, and I'm getting it all from my class which I took last semester about political ideologies. We learned about radical Islam as one of the ideologies. Of course, I don't claim to be an expert, just a college student heh.
the saddam hussain thing, firstly if he was guilty or not, the lawyer sed that the trial was unfair. Even witnesses had their say and no one took notice or anything, the only thing Bush wanted was for him to be hanged and so they just wanted to get straight to the point. His lawyer even said this himself on the news and Tony Blair was the one who helped bush to get him and now Blair is regretting the fact that he shouldnt have been hung and that was not right. He just wants to look like a good man and move away from the crowd by trying to say that he wasnt involved in it. Basically Bush wanted to get rid of saddam and it happened, and even now he said this aint gonna help make peace in Iraq. As u may be aware that yesterday there were bomb blasts and about 60 people died. whetehr he was guilty or not, it doesnt matter, the fact that it was an unfair trila says that they just wanted to get rids of him by any means necessary
he did kill quite a number of people, but then again he is a mere pawn on a chessboard compared to some of them. Hitler, Ghengis khan, Pinochet, Stalin, Milosevic, im sure there are numerous others. Israel kill palestinians on a daily basis and we support them!!! Well thanks to Darussiaman for giving me a greater insight. Much appreciated. I'll read some more and reach my conclusion.
Yeah, but the UN passed a resolution stating there would be consequences if Saddam kept interfering. Guess what? He kept getting in the way of UN weapons inspectors who were trying to determine if they. Wether or not the people in the UK are religious or not, like the US, it would be classified as a Judeo-Christian nation. The US does not have an official state religion either, and last I checked there was the Church of England. Osama bin Laden has stated that we (western culture) are infidels and has a Jihad going against us. Why? First, we support Israel. They say we gave them Palestine, but there's not been official state of Palestine, rather a region. Second, he says that because we have weapons, we have no right to point fingers. Okay, fine, but we're not threatening everybody we oppose with military force right off the bat. Unlike what some countries assume, we don't shoot first and ask questions later. Another point made is that they dislike us (America) being in any middle eastern country. Let me quote something: Osama's case is that we have murdered their people. He believes that we have killed Muslims on purpose. We have not. Even now, in Iraq, we're taking our sweet time to ensure we don't kill innocent civilians. It does happen, and unfortunately, that happens with war, particularly in combat in tight areas. While that may be true with a few cases, that is not the rule. We make it a point not to. Those soldiers that insulted prisoners in Abu Graib? Yeah, they're in military prison for a long time. Don't misunderstand me, prisoner abuse shouldn't be tolerated, but the US prison system is arguably one of the poshest in the world. We don't even have to give the terrorists any rights. Sure, there's the Geneva Convention, but that applies to uniformed soldiers. We're under no obligation to keep Gitmo open like we are now. Why am I pointing out Osama? He's a very influential terrorist leader, so you don't expect him to make idle threats...at least I would hope not. As far as another reason for Iraq, Saddam was supporting terrorism. It was reported that he paid several families who's sons (and the occasional daughters) were suicide bombers. In the case of Mrs. Khaldiya Isma’il Abd al-Aziz al-Hurani, Saddam paid $25,000 because her son was a suicide bomber. An Iraqi defector, former army captain, Sabah Khodada, worked at a terrorist training camp---Salman Pak. He went on PBS "Frontline" and stated as much. Sorry for the late replies, been busy...and tired.
i get wat ur tryin to say but it besides the point that it was an unfair trial. even if he was guilty, and even if it was blaintant, it doesnt mean that u can just skip certain steps and make the final decision. its like in a cricket of football game, if a country like brazil was playing against denmark and ever1 was in shape, ever1 else would know that brazil would win but that doesnt mean that they skip the game and give the score to Brazil, they still have to work hard and follow the steps, just like the case, they should have followed the trial properly and not make it unfair
What steps did they skip? Last I knew, the following was done: -Present Saddam with charges -Saddam pleads innocent Goes to trial in Iraqi court -Evidence for prosecution presented -Defense presented -Ending arguments -Verdict from court Did they skip any of that? I don't think they did. I know they replaced one judge because he stated that he didn't belive Saddam to be guilty. There were also a few lawyers murdered as well.
i dont exactly mean missed steps but it was an unfair trial as stated by one of his lawyers. and replacing that judge, lawyers bering burdered, doesnt that tell us sumthing, y would they be murdered and the judge replaced, becoz they obviously wanted him to be executed
Well, you can't have a judge that comes out openly with a bias toward or against the defendent(s). He should've been replaced if he came out and stated Saddam was guilty as hell. You can't have a judge in there doing that. As for the murder of the lawyers, remember, they're lawyers. Seriously, Saddam has a lot of people who hate him, and anyone associated with that trial was a target. Your right that people wanted him dead: he ordered the murders of thousands of Iraqi's. Not to mention Kurds, and other groups. If the defense was presented, killing a lawyer wouldn't stop that. I could be wrong, but I think they stepped up security after that. It's still pretty wild over there, and there's a lot of vying factions who hate or love Saddam. Any leader of a country (or in this case, former leader) will have their share of enemies and friends. Why would you believe Saddam would be any different. Adolf Hitler, George Bush, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Ehud Barak...all leaders or former leaders of nations. Guess what, they all have/had their share of enemies and friends. Plus, think about how much time Saddam spent yapping about how this was a mock trial and that he was still the president of Iraq.
