Well, now Ken Lay isn't the most junior celebrity in Hell any more.

The death of Saddam does absolutely nothing to legitimize this cluster fuck of an illegitimate, unconstitutional, unwarranted, and idiotic war. Saddam was never a danger to America, but George W. Bush is.

I find the timing quite interesting. If the Iraqi 'state' is so interested in seeing justice done.....then why not postpone his execution to allow the continuation of the already opened trials he still faced?

Because there is a good chance he'd be freed in the coming collapse.

I don't have anything to add.

I just wanted to use this smilie.

:behead:

Some people view the hanging of this man as a legitimization of their efforts in the war they started in his country.

It has been a failure. Nobody has been fooled - except the ones who've been wearing blinders from the start.

And some don't. Speaking strictly for myself, I'm glad to see him dangle from the end of a rope. I'd feel the same if we had never set foot in his stinking country.

Hmmm...I've just noticed my terrible grammar in my above post.

I think I might go back and edit.

Beestie, there's plenty of people who feel the same way you do also.

As I stated at the begining of this thread, I disagree with the death penalty on principal, and in this case, I think it's been a pointless excercise anyway.

I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of people Saddam unceremoniously offed agree with you.

Saddam was bad, m'kay? Now that we've done him in and avenged the many thousands who suffered under his iron fist, we need to figure out if we're going to be able to further help stabilize the region, or if our presence is just making it worse.

These people have been killing each other for a long time. They aren't going to stop simply because we've set up a democratic government. Sooner or later, that government is going to have to go to work on its own.

That probably won't happen as long as they have oil, though, huh?

"Now that Saddam has been judiciously hanged by his peers, I for one an confidant that the whole Middle East situation will settle down and come round to our way of thinking"


which is the sort of thing GW would say if only he could string more than two words together.....

I don't think this is a good argument UT. For one thing, it can too easily be turned against you by citing other genocides which the US (and other western nations) have refused to enter into because they've had nothing to gain from it.

Also, killing him once doesn't really count for all the people who were killed under his regimen. To add to that, once he's gone, there'll just be another to take his place.

Killing the bad guys doesn't rid the world of evil.

You could be right though. Maybe the families of the victims are happy he's dead, but I'll bet you a million to one they'd have prefered to do it themselves.

In a sense, they did do it themselves, as long as they accept and support the newly installed government. Could be a unifying factor on one hand, and the cause of new and more intense bloodshed on the other.

I don't care what America's interests are. In this case I speak as a earthling and a human. I'm against the death penalty. But there are some things I'm even more against.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_shredder

Els...the comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan has been made before. They're both land masses which were forced to become nations by western influences, and yet have been ruled by tribes for thousands of years. There will never be peace between these tribes until tribal cultures have been destroyed. Good or bad? Any anthropologist will tell you bad, and so will anyone who values cultural diversity. On the other hand, it'd certainly stop a lot of people being killed if these countries were homogenised like the rest of the western world huh?

I saw the video of the moments before the hanging. Saddam seemed calm and appeared to be asking questions of his executioners.

I can think of a lot of politicians who would have been wetting themselves in a similar situation. People in this country are conditioned by the media to believe that all evil bastards are cowards. This is a dangerous mistake when fighting guys like the Waffen SS, Khmer Rouge, and various insurgent groups. In a situation where both sides feel that they have divine guidance it can be downright stupid.

I hope this moment was worth 300 billion dollars and tens of thousands of lives.

Cell phone video of the execution.. it will probably be removed soon so if you have the stomach watch it now.. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74199652195562

I get it, he killed people... so we want to be just like him!
Makes perfect sense.:rolleyes:

Saddam Execution Part 1 - The Preparation

Saddam Execution Part 1 - The Preparation

---------------------------------------------------------------

Saddam Execution Part 2 - The Hanging

Do NOT watch this video if you are offended by this material. This is the REAL hanging video and contains graphic footage!

Saddam Execution Part 2 - The Hanging

Welcome to the Cellar, Hypnotic88. :D Another Aussie, huh?
Thanks for the link but Bullitt beat you to it.

OK, the lead in video is much better quality but the execution is the same cell phone video as Bullitt's link

Austin Bay : "The next to last thing Saddam ever expected was a hangman’s noose. The last thing he expected, of course, was a fair trial."

I was surprised by this execution.... I thought they would go through the other charges first.
So, naturally I wonder why?

Maybe, like Griff said, they're afraid he would be freed, if the shit hits the fan.

But, I wonder if this quick execution, was to appease the Mullahs, on both sides, that were worried about a secular faction being in the power mix for a coalition government?

This pretty much guarantees the government will be dominated by the two Muslim factions and, in my opinion, will drive the Kurds toward independence. But I could be way off base....again. :blush:

Anything embarassing to his American supporters in the other charges?

history altering... offering another choice... message extends beyond the Middle East... We should all be thankful... the US-led coalition began the difficult but worthy effort of breaking that tyrant’s and terrorist’s trap, and offering another choice...

Mission accomplished??? Or rather point made? At the very least, a start, a very good start.

Wrong on all counts, Paul. It's quite constitutional, as the Constitution contains not a word against a President fighting a war without Congressional declaration, as does the hundred-forty-plus historical precedents of the Prez sending the troops in. No one has ever breathed a word of indictment against such action, and it is unlikely ever to start, flexibility in foreign policy being handier than bondage, and the general run of America's enemies aren't exactly libertarians anyway.

For starters, stop calling a campaign within a general war a war of itself. That is intellectually lazy, technically inaccurate (and we all know how you loathe inaccuracy, right?), and a propaganda trope of the anti-American, antipatriot, defeat America now lobby. Not a crew you'd want to associate with if you have any self respect [insert Walt Kelly cowbirds pic here]. Surely you think you have more self respect than I do, Paul! Act, then, like it.

The whelming of an ultra-anti-libertarian creature such as the dictator Saddam is by definition warranted, and moral, and is likely also to be wise. This, Paul, is why I consider my views more libertarian, in the real way, than yours.

He was most particularly a danger to our friends in the region, and in that region, friends are what we want, no? We should not be leaving our friends, however iffy they be, in the lurch. This is what costs us political capital, and I think this not merely profligate, but unconscionable. That we hit Saddam now, instead of waiting for the guy to enlarge into an extra-big threat comparable in percentage of world economy to Hitler's Germany, is simply wisdom. That it's wisdom you can't see isn't a deficiency on my part, but more a demonstration of your inflexible thinking, already pretty well shown in these pages.

At bottom, Paul, W thinks more like you than you'd acknowledge, as did Reagan, also not acknowledged. He does, however, have the responsibility of prosecuting a general war, thrust upon us by bigots who are mad at about two thirds of humanity for not being their brand of Muslim, and at which prosecution I fear our political party would prove miserably incompetent. For the time being.

Griff, was it not Kissinger that said of Saddam's Iraq and Khoumeini's Iran that it was a pity they couldn't both lose?

But a pretty good second best was the weakening of the mullahs' Iran. Only nowadays have they started making mischief up to their onetime potential, nearly three decades later.

Now that is some impressive irony right there.

No, not every Muslim in the Middle Eastern region is obsessed about the spread of Islam. The spread of Islam is less prevelant in the Qur'an than it is in The Bible for Christianity. Stop puting all the blame on someone who you have no understanding of.

You seem to have imagined that I've said every Muslim is at least a bigot-in-waiting.

Show I've said that, if you please, or withdraw it and sit down. Think more carefully next time.

I'm putting all the blame on the ones I do understand sufficiently well, thank you. Fundamentally, what we have is a war against the bigots. Just as few Christians resemble the Fred Phelpses of the world, few Muslims resemble the al-Zarqawis.

The matter is aggravated by a massive, society-wide Muslim inferiority complex with respect to European and American drive, success, and our general worldwide clout. This drives the hysterical response to Danish cartoons, for just one instance of what will doubtless become a whole train of them.

No irony. You've given a remarkably incorrect response.

None at all? I find at least a little, especially when the usual line I hear from many is that "violence/war is what got us into this mess" when, in this cluster of the past thirty some odd years, it was "making friends".

I can't wait to find out who we'll be friends with next in the Middle East. What friendly dictator/rebel/revolutionary/resistance do you think we're going to give money/weapons/training to this year?

Better to simply walk away and have no policy; only slightly better, to arm both sides and let them fight each other until they have no fight left. All our money should now go to Canada, to help them retrieve oil from the tar sands.

This got me thinking, in the west when a young man wants to make his mark, be "somebody", be known & remembered, he has to make a choice.
He can buy a guitar and practice night and day in Mom's cellar; he can go to school and become a famous Doctor/Lawyer/Indian Chief; he can work at becoming rich and getting his name on a library/stadium/endowment.

The Muslim kid, in the Middle East, has choices too. Become a cleric and try to build more power and influence than the other clerics; become a genocide bomber; start an al-QED clone, of his own.

Being a contender in the Middle East ain't easy.... and that would tend to stifle ambition to be more than a sheep...uh, follower.:cool:

That's an interesting point Bruce......but y'know there are also musicians and doctors in the Middle East. Playwrites, poets, artists and authors too.

I mean after the Moors were driven out of Spain. :p

"Some says yes, and some says absolutely." -- Walt Kelly

And in place of this (pretty much the standard for international diplomacy for the past five centuries or so) you'd do... what?

That's the problem with the people who take this approach to What To Do About It All -- damned seldom do workable alternatives emerge from these people's minds.

In Iraq? Absolutely nothing. It wasn't any of our business. Regardless of whichever of the myriad of reasons you happen to subscribe to for our "need" to invade Iraq, application of any of them as "standard international diplomacy" is about as intelligent as the current desire of The United States to fight an ideology as an army. Applying it in one instance is going to have negative repercussions for decades to come. Applying it everywhere would be suicide.

I almost said we're the ones that started this mess decades ago, but the situation we've entangled ourselves in and cannot remove ourselves from until we build a stable country, essentially from the ground up, was absolutely avoidable.

Again, I'd love to know who you think we're going to "make friends with" in the Middle East next and how you think we should do it. I tend to think we could have made fewer enemies by leaving Iraq alone.

Sure, but how can you make money that way? war is good business. :rolleyes:

The enemies we've made, were, I think, enemies already without any input from us. Are not the troublemakers a crew of bigots? -- for it is the religious bigotry of our opponents I find their most striking feature.

Never forget, too, how often it is in policy that one is presented only with a choice of blunders -- in which case probably the best choice becomes to choose that blunder from which one's policy may best recover. This isn't a science; never has been.

One should not, I think, be afraid of "making enemies" -- some greedy, sociopathic Lider Maximo will always be found kicking up a fuss precisely because he's a greedy sociopath.

The remedy for these people is usually either two bullets transecting the cranium or blowing them from the muzzle of a field gun. Their sort doesn't quit without getting Ceausescu-ed.

We might want to be careful about sending all our money in that direction. In 2006, the National Energy Board, Canada's regulatory agency, did start to look more closely at U.S. markets. However, prior to mid-2006 the focus was on shipping crude to Asia, with a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast due for completion in 2009. Prices in the U.S. have risen; if they rise in Asia again, the crude will go there. Canada will be determined not to commit itself to primarily U.S. sales.

MOOPS! They're the MOOPS!

-

Of course they didn't become enemies with input from us -- most of the money and weapons went through Pakistani ISI agents, first. I'd say the influence on the Iraqi public and political groups we're having right now is pretty damn direct, though.

Oh, oh, please tell me how we can best recover from this. I'd still love to hear more about friend making through these actions, but now I'm really interested to hear how not getting into this in the first place would have been a "blunder" more difficult to recover from than the shit we've firmly embedded ourselves in, now. What thought process, in your mind, makes this and this invasion and the decades of fallout/political instability to come worth it? Do you even see the same colors everyone else does?

Well, you certainly leave little doubt that your version of "international policy" boils down to little more than memories of your previous military training. Besides countries that present an imaginary threat, would you care to mention what other worldly problems would be best solved with ammunition? Who else that hasn't attacked us needs to have our boots on their soil?

"Imaginary threat" is an interestingly head-in-the-sand way to describe an Iraq that first attacked Iran, and then some years later attacked Kuwait. Real peaceable, real quiet, and a really good global village citizen, wasn't ol' Saddam? Just what would have sufficiently demonstrated his bad character if it were up to you? It's this sort of absurdity that makes the antiwar crowd such a lot of dopes. You can't figure out when force is actually called for -- demanding, or purporting to demand, an impossible, indeed nonhuman, standard of, uh, proof. It doesn't look like getting raped bent over your own rider mowers would suffice. Talks? Not that much negotion goes on during rapes, IMHO.

My position has a more elegant simplicity to it.

What you fail to recognize, and what by contrast I appreciate fully, is that we took Iraq out happily before Saddam could build himself into either the Emperor of Oil, or some new edition of Nebuchadnezzar -- the none-too-smart still try and follow the imperial paradigm, as they don't understand nor respect the virtues of free trade and a world economy so based. Saddam, whose career most resembled that of a Mafioso who made Godfather, crossed with a Soviet-style purge or two, should be entered among those none-too-brights.

Keep in mind: the whole of the human world's political troubles spring from the un-democracies. Democracies not only are more easily richer, they behave better too. The less a country is a democracy, the worse it behaves, as a rule -- and for a clear example, we may look to Saddam's Iraq and the last, er, election. A dog-and-pony show that everyone went along with that they might survive, par for the course for an un-democracy. I don't think you have personal experience of such a social order, or I'd hardly have to work this hard to persuade you.

The answer to your rhetorical question is EVERYBODY who isn't a democracy needs our boots or someone's all over them -- make them tired of being anything but a democratic republic, or a republican democracy.

Your idea that we can change attitudes and fix everything with bombs and boots in other countries hasn't held water for decades and I'm at a complete loss in understanding how anyone in this day could think sticking our hand into the hornet's nest that is the middle east could result in anything other than a disaster.

Your own government doesn't even agree with you, anymore.

This isn't the cold war or a campaign in Europe. We're not fighting communism with an arms race and we're not liberating the oppressed from Nazi invasion. We're not even fighting a physical army.

Don't understand how this works? Here's a simple simulation.

Urbane, just out of interest, how long did you spend living amongst, *adopts a scary-movie-voice-over voice* The Undemocrats?

New video? Reported by CNN Somewhere?

I bet saddam's last thought on the gallows was 'dammned yanks..... that's the last time I trust them.....'

The Times' John Burns:
Wretchard points out:

Nine years, engaged in directly fighting Communist regimes -- particularly directly fighting the big one. Military service, and military living, is emphatically not a democracy, and there are lessons to be found there even for someone who doesn't care to look.

While I consider there is a place for totalitarian organizations as subsectors of a society -- its military services -- the totalitarian model is no way to run an entire society, a nation. Nations behave well, both inside and out, only if they are democracies, which term I am using rather loosely to include republics, and constitutional monarchies. The ones that aren't like that start wars promiscuously, oppress anyone they take a whim to, and make just about all the trouble in the world not caused by large hurricanes and quakes. Is this not so? Cast your mind back over the last couple of centuries and consider it.

And I sampled just enough of Kenya under Arap Moi to get a clear idea of just what kind of game he was running -- and I could see personally just what that did to people who had to live and work within range of him. What it did wasn't good, and it wasn't the kind of good government we can expect even from the most primitive sort of democracy. So it's not all just the Commies, conspicuous in evil as they were -- totalitarianism of any stripe is the problem. Democracy is the solution. The people who don't want the solution implemented are fascists, fuckups, and all-around nasty pieces of work, often sociopaths, definitely sinners. The people who don't object to implementing the solution, but don't want it done just today are weaklings, cowards, and fools who never clearly understood their own interests.

Those who spout about military force not succeeding in making democracy have been at pains not to understand the actual method: the military force is there to remove the coercive effects of the anti-democracy forces, which may be taken seriously if they are armed and organized. The antis will have the strategy of trying to terrorize the rest of the population into submitting to these as the government once again. Naturally, our countervailing strategy is to exhaust and wipe out the antis -- get them too dead to oppress, or too spiritually exhausted to stay that particular course. While this battling is going on, others-than-military are to establish the democratic institutions that will result in better, even downright good, governance. Some steps have been taken in this direction in Iraq, and the antidemocracy antihumans are still stubbornly duking it out, but this action also gives the pro-humans the opportunity to catch and destroy them.

There will always be those who complain this isn't getting done in Iraq -- but critics always count less than the man in the arena, and this should be ever kept in mind. The "insurgency" stays busy, but it still isn't getting traction outside its initial areas. In the end, it's doomed. It will take actively prosecuting it to end it, and there may yet be a more acute phase of civil war in Iraq -- but the end will be an Iraq that is a democracy, precisely because they remember that was what they didn't have under Saddam & Company.

Take a look at America's record on conflict. Promiscuity is not just the preserve of undemocratic countries.

Look which side we've fought on in every single conflict for the past hundred years, DanaC, and for a large portion of the hundred years before that: the side we Americans weigh in on is the side of the greater freedom against the lesser freedom. You have not, I believe, ever understood this.

Wars come from the undemocracies. History shows this. People who read history see this.

What?

That is because democracies have been around for the past 250 years and that is it. Even then, that statement is false.

Romans were a democracy and the tried to conquer the world.

America is a democracy and start shit with every dictator they don't like.

The most influential democracies in human history have started numerous wars, I think your logic is a bit off.

Urbane. Just because your interpretation of history does not match my interpretation of history, please don't make assumptions about what I read. Not everybody who reads history sees what you see.

Incidentally, I went looking at a site that lists every American conflict and found this little gem:

U.S.-Philippine War
1899-1902
Colonial War, War of Imperialism

I'd be interested in your take on this.

Thats the truest statement EVER! We all interpret information in a different way and most times to suit our own needs. No matter what side of this, or most any argument you are on, there is information that can be interpreted so that you see ehat you want to see. Whether or not their were valid reasons for getting involved in this war, they were not what we were told and that is wrong. Even if there was a "bigger picture" that we as citizens were not aware of.

This is actually the biggest reason why many conservatives defend the Iraqi war. The US "put down" the Philippine resistance by force and they think they can do that to the Iraqis.

And were we or were we not fighting the Empire of Spain in 1898-99? And what was their manner of governance? Avoid selective views if at all possible, DanaC, or you won't have the entire picture.

You think one halfhearted and latecomer example is going to disprove my basic thesis? Think again. Also take note of when the Philippines became an independent nation, and how it was done.

We gave the place back.

Ours is a singularly unimperialistic habit.

ANY history teacher will tell you that the US was extremely imperialistic way back when. That's the actual name of the unit for that era. US Imperialism.

We're returning to our habit.