Saddam captured
 

According to various officials in Iraq (former exile Chalabi, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, Ibrahim Janabi of the Iraqi National Accord), Saddam has been captured in his hometown of Tikrit.

"Volleys of automatic rifle fire echoed across Baghdad as Iraqis drove around town honking their car horns and giving the V for victory sign, witnesses said."

source

[Edit: DNA tests confirm that this is the real one.]

[Edit: Blair has already announced the capture of Saddam]

So! I guess that Bush can checkmate his enemies. How substantial will his popularlity boost be from this victory? How much will this affect the ongoing War in Iraq?

This is a very, very good thing -- the fear that the population has of this man is extreme and his final capture will allow for reconstruction efforts to speed up.

It will also be really interesting to hear what he has to say and even more interesting if he is brought to trial.


But, still, I gotta say the obvious: "You can find one man hiding amoungst twenty-two million people, but you can't find 500 tons of sarin, vx, and mustard gas?"

"Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said members of the Fourth Infantry Division found Saddam hiding in a 'spider hole' about six to eight feet deep."

I wonder if it put the lotion on its skin.

WRT Bush checkmating his enemies, if Hussein's capture is a checkmate it surely should have been anticipated by all the players, and they deserve their new status.

Hillary anticipated it and was all hawkish last Sunday. Her position fits well with her husband's hawkishness when he was in charge.

Lieberman is not hurt IMO and this completes his best week in a long time. I hope it preserves his campaign.

It is so much fun to look at one of the world's major assholes being rudely checked for lice. It is so much fun to see Baghdad residents coming out to the public square to celebrate! This is must-see TV. It's a great contrast to the video a few weeks ago, of people with their hands tied being thrown off of the roof of a three-story building on to the concrete below, of people having their tongues cut out and hands and heads hacked off in public.

Iraqi governing council on Saddam: "He was unrepentant and defiant... he tried to justify his actions."

"Physically and mentally tied but did not feel at any moment apologetic to the Iraqi people or any remorse for the crimes he had committed... he said that the Iraqi people are just a bunch of hoodlums. No remorse for any crimes... the wars against Iran... not even about the Kuwaiti... I think he is sick, you don't believe how sick this person is. A psychologist or psychiatrist should investigate him and check what kind of paranoia he has."

"The 750,000 dollars [found on Saddam] are an insignificant amount compared to what was taken from the Iraqi people."

"[Will there be a change in the timeline of sovereignty?] I don't think it will be postponed... I think it will be earlier... Definitely not later than June next year."

"[Were there military around SH when he was caught?] Two guards, rifies in his hole but he did not use it, there was not one bullet fired. He was in an 8 foot hole and the hole was for only one person... he was living with rats actually."

Story from Fox News with photos of him taken after his capture.

so now what?

we try him for a long list of war crimes? and where do we try him? who sits in judgement? will he be jailed? will he be put to death? is there an international death penalty?

do we torture him until we find out the straight dope on the WOMD's?

or do we just put a bullet in his neck and send his family a bill for the bullet?

Joe Lieberman reaction: "My first reaction? Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!... This is a day of glory for the American military... This is a day of triumph for anyone in the world who cares about human rights and cares about peace."

From the BBC...

Spokeswoman for French President Jacques Chirac

The president is delighted at the arrest of Saddam Hussein.

This is a major event which should strongly contribute to the democratisation and the stabilisation of Iraq, and allow the Iraqis to once more be masters of their destiny in a sovereign Iraq.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in a message to US President George W Bush

It's with great delight that I learned of Saddam Hussein's capture. I congratulate you on this successful operation.

Saddam Hussein caused horrible suffering to his people and the region. I hope the capture will help the international community's effort to rebuild and stabilise Iraq.

You are WAY too much of a Lieberman fan, Toad...you're starting to scare me. :)

Kerry reaction: "This is not a political... uh... I'm excited like every American is that this is the full decapitation of the regime.. I just feel there was a better way to do it. ...I hope we see this as another way to bring the rest of the world to the table... the best military deserves not to be over-extended... there are still great challenges here... bring this now to the world, bring the world to the table and we can transform Iraq together."

"[What about Dean?] In my judgement, those of us who had a way of doing this, but doing it right, had the right course for America."

"Let me just say that I believe very strongly to stand up to Bush and win is someone who has experience in foreign policy who can make the American people confident of giving the American people a way to be safe in the world."

Practically unintelligible poli-speak. I give it a D-minus.

Dean is supposed to be speaking shortly...and Dubya will be on at noon ET.

My wife's reaction:

"It wasn't his fault" and "He'll never get a fair trial, and I think that's sad".
<blockquote>"But... he murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people, and appointed his entire family to positions of power... who in turn murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people."</blockquote>"No he didn't. Other people did that."


...?

Oh well.

She should take a look at this page.

From the Fox story I posted:

Ahmad Chalabi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, said that Saddam will be put on trial.

"Saddam will stand a public trial so that the Iraqi people will know his crimes," said Chalabi told Al-Iraqiya, a Pentagon-funded TV station.

Sycamore's idea that most people will laugh off: An international court under US and UN authority. Cruel tyrant he may have been, he still deserves a fair trial, and I really don't see that happening in Iraq. Maybe I'm not giving Iraqis enough credit to be impartial, but I dunno...

Out of curiosity, how is he going to be put to trial? Since the US withdrew from The Treaty of Rome and pretty much told the World Court to go fuck itself (you know, because we were afraid that the court could be used to try our own people), are we going to bring him stateside for the trial? Despite the fact that this man deserves to be severely beaten, it'd be nice to have some kind of world-recognized trial that is somewhat fair.

I think the real problem is that Dubya will not go the international route -- again.

Saddam will be tried in a US military tribunal, found guilty and put to death. All without the benefit of a real trial. "National Security" will be the excuse Rummy will use.

Let's face it, that's how they do it in Texas.

- Pie

PS: I sincerely hope he is tried in The Hague. That's the only thing that might lend some legitimacy to this whole fiasco.

A trial is partly intended to determine guilt or innocence and there is no question of that here. For those interested in "fairness" I'm not sure there is a "fair" result possible. The "fair" result would be that he gets chopped up into little pieces and that each piece should be given to various Iraqis for them to stamp on. The role of this trial will be to give the Iraqis a sense of how to administer their own situation IMO. I expect they will rule that Hussein should be chopped up into little pieces and stamped on.

I'd actually like to see him toured through the streets of each major Iraqi city, shackled to a post or at least held in a cage with very wide bars.

As for the trial, I think it is somewhat important that the US go the International route just because of the importance of seeming fair and allowing the world to have its say on what happens to a man who very much affected the world. This is not so much for the fairness of Saddam as it would be to improve the image the US has with war crimes trials, etc. Since Bush unsigned us from any involvement with the internaional criminal court in 2002, we don't exactly have a good image with other countries who are trying to bring other people to justice for war crimes.

Saddam
 

What and turn the bastard into a martyr that will be card blanche for every muslim headcase to star jihad.
life in jail,in solitary,give him a lot of time to reflect.

In order to be in compliance with the ICC we would have had to change the US Constitution to allow a force of international cops to override the first and fourth amendments. At any time the ICC feels it has the right and ability to detain and search and arrest US citizens in the US and take them back to Belgium or where-have-you where they can be tried and jailed. And eight months ago they wanted to try Tommy Franks for war crimes.

Fuck that kind of noise, we like the system we already have.

John McCain mentioned a short time ago on Fox News that he thought that Hussein should be tried by the Iraqis and the UN. That sounds reasonable.

I don't think Hussein could be moved out of Iraq at this point...oh sure, it COULD be done. But I think it would lead to a huge backlash by the Iraqis. And a war crimes tribunal wouldn't have to be in The Hague...the one for Rwanda is being held in Tanzania, for example. So, bring the gang over to Iraq...hell, have it in Saddam's hometown to add further insult to injury.

Well, we sure didn't have a problem with allowing an outside system to have the ability to override the US Constitution when we gave in to the deals of the World Trade Organization.

...and you're right -- it is a bad thing that the ICC has the ability to do this. But the problem is that by unsigning ourselves from the treaty, we got a good deal of bad press from it. Immensly bad press.

You ever wonder why so many populations in the world tend to dislike us? Its because, for years, we've claimed that we hate people who violate human rights and commit war crimes. We've gone into countries under the banner that we are going in to stop various criminals and help out people. But, for some reason, we tend to ignore a lot of human rights violators and war criminals. You don't see us marching into Saudi Arabia to free those people from the tyranny of a government that punishes its citizens by removing various body parts and torturing them. We also aren't going there to stop a government that we know funded the terrorists that commited the 9/11 acts. We aren't even going in to North Korea to stop a country that is openly threatening others with nuclear war. We also don't even blink when we do business with a communist Asian country that is violently against free speech. And there sure are a lot of ignored countries in Africa where people are murdered by the thousands when some leader tells one tribe to kill the other with any sharp object they can find.

...but we go into Iraq and claim that its because Saddam is a really nasty guy and is hurting a lot of people. This raises suspicion with the world and its why a lot of people yell that we are doing it for monetary gain and not really for justice. Even worse is that because of our rather shady dealings in the past (Hello? We INSTALLED the man we just captured.) the rest of the world tends to think that we actually do commit war crimes and that we do support violating leaders with money and weapons.

And the unsigning that Bush did in 2002, while it saved us from having citizens detained, appeared as proof to the world that we really are cheating bastards and it underlined the notion that we go where we want to, not because we're out for justice, but because we are greedy.

That's why I think that handling Saddam Internationally instead of locally is a good idea and that it might actually repair some of the damage we've done.

one down
 

One down, one to go!! Bet the 4th ID won't have any trouble getting laid when they get back!!!!

Yeah, we got the bastard, now what do we do to him. The one quote I heard today that I liked came from a Republican congresmen from California, don't ask me who I can't rember his name, or the exact quote, but the gist of it is:

"He's basically bargining for what's going to happen with the rest of his life, and just how long it's going to be."

At least Hitler and his henchman had the good grace to kill themselves. We're going to be stuck with this peice of human garbage for years.

Wonder how many libbies out there would be willing to bond him out. I sometimes think the worse thing we could do to the man would be to sentence him to be chained to Hillary for the rest of his life. Bet suicide would start looking good after a few hours of that.

Re: Saddam
 

I'm afraid as long as he's alive those "muslim headcases" will be trying to free him through hijackings and extortion.

Aside-It's a lie. Delayed news. Actually Bush captured Saddam single-handedly, on Thanksgiving day. He's just too modest to take the credit, therefore this elaborate ruse.

Uh, since when did the ICC, the World Court, the UN or any other international institution mean jack shit to America? Do they realize that damn near all their funding and what little power they have is because of America? The Europeans were certainly singing an entirely different tune when we were keeping the Russians off their ass. My, but gratitude certainly has a very short half-life.

We got him. We as in Americans. We got him and we're gonna try him and find him guilty because god knows we got enough evidence to convict the bastard on multiple counts of human rights crimes, murder, theft, crimes against humaity, and a host of others. And if the death penalty is enforced, he'll get strapped to a gurney and a nice clean needle, which is a hell of a lot more humane than the way the Husain crew executed their prisoners. Or maybe we should simply let him loose in the public square and let nature take it's course. Either way, Husain is history.

Last week, when the tariffs on imported steel were dropped by the US after a WTO ruling against them.

I definitely don't think we should have signed onto the ICC, as I think it would have affected our national sovereignty. And let's see how the signatories feel when one of their countrymen is in the crosshairs.

The US needs the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world needs us. Economically, we cannot survive on our own anymore. Historically, we helped start the UN (and for that matter, the League of Nations). And from a humanitarian perspective, we only have this one world. To me, it makes more sense to work with others as much as possible rather than against them.

The UN is by no means perfect...it simply can't be when you have the interests of 200 nations clashing against each other. But it provides a vital forum for countries to air their grievances and to work together as best as possible to take on issues that could affect us all.

Sure meant a lot to us when weapons inspectors were there and we were screaming that we needed to go into Iraq because they were in violation of UN regulations.

...but then, again, the UN meant nothing to us when they said, "Hey, give us more time. You'll be in violation if you invade Iraq prematurely."

That's one perspective. Another perspective is that the UN has almost always failed to address every major world problem, and so if it really is/was a question of the security of the US, solving the problem of national security was easier and more important to do than solving the problem of the UN.

One could argue that it wasn't a problem of national security, but the President AND both houses of Congress agreed that it WAS a problem of national security. On the world scale, the diplomatic scale, it was the position of the US that it WAS a problem of national security.

What do other nations do at that point? We said, basically, "We have a gun pointed at us, and we want the OK to go remove it." An ally of the US would say "We don't like the idea of using force, so we won't help you; but since you think it's a serious problem, we won't stand in your way."

Instead, they basically said "We know about the gun, but we don't think it's loaded. We know you have evidence that it is, but we figure as long as we're looking at the gun it's not going to go off."

Oh yes, and in the back room, the guy with the gun was making outrageous deals with the naysayers... to basically give them the wealth of the country, as long as he controlled it.

To what exactly are you referring when you use "gun"?

No matter how we handle Saddam, somebody's gonna get their panties in a wad about it.

Fuck it.

I say, give 'im to the Kurds. They'll know what to do.

It really doesn't matter! On the diplomatic stage, that was and remains the contention of the USA.

But if you want to extend the analogy, the bullets in the gun are WMD, the gun is the intent to use them.

Nobody disputes the fact that there was a gun, they only dispute that there were bullets. Last February Colin Powell described the bullet factories and we found them, and we have plenty of evidence of many more bullet factories since then. We just haven't found the actual cache of bullets.

Some feel the bullets might be in Syria, some people feel they are buried in the sand, and some people feel the bullets were just stories about bullets. I say, if there are bullet factories with trucks of lead and brass and gunpowder, that's proof enough for me, and I don't really need to see an actual bullet.

And frankly, a guy holding a gun is danger enough for me to take action. I don't really care if there are bullets in it.

What's your point? We have a shit-load of WMD pointed all over the fucking place. Does anyone come tell us to stop using them? What about the nifty new pox virus we've been working on? The one with 100% kill rate in mice. The one with 100% kill rate in cows? Oh, yeah, sure, that's just for defense, to prepare a cure. Bullshit. It's a weapon. But it's ok, because we're the US of A and we're always right.

America is so two-faced it's sickening.

And as for Saddam... he's fucked. Everyone knows it. To pharaphrase my SO, never ever be considered useful to the USA. They'll stab you in the back when they decide you're no longer useful.

Quzah.

My problem with this is that how the US moves on other countries that are a threat tends not to make sense. Okay, so there might be WMD in Iraq, but the threat of it was so miniscule that we can't even find any WMD or even a trace. Yet, at the same time, we have a country working feverishly to build ICBMs, has threatened us with nukes, and has even launched missiles over Japan to prove that they are a big threat to the world.

Which country to we take issue with? The one where we can find a man hidden in a hole in a ground, but can't find biological or chemical weapons residue.

I do, UT, agree with what you say regarding the UN. They're usually so slow that more people end up suffering while we wait for negotiations.

Well, yeah. Get yourself a couple plane tickets to your utopia and put your stuff in a shipping container.

Nobody's making you stay in a country you clearly dislike.

Live with it, work to change it, or move on.

That's true Kitsune... NK might even be a worse problem. And it's definitely a worse humanitarian disaster. And there are still other worse hellholes and dictators.

Yeah, I'm actually growing really concerned about NK.

I *think* the only reason we're staying off of them is because China and other surrounding countries seem to be enough of a deterrant to them to prevent them from hitting the button. The only problem is that if it stays that way, North Korea just keeps getting more technology and more power as everyone waits it out.

I think part of the reason that we don't go after North Korea is b/c we don't quite know what to expect from them. We had a pretty good idea of what to expect out of Iraq, but North Korea is like a mystery package.

I agree with Kitsune...who was more of a threat? And maybe I was just living under a rock, but that evidence presented by the US regarding Iraq didn't look very convincing to me. I'm not sure there really was any gunpowder around.

And is there something wrong with complaining about our country? After all, if we don't complain about the problems, we could very well become oblivious to them.

Complain all the heck you want. You can, you know ... that's all part of the "it's a free country" thing, that people take for granted. It's when people express outright hate for their country of origin and/or residence, that I get cranky over it.

I wouldn't consider Quzah's comments as outright hate, here or overall on the Cellar. I just think he's a bit more pessimistic and vocal than most of us on the subject.

But hell, let's ask him.

Quzah, overall, how do you feel about the United States?

More Lieberman from Meet The Press:

Ouch, that's gotta hurt!

Enlighten me, UT...this is supposed to hurt Dean? It sounds to me like Lieberman is desperate to inject some energy into his campaign, so he does what he's done best recently: attack Howard Dean.

Oh, I see, "Live with it" is your way of saying shut up, you don't get an opintion?
Second, if America can't even have its presidential ellections held accurately, *I* am supposed to change it on my own? Riiiight. The entire state of Florida couldn't change it. Magicly I myself can?

Quzah.

Let me shatter your illusions and put it out there nice and clear for you: North Korea has no oil.

Quzah.

Neither does the former Yugoslavia, but we eventually went there.

Well politics aside, it's not a bad place to live. The health care system...oh wait, we don't have one. It's mainly the all the two-faced politics I can't stand. How we get all holier-than-thou and say we're "liberating" countries when it's all bullshit. We care about democracy except when we don't like elected leader. (Chile anyone?) It's that America I don't like.

People wonder why the rest of the world doesn't like America, it's not hard to figure out. We doll out punnishment on whoever we please and expect everyone to say, "Thank you sir, I"ll have another."

Politics aside, I have a pretty good life. If you don't count the sending of my job to India...

Quzah.

We could put it another way Syc. From N.Z.Bear:

Osama who?

Quzah.

I don't think the war was necessarily illegal. The wording of the various UN resolutions gives the US enough justification, IMO.

So, no, I don't think Hussein should be returned to power.

No health care system in America?! This is the only country that is truly capable of separating twins that are conjoined at the head! Bring your conjoined twins right here!

And this would affect me, how?

It would increase the probability of a suitcase nuke being detonated in a major city near you, and at least markedly slow down any transformation of the Arab world into something half-decent.

Especially if THIS turns out to have legs:

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
...but it's probably just a fake. I mean, handwritten? Come on. And Niger? Too much a coincidence, too convenient...

We'll see more, I guess, if Hussein opens up a bit before his trial.

So will they take him to Cuba and "debrief" him?

No, worse - they'll turn him over to the Iraqis.

All I could think after I heard this on KYW at 7AM and I was glancing at the Inquirer and the NY Times before I went out was, "damn I bet newspapers hate it when stuff like this happens overnight!"

Fuck what Saddam deserves. Everybody else deserves a public accounting for what he's done over the years. For the sake of history, and for the sake of everybody who died under his regime, and for the sake of all the blood and cash that was spilled to bring him in. While a quick bullet through the head would have a certain visceral appeal (says the capital punishment opponent), I don't think it's the right way to go.

On Saddam's trial:

Should probably be held in neutral territory. In Iraq, it'll draw partisans and terrorists like flies and any tribunal will draw hard-to-dismiss accusations of being controlled by the US. In the US, just as bad. Hold it in Europe (outside the UK and Spain) and the accusations will be a lot easier to dismiss.

Hmm...how about Nuremberg?


On the US health care system: So what's the waiting period for non-life-critical surgery in those socialized systems? Several years?

Sure there's healthcare. If you can afford it.

Quzah.

Steve, to deny Saddam Hussein a fair trial is a slap in the face to human rights in general, IMO. I think he deserves the chance to face his accusers, no matter how evil he is.

In Canada, it seems to depend on what type of surgery you need. I've seen 6 months for a hernia, over a year for a knee or hip replacement.