BULL!
Posted on 02/10/2006 5:20:52 PM PST by Straight Vermonter
The United States offered to let Saddam Hussein live in exile like Napoleon on St Helena if he would use his influence to end the Iraqi insurgency, a lawyer for the deposed leader said.
Lawyer Saleh al-Armouti said that when he met Saddam in prison in Baghdad last month, Saddam had said the Americans had offered to treat him "like Napoleon," whom the British imprisoned on St Helena island in the Atlantic ocean in the 19th Century, "if he called on the resistance to end its activities".
Armouti reported Saddam as saying the Americans had told him that if he turned down the offer, there was an alternative.
"The other offer was for him to be treated like Mussolini," Armouti said, referring to the Italian dictator who was shot and strung from a lamp post by partisans in the last days of World War II.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad, LTC Barry Johnson, dismissed the lawyer's report.
"This claim is completely unfounded and, frankly, rather ridiculous," Johnson said.
"This appears to be some vain attempt by a lawyer to make it look as if Saddam still has some power or authority over people, which he doesn't.
"All he has is lawyers," Johnson added.
Armouti, the head of the Jordanian Bar Association, joined Saddam's defence team in December, but was ordered out of court on January 29 after arguing with the judge. Subsequently, the other defence counsel left the court and, after another argument, the judge ordered Saddam to leave.
Al-Armouti said today that the lawyers will not attend the next hearing, which is set for Monday, unless the chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, is replaced. The defence counsel boycotted the past two hearings, demanding Abdel-Rahman's dismissal.
"I call for his dismissal because he is completely biased," Armouti said.
"He should be referred to court, to a disciplinary council and tried."
Abdel-Rahman has appointed new defence lawyers and continued with the trial. Last week, he told the court he had received no motion demanding his removal and did not address the charges of bias.
Armouti said Saddam spends his time in US military detention reading the Koran, the Islamic holy book, writing poetry, novels and his memoirs.
BS. As if this insurgency is about restoring Saddam to power. Nobody wants that. Certainly not Zarqawi.
This sounds like something America hater Ramsey Clark would be involved in.
Seeing Saddam hanging by a rope would do more to the insurgency than making him a Napoleonic-like hero.
I think a sizable number of those fighting the US in Iraq are in fact Ba'athists that want the party back in power, with or without Saddam.
They are the ones who had the money, connections etc.
Is this the NYT?
Yep. Treat him just like Napoleon: poison him and let some british doctor cut off his privates so that they can be sold by the doctor's descendants at auction on Ebay in a hundred years.
BULL!
"US offered to exile Saddam if he curbed insurgents: lawyer"
(a week later)
"Army intelligence reports bombing a meeting of insurgents loyal to Saddam."
LOL!
Let's see:
1. Napolean came back.
2. Saddam would most certainly have taken such a deal and hoped to come back.
This story is just that a story.
Actually if you remember, I think it was in Feb. of 2002, Iran, Syria and even N. Korea offered the Holy Protected Innocent God of the Democrats (aka Saddam) exile and he was putting out hints that he might accept. But then what happened? The Holy Protected Innocent God of the Democrats cheerleading squad held a "Guinness world record breaking anti war protest" in Europe after which he immediately refuted all rumors of stepping down (In fact I believe it was the exact next day after that protest he put out a press release stating such)
If the cheerleaders never came out, would he have stepped down? I highly doubt it, but we will never know now will we? Very ironic, or maybe intentional, that these so called "anti-war" vermin chose to escalate the very thing they said they were against, chose to embolden their Holy Protected Innocent God of the Democrats, and now who do they constantly blame for the result? Only now though I suspect they are protesting because their God has lost so much. They didn`t like it when their Golden Idol was pushed off that pedestal and the American flag of Freedom was thrown over his bloated face.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest
All his lawyer are belong to us!
Not from St Helena
But he did come back from his first exile. Similarly we could not be sure Saddam would not come back from exile either if another weak administration were elected in the US. Executing him might slow the insurgency more than anything he could say.
I got a better idea:
Feed Saddam into an industrial shredding machine like so many of his victims were killed by his now-dead-and-burning-in-Hell sons, Uday and Qusay.
"The family that burns together, STAYS together. Eternally!"
BS alert !!
It's an attempt to thwart justice by theatrics. In the grand tradition of the seventies, Saddam is playing his case to the media -- not as a legal proceeding, but as a soap opera.
It's what American lawyers have brought to the bar...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.