Posted on 12/29/2006 10:32:51 PM PST by jdm
(CNN) -- A witness to Saddam Hussein's execution in Baghdad said that celebrations broke out after the former dictator died, and that there was "dancing around the body."
"Saddam's body is in front me," said an official in the prime minister's office when CNN telephoned. "It's over."
In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said "These are employees of the prime minister's office and government chanting in celebration."
The execution took place shortly after 6 a.m. (10 p.m. Friday ET), Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told Iraqi television.
A power outage delayed the spread of the news to Iraqi citizens. But as word got out, gunfire broke out in the capital's streets. It was unclear whether the shooting was celebratory in nature.
Temperatures hovered around freezing hours after the hanging at the start of a Muslim holy day, and CNN correspondents reported relatively few Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad.
Feisal Istrabadi, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, told CNN the execution was "a very solemn moment for me."
"I can understand why some of my compatriots may be cheering. I have friends whose particular people I can think of who have lost 10, 15, 20 members of their family, more," Istrabadi said.
"But for me, it's a moment really of remembrance of the victims of Saddam Hussein."
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki did not attend the execution, according to an adviser to the prime minister interviewed on state television. Al-Maliki is a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, which was oppressed during Hussein's reign.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Of couse it was celebratory, CNN. Stop spinning.
Chanting to celebrate?
And he won't be shaking his finger at the next Judge he faces, either.
I'll bet it really galled CNN to have to report on his execution.
...didn't Saddam win 100% of the Iraqi vote in late 90's in what I was told were the fairest elections the world has ever seen?
So why are the Iraqis so happy right now? Why did they even find him guilty to begin with?
I love how CNN is so very specific, so very early in the story that these are GOVERNMENT PEOPLE doing the chanting--making sure no one thinks these are just regular folks.
If only they were just as specific in other stories involving spontaneous (?) demonstrations.
If it was Jimmah who declared it the world's fairest election, there's your answer right there! The Iraqi situation may calm down ASAP now that the Baath party remnants realize that the party's over (in more ways than one).
Yes, he won with 100% of the votes cast. All one votes (the one he cast, which was all he needed for victory).
Al-Sadr and Mullahs in Iran will celebrate this too.
It's going to be hard now for the Liberals to posit that we'd be better off if Saddam were still in power. After all, Saddam is in hell, so he can no longer serve as the Iraqi dictator in a way that the Liberals prefer.
It's going to be hard now for the Liberals to posit that we'd be better off if Saddam were still in power. After all, Saddam is in hell, so he can no longer serve as the Iraqi dictator in a way that the Liberals prefer.
I'm hoping you just forgot to add the "sarcasm" tag to your post.
CNN, you're the so-called newshounds. Why didn't your reporters figure out whether the shooting was celebratory or violently reactionary before reporting this shinola of a story?
Temperatures hovered around freezing hours after the hanging at the start of a Muslim holy day, and CNN correspondents reported relatively few Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad.
Wait a minute? I thought there was a bunch of Global WarmingTM going on all over the world ... yes, Algore promised it and therefore it is so ... how can temperatures be near freezing in the desert of Baghdad when they are some 50 degrees in New York City?
/pffffttt rant off
Any references to Jimmah and the election of Saddam? When did this happen? Jimmah said that about the Pallies and Hamas, but I think all would agree the Pallies did freely choose to make their own bed in that sad situation. But wasn't Saddam more or less forced on Iraq?
Note, how CNN avoids discussing Saddam's bloody regime.
The UK Guardian, a liberal UK paper actually talks about it. WHere does that put CNN -- but we already know that.
A thug who used terror and war to stay in power (Saddam Hussein -- "must read")
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1760197/posts
Promptly he led Iraq into war with Iran, a punishing eight-year conflict that left more than 1 million people dead.
War was to characterise Saddam's rule, the glue he used to hold together his country and to maintain the dominance of his Sunni Muslim minority over the persecuted Shia and Kurdish communities.
As the Iran-Iraq war ended, he went into battle against the Kurds of northern Iraq, committing some of the gravest war crimes of his regime, wiping out villages with chemical gas attacks at a time when he was still an ally of the west. He sent his forces storming into Kuwait in 1990, disguising a long-harboured land grab with atavistic notions of pan-Arab unity. When western forces pushed his troops back, he then went to war on the Shia and the Kurds who had risen up in rebellion against him at home. He deployed his troops and his attack helicopters and the uprising was crushed with summary brutality. Graves across the south and the north were filled with the bodies of thousands of rebels. Most of those corpses were only recovered, mourned and reburied 12 years later, after Saddam's fall. The most modest assessments put at 200,000 the number of Iraqis who "disappeared" in the Saddam years.
Actually one giant leap (into hell) for Saddam, one tiny step for defeating the Insurgents (a.k.a. Gulf War III)
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