Posted on 12/31/2006 10:36:28 AM PST by knighthawk
AMONG contemporary tyrants, Saddam Hussein ranked among the most brutal until the dawn hanging ended his life just as the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, began.
Not only was he responsible for the deaths of perhaps as many as two million people, including his own countrymen, he held power throughout his reign by wielding a savagely primitive tribal feudalism on a massive scale. His tools were treachery, betrayal, revenge and assassination and they kept him in power in Iraq for more than 30 years.
Though the 69-year-old was executed after his conviction in November of crimes against humanity following a trial in which evidence of his ordering the murders of 148 Shi'ite villagers from Dujail, whom he claimed were complicit in a 1982 attempt on his life, he had committed so many other atrocities that courts would have been in constant session for decades had it been decided he should be made to answer for each of his crimes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Ping
It appears he went out strong and arguing with his guards who were attempting to taunt him. That is how a Major League Tyrant should go out. Good exit.
Am "I" having a Happy New Year???????......Do bears get lost in the woods?????????????
I agree. Those Sadr Brigade clowns looked like asses taunting him now that he was no longer a threat to them. It took Americans to bring their tyrant to that point.
I support our efforts in Iraq so long as our troops do and not a minute longer. The tribalism at the execution makes me think we are wasting our time with these people.
Regards.
Not according to the NY TImes.
We are. The hatred that these Sunnis and Shiites and that the Arabs and Persians obviously have for each other looks like a congenital condition that will never be overcome.
It's times like this that I look at race relations in the US and think how glad I am that African Americans, by and large, don't hold the kinds of grudges people in other parts of the world do. I hope that doesn't sound like a weird or awkward thing to say.
"He returned to Iraq in 1963 when the Ba'athists managed to overthrow the Qasim regime and turn on the Iraqi Communist Party in a massacre in which the CIA undoubtedly assisted."
Probably true and is the other side of the "realists" coin.
Interesting details in some of these accounts. I wish these newshounds would get back to the business of doing their jobs and ferreting out facts, instead of pushing their ideology 24/7.
This account starts out like the best sort of British obituary and is an interesting read for a while. Regretably it reverts to politics as usual and grows weaker and weaker toward its feeble close. We've been forced to read nothing but factless arguments about the Iraq war since the year before it started. Can't we at least have a decent, witty, straightforward obituary?
Nope, but they also thought Stalin was a nice guy
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