Posted on 01/01/2007 5:30:26 PM PST by 68skylark
It was rushed and botched (because Saddam was may have been "taunted"). Laws were ignored. It'll just make things worse. And check out the snark in paragraph four -- the author says there's no real difference between the actions of Saddam and the actions of the new government, only a difference in their paths to power.
Personally I'm glad Saddam is gone.
Everyone would be better off if the Sunnis offed al Sadr.
I am glad he is gone too, befor e he could be freed by some Sunni team. It is too bad the idiot Shiites couldn't conduct things in a better fashion, still it was ten thousand times better than being thrown off a building and a million times better than being ground up by a chipper.
Gosh, New York Times, get with the new multiculturalism. Taunting people at hangings is S.O.P. in Iraq. And in most of the rest of the Arab world.
Please, don't try to impose your snooty western values on them. Be a little more broad-minded.
I wish they had put panties on his head or made him pile up with a bunch of nekked prisoners. Screw the feelings of the throat slittin arab street.
The Strong Man expects to die in one of two ways — with a nine millimeter ballot (ie, assassination) — or old age. That has certainly been the case in the Middle East. A public, legal trial followed by court-sentenced execution? That isn’t going to happen unless…unless a democracy replaces a tyranny. This is astonishing news — history altering news. For centuries the terrible yin-yang of tyrant and terrorist has trapped the Middle East. In 2003 the US-led coalition began the difficult but worthy effort of breaking that tyrant’s and terrorist’s trap, and offering another choice in the politically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East.Frankly, I doubt Robert Mugabe will get any message at all from this. But except for that quibble, I think the views in this quote are correct.Saddam’s demise serves as object lesson and example. In late 2003 every Middle Eastern autocrat saw the haggard Saddam pulled from the hole; now they’ve seen him hung. The larger message: To avoid Saddams fate means political liberalization. The message extends beyond the Arab Muslim Middle East. Iran’s mullahs see it. At some reptilian level, destructive despots like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe also understand it.
To be fair, the NYSlimes probably was talking about the Shia militias, which have killed hundreds, maybe thousands (among them also terorists, Baathists and "Insurgents"!)
Saddam was resposible for aprox. 2,000,000 deaths (genocide, murder and wars).
Anyway since the latter is dead (yipee!), it's time to crush the first, since they are certifiable Islamo-Nuts endangering our troops and stability.
Aha! You have a point.
I thought our mission was to create a viable democracy in Iraq? If so, the chanting of sectarian slogans during Saadam's well deserved end was akin to spitting on our troops. Many have died in an attempt to better than country but the executioners' behavior, as recorded on cell phone cams, makes the task all the more harder.
Exactly.
not even close.
this death sentence as carried out is light years ahead of most governments on the earth.
What is spitting on our troops is the international law norms regime that continues to fund and apologize for these tyrants.
Good riddance to saddam.
It's entertaining to me to see how the same media that excoriated the Serbs now feels sorry for the Sunnis in Iraq. This minority group maintained a decades-long tyranny over the majority of the people in Iraq. No wonder the Sunnis are worried now.
You even bother to read my post or was it too complicated for you? How's about I simplify:
US troops fight and die to make Iraq a democracy - Saddam's
executioners engage in actions that make a mockery of US troops' sacrifices. That's a bad thing.
I did read your post.
I think you over state your case.
The idea that the execution was not going to be an emotional reaction is unrealistic.
I would like Iraq to be a 21st century American democracy but I think we should respect the accomplishments of our troops. This verdict and execution is an accomplishment. I think the humiliation of Saddam at his hanging is unprofessional but globally significant to a world with still too many tyrants.
I think we should respect the autonomy of the Iraqis to execute as they see fit. Ironically, I think the mistakes of the Sadr chants made public will help drive the democratic engines of Iraq against the Shiites. The fact that the impatience of the public is manipulated to demean the results is unfortunate in my mind.
I agree with this sentiment 100%. This tribalism was a disgrace. Sadr Brigade retards, who in the past couldn't so much as look Hussein in the eye, taunting him as if it were they and not our American heroes who brought him to justice.
It was an insult to our troops. I do not give a damn about Saddam. I would have hung him myself. But to be hung by thugs chanting the praises of that rotten toothed, shoulda been dead long ago Moqtar Sadr, the ambush murderer of US troops was enough for me to say to hell with all these Iraqi bastards.
I say we take out any who would openly oppose us starting with Moqtar Sadr. To do less is an affront to the sacrifices of our troops.
Regards.
I recall reading about a number of problems with those hangings-- the trap doors were two small, the prisoners disfigured their faces banging the too small openings going through . . . the British were so appalled that they sent their own professional to conduct the future hangings.
Certainly, I would have much preferred that Saddam's hanging be conducted in a more professional and dignified manner-- forcing him to wear a hood as proper protocol even though he refused it, singing him a couple of hymns before the trap door was sprung and so forth.
But the United States didn't conduct the hanging-- they handed the prisoner over in respose to a legal request from Iraq's freely elected government officials.
From what I could see, they conducted the hanging in a fairly dignified manner under the circumstances-- giving him a cloth wrap around the neck before affixing the noose and dropping him sufficiently to acheive a fairly quick and painless death, in sharp contrast to how victims of his regime were executed. Recall also that standard hanging protocol in the Middle East is nowhere near as advanced as what was done with Saddam. Iran, f'rinstance, uses a crane to hoist the condemned off the ground. Syria uses a short-drop "dangle and strangle" method. It appeard that the gallows used for Saddam was built by a professional or at least someone with the engineering know-how to ensure the prisoner was humanely hanged.
Agreed that the taunts were out of order, but they don't come anywhere close to the indignity of being dropped into a plastic shredder.
It is simply BS NYT tripe. Nothing else. They cannot come out and admit they were rooting for Saddam at the NYT all along, so they have to write it the way they did.
The key thing to keep in mind is that they are ALL liberals at the NYT, and liberals are liberals BEFORE they are Americans. That is why so many liberals (including the liberal Supreme Court Justices) are gung-ho for a single world government like the UN.
Like all liberals, they are disturbed that it took two years and not twenty or more to try, convict and carry out the sentence.
Like all liberals, they are upset that the death penalty was actually carried out. Now there can be no more "Free Saddam" signs like the "Free Mumia" signs liberals are so fond of.
Like all liberals, the writers and workers at the NYT are deeply saddened.
I am too.
Saddam should have been handed over the the families of people who were fed into that plastic shredding machine (like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-hnCT6a9Co ) by Saddam and his henchmen.
It's so typical of these people to do this ~
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