SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURED

SkyNews ^ | December 14, 2003 | Staff

[Bubba_Leroy]

SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURED

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured in his home town of Tikrit, according to reports.

There has been no independent verification of the news but Sky New's Foreign Editor Tim Marshall says the source of the news is usually reliable.

The US Defence Department says it has had no confirmation of the claims, which come from Iraqi Kurd leader Jalal Talabani, says the Iran news agency IRNA.

Hundreds of exultant people have taken to the streets of Kirkuk, firing weapons into the air in celebration.

A press conference has been announced for 12pm GMT.

In Baghdad, a spokeswoman for the US-led operation notified reporters that a "very important" announcement will be made at the press conference.

[JulieRNR21]

This morning when I heard that a white and orange taxi cab parked outside of Saddam's hiding hole, it rang a bell for me. I remember that it had been reported by someone on one of the cable news stations about a month ago, so I had to see if I could find that info. I did not find the cable news report, but I did find this article dated Nov. 10, 2003

Quote: "Tikrit has been the center of much speculation about Saddam as well. There is a lot of anxiety among Iraqis over where he might be and how much power he retains. People think maybe he returned to Tikrit. I even heard one rumor that he is driving a taxi cab."Unquote

You have a phenomenal memory...thanks!

[Radix]

Re: Your post here #917

Touching.

TY!

[joanie-f]

I was invited to attend a rally in Lancaster today to celebrate Hussein's capture (Yes, even contending with a nor’easter, we Pennsylvanians are a hardy bunch :), but am not able to leave the house (a little under the weather just now). Do I know how to choose my times to be sub-weather or what?! Drat!

E-mailed this to a liberal friend today in response to a ‘Yeah, but they still haven’t found any WMDs’ message from him:

No matter what one thinks of the American presence in Iraq, it is beyond my comprehension how any American cannot view today’s news as glorious.

No, we haven’t ‘stopped the threat of terrorism’. Not even close. There are so many madmen out there, so many weapons (and potential weapons) of mass destruction, and so many easy methods with which to disseminate them, that I’m afraid terrorism is here to stay. It’s the price we humans are going to pay from here on in for the deadly combination of scientific progress and burgeoning violent/militant/radical ideologies.

But does that mean we should simply throw up our hands in dismay and take to basket weaving?

I had (and still do) mixed emotions about our invasion of Iraq. I believed (and still do) that the stated reasons were other than expressed by the administration (although I do not believe the reasons were as duplicitous as you do). I believe that an over-riding reason (although not the only one) which dragged us into Iraq was the pre-emptive protection of Israel, in which I very strongly believe. Yet, the fact that the administration has not been honest enough to lay that reason on the table, no matter the political repercussions, has not sat well with me for nine months.

Another reason I was not necessarily in favor of our incursion is the fact that, as bad as Hussein’s atrocities (and threat of more of the same) have been, I believe there are more delicate/flammable regimes that require our attention – with North Korea sitting much higher on the list. (I truly believe that Kim Jong-Il has already reprocessed, or will soon, thousands of spent fuel rods, and could well have possibly six nuclear warheads at his disposal. I worked in the design of nuclear fuel elements in the seventies. Reprocessing fuel rods into plutonium isn’t that difficult, or time-consuming, a process).

With that said …. having gone into Iraq, we cannot now leave. Our history is replete with international jobs left half done – not the least of which was Bush I’s promise to carry through after the Gulf War, leaving many thousands of revolutionary Iraqis who took him at his word as sitting targets for Hussein’s killing machine.

As for the weapons of mass destruction, I do not believe that was the over-riding reason for our incursion into Iraq. But neither do I believe that they did not exist in pre-war Iraq. The simple behavior of Saddam prior to our actions spoke volumes. Had he not been producing WMDs, he would have been forthcoming with UN inspectors – and he was anything but. Many mobile labs, and the like, whose sole purpose is the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons, have been discovered. The fact that the weapons themselves have not simply means that they have been moved (most likely to either Syria or Iran).

Yet the capture, and hopefully the eventual execution, of Hussein cannot be downplayed. He is a mass murderer of the worst sort – one who saw fit to brutally, often under extremely torturous circumstances (which served no purpose other than the satisfying of an abominably sadistic nature), murder hundreds of thousands of his own people. Had Hussein and his bloody Ba’athist network remained in power, his legacy might eventually have rivaled the killing fields of Cambodia. Surely the need for mass graves would have continued under the administrations of all of the current democrat presidential candidates, or under the watchful, but relatively disinterested, eyes of the UN or EU.

Were I the mother, or wife, or sister, or daughter of one of the three hundred or so Americans who have died since the war began, I might be looking at the reasons for, and the current results of, this war with a much more justifiably jaundiced eye. My heart breaks for the survivors of our war dead. But I do believe that, even under such heartbreaking circumstances, I would be cheering today’s capture of one of the most brutal tyrants in the history of mankind.

How satisfying to see the creature who built himself multi-million dollar palaces, trimmed in gold, while most of his people lived in abject poverty, finally discovered living like an animal in a coffin-like hole in the ground.

I always knew he would receive justice after this life. But am so much more content to know that he will also receive punishment in the here and now. Yet what form of punishment could possibly be commensurate with the torment he unleashed on hundreds of thousands of his own, and the plans he no doubt had to extend the suffering beyond his own borders?

God bless all American and coalition troops. God bless the 4th ID!

~ joanie

[ChemistCat]

This towel? (Can be had at Stupid.com, too!)

[Radix]

I wonder why the moderators pulled this thread from Breaking News..

Did they?

I often wonder about our FR Moderators myself.

I am beginning to figure some FR.com things out. The Moderators, are apparantly, a lot like us non-Moderators. They are just inflicted with the burden of trying to be moderate.

I would not ever want to be a Moderator. I could never put up with posters such as myself. I would not have the patience. Zots would abound, that is for sure!

[Lazamataz]

I would not ever want to be a Moderator. I could never put up with posters such as myself. I would not have the patience. Zots would abound, that is for sure!

This comment just earned you a zot.

[Maria S]

"Some of the posters at DU are traitorous thugs..."


Some probably are...but many of them seem to have the IQ of rocks! They misspell words, and they offer incredibly stupid opinions. I noticed a couple of threads on whether or not the man captured was the 'real' Hussein. They seemed to think his 'after' pictures didn't show enough gray hair, his face wasn't thin enough, etc.

[Maria S]

Exactly WHERE is "Big Earl's College of Law and Automotive Mechanics" located? Somewhere around Big Springs, maybe?

At any rate, if lawyering don't work out for you, I hear mechanicing pays big bucks.


LOL!

[Pukin Dog]

I have spent more time on DU today than I have on FR. My head is spinning from the depths of depravity displayed over at DU. What a great bunch of nutcases. I hope that the trend of quoting those idiots on other web sites continues, and that their nonsense is on display for all to see. Now and then, you get one rational person warning others to hide their contempt today, but overall, the place just overflows with hatred based on nothing but ignorance and stupidity.

[BulletBobCo]

Does anyone out there know how many are left not caught on the deck of cards?

[BJClinton]

Ah. Makes sense.

[DollyCali]

You are joking, of course...

(aren't you???)

[Merdoug]

No. I'm not. I feel sorry for him. I guess I have too much liberal in me. :)

[jocon307]

I will answer you as a loyal bushbot, that I really am.

You are correct, Bush is wrong on some subjects. Immigration, wrong. So-called "Campaign Finance" way wrong. He should have vetoed it, for sure. And the Supreme Court Justices who voted for it have NO excuse, after all, they're supposed to be geniuses and Bush is supposed to be a dope. Prescription drugs, don't know, probably wrong. And sure, I'd like the Feds to give up the feed the children, buy the pills for the old people crap and just DEFEND OUR BORDERS.

Having said that, I have to say that Bush has been a great leader since 9/11. You have to remember how many,many, many times the Islamofascists have hit us over the last 30 years, from RFK to 9/11. We really never hit back. Even Gulf War I was a defense of our ally, even if it was in our own interest to do so. All that restraint and we got Sept. 11th, the brutal murder of as many Americans as possible. Innocent people who had done nothing but go to work that day. Children and babies and elderly people brutally and heartlessly murdered. They would have plunged that 4th plane into the Capitol too and completely wrecked havoc with our entire government except for the brave actions of the men on the plane.

Now you may not think Saddam had anything to do with any or all of the actions of the Islamofacists, but President Bush did. And he was not the only one. PM Blair agreed with his assessment. Now, either these guys get some good info that you and I are not privy too, or they don't, but they most likely do.

The best sign that this was a good move is the news that Arafat is, a la Tom Daschle, deeply saddened. My feeling on this is that Bush thought this was the thing to do, Saddam was a pig and a constant danger, there were 101 good reasons for getting rid of him, and now he's gone.

I could be a Buchannanite too (I'm not saying you're one, don't misunderstand), but I'm afraid it's impossible to be such in the year 2003. We do live in a global village now. We better strive hard to make the neighborhood a place we enjoy living in. Getting rid of the biggest Muslim bullies is a good place to start.

And with all that said, I'll admit it, I sort of felt sorry for Saddam today too. And relieved he showed the sense to just surrender, and that he was taken by Americans, who won't just slaughter him. I'm like Stalin, who felt that the Nazis deserved a trial before their exectuions.

[ChemistCat]

It's a reasonably stated version of the usual troll position...and there's a case to be made there, if one completely forgets 9/11 and refuses to see the clear link between states like Saddam's and the evolution of Islamic terrorism.

It's the Clinton attitude that if you just give lip service to true self-defense, and otherwise ignore the bad guys, or insist on an unreasonably high burden of proof first (unless you're in trouble for getting Lewinskys in the Oval office) they'll go away on their own. Mouth some harsh rhetoric condemning a bombing and the loss of innocent life, and go back to your golf game or mistress--gosh, it's not like there won't be someone else along to clean up the mess, right? You only get 8 years at most, so leave it to the next guy....

It's like telling a rape victim not to testify...sooner or later the perp will change his ways on his own, and not rape anyone else. Someone else will fix the problem. I'm BUSY.

What we did for Iraq is the best thing any country has EVER done for any other country, and if the libs can't see it, that's too bad. They can keep worrying about the WMD, the supposed erosion of civil rights (I personally haven't experienced any) and political purposes. This was pure goodness, and it has the added advantage of being pragmatic. Nobody is going to mess with us again soon, thinking they can get away with it. They WILL be assuming accounting will follow. We're not safe, but we're safer.

[Timeout]

[ChemistCat]

I just forgave you the Kool-Aid comment this morning. That's terrific. Thanks!

[Merdoug]

If the US is threatened by another country, I say go get 'em. Osama Bin Laden attacked us and we kicked his butt in Afganstan. HE WAS a threat. He attacked us. The evidence of Saddam's connection to terrorism is less than the Saudis, but we AREN'T attacking their country, are we? Why? North Korea is a bigger threat, in my opinion, than Saddam ever was, but we have done nothing about them. China is a threat, but we're buddy-buddy with them because OUR companies are using it's people as slaves so we can by $30 DVD players, while Taiwan is hung out to dry.
You are right; there may be information that our government knows that we do not. However, I WILL NOT follow blindly into a war for a political party no matter WHICH party it is. The "good guys" can use their followers just as well the "bad guys". Actually, I don't see much difference between the two parties, but that's another thread! :)