Saddam complains about treatment-(no joke)

The Australian ^ | June 25, 2004 | na

[Flavius]

Saddam complains about treatment From AP June 25, 2004 BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein was being treated with "dignity and respect", the US said yesterday as cable news network CNN broadcast images of a heavily censored letter said to be from the captured Iraqi dictator to his family.

"Saddam Hussein is being treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions," US military spokesman Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt said.

"He is being treated with dignity and respect by the coalition forces and we will continue to do so." He said the respectful treatment of Saddam was "ironic" because "this is a man who is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen".

The International Red Cross, however, is pressing US authorities to release three letters Saddam has sent to his family, as is permitted by the Geneva Conventions.

ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani said "there has been a lot of delay" in releasing the letters.

"We have repeatedly raised the issue with the detaining authority and urged it to speed up the process." One of Saddam's daughters, Raghad Saddam Hussein, told an Arab women's magazine earlier this month that the Red Cross had delivered one letter from her father, who has been held by US forces since his December 13 capture.

She said three lines of a six-line letter were deleted by censors. CNN yesterday broadcast images of a letter reportedly written by Saddam to one of his daughters in which he said his morale was high.

"My spirit and my morale, they are high, thanks to greatness of God," the letter said, before continuing: "And say hello to everyone."

But two-thirds of the letter was blacked out. Brigadier-General Kimmitt said despite proper treatment in confinement, Saddam "has the gall to be complaining". "We don't have him in one of his palaces," he said.

"We don't have him in one of his luxurious apartments that he used the oil money of the people of Iraq to buy. He's being treated like any other security detainee according to the Geneva Conventions."

AP

[AUH2OY2K]

Perhaps we could Clockwork Orange him. Force his eyes open while we run videos of his torture inter spliced with pictures of his dead sons and his statute falling to the ground. All the while, he'd be forced to listen to Kenny G....OK, I'm getting carried away. Forcing someone to listen to Kenny G is torture.

[Texas Mom]

They should give him some pictures of the people he slaughtered and the remains of the people his sons fed to lions. That ought to cheer him right up!

They have pictures of his two sons and one of President Bush hanging on his cell wall.

[txhurl]

Ya know whose presidential memoirs I'm really looking forward to? All eight of Saddam's doubles...what it was like.