Wow Sadam Arrested?

[Sip]

so what?

 

nothing changed for people

 

nothing changed for bombings

I think the best that could have happened happened. Nothing worse than your fanatic followers watching you crawl out of a hole, bend over, and be captured by your "worst" enemy. The ass didn't even have the decency to put a bullet into his own head. What a whimp.

[Sip]

There were two highly televised wars wit Iraq in the last decade or so.  Did you see any US made weaponry in Iraq's possession or would you think that anytime the cameramen came across them, they turned the camera away"  Just a rhetoric question to make a point.

Point taken though no matter which way you look at it, I don't see how anyone can take the side of Sadam's regime. Even if US giftwrapped and sent M16's or even chemical weapons to Sadam with a bow on them doesn't change the fact that he was not interested at all by playing according to international rules and agreements.

[sev-mard]

I think the best that could have happened happened. Nothing worse than your fanatic followers watching you crawl out of a hole, bend over, and be captured by your "worst" enemy. The ass didn't even have the decency to put a bullet into his own head. What a whimp.

I agree wholeheartedly. Any true hardcore megolomanical dictator would have taken himself out. He looked so defeated and bewildered. I don't know how it will turn out, but i'd be suprised if his remaining followers weren't shook up by his easy, uneventful capture.

[Sasun]

Other than being a coward there are other possibilities why Saddam didn't kill himself:

1) He wishes to go on a publicly known trial and expose other countries and leaders that have had anything to do with the crimes that he is being accused for. A few days before the war broke out he had challanged Bush to have an open televised conversation. Obviously there was something he wanted the American public to know (that could be a lie or a truth)

2) He wishes to prove that he didn't actually have WMD as a matter of principle or for spite, no matter what happens next.

3) There is a likelihood that even if convicted of all the crimes he may stay alive. After the Americans eventually leave Iraq the political situation may turn out to be favorable for his return to power. I imagine the jail where he will serve his life sentence will be located in Iraq most likely.

 

P.S. By the way, suicide is also is a sign of cowardice most of the time.

[sev-mard]

Point(s) well stated Sasun. But in the case of psychotic dictators like Saddam it's almost more story-like, ie fitting, that they either go out shooting or take themself out rather than suffer through the public trial and imprisionment at the hands of their hated enemies. This is normally their rethoric of course.

But your ideas about his wishes might actually hold some weight. Not a bad idea if he does go on trial and expose people. Or end up living a jailed, simple existence in Iraq for the rest of his days.

Edited December 17, 2003 by sev-mard

[Armo77]

http://cagle.slate.msn.com//news/SaddamCaptured/Saddam031217/duffy.jpg

[CrystalHye]

After the Americans eventually leave Iraq...........

 

 

Sasun, I personally don't think that Americans are EVER going to leave Iraq. See, thats the thing with Americans, they never LEAVE. They set up a base there and stay FOREVER. Qatar for example, Americans have a base there since the Persian Gulf War. WHY???? Americans STILL have soldiers in Germany---hmm..---when was WORLD WAR II over???..... Thats the reason that nobody wants American soldiers in their country!!!!!! THEY NEVER LEAVE!!!

 

 

 

P.S. Besides, Americans will probably stay in Iraq for A LONG time because they are trying to start something against Iran and Iraq is a nice Front for them. Don't you guys think so?

[Dan]

Sasun, I personally don't think that Americans are EVER going to leave Iraq. See, thats the thing with Americans, they never LEAVE. They set up a base there and stay FOREVER. Qatar for example, Americans have a base there since the Persian Gulf War. WHY???? Americans STILL have soldiers in Germany---hmm..---when was WORLD WAR II over???..... Thats the reason that nobody wants American soldiers in their country!!!!!! THEY NEVER LEAVE!!!

 

P.S. Besides, Americans will probably stay in Iraq for A LONG time because they are trying to start something against Iran and Iraq is a nice Front for them. Don't you guys think so?

VERY well said, CrystalHye.

[MJ]

This might go into the humor section, but given the pace, Hye Forum may turn into Humor Forum, anyway, so it may go in any tread, I guess:

 

 

"We can make them [saddam and other regime members] listen to rap music 24 hours a day until he absolutely goes out of his mind," former CIA operative Wayne Simmons told Fox News. "The key is, we don't want to go that way," but interrogators will want to establish a personal relationship with Saddam to make sure he responds to questions and, among other things, make sure at least one interrogator is fluent in Arabic.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105985,00.html

[Vigil]

I wonder if he will spill the beans on the entire international communities weapons deals with Iraq. It is evident from the news agencies of these nations that the race to accuse one another of having supplied him with the most arms is on. Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[Stormig]

Point taken though no matter which way you look at it, I don't see how anyone can take the side of Sadam's regime. Even if US giftwrapped and sent M16's or even chemical weapons to Sadam with a bow on them doesn't change the fact that he was not interested at all by playing according to international rules and agreements.

He wasn't "abiding by international law and agreements" the minute he was the defeated in Gulf War I. Wasn't an issue until then. In fact, samples of all sorts of germs were being passed out to him by Uncle Sam just years before the Gulf War - with Halabja being just about the only hoo-haa-getter, and even then... I mean, what was it that had changed about Saddam? He was the same person he was in the years past. Sweethearts don't turn on each other like that, without warning.

[Stormig]

I agree wholeheartedly. Any true hardcore megolomanical dictator would have taken himself out. He looked so defeated and bewildered. I don't know how it will turn out, but i'd be suprised if his remaining followers weren't shook up by his easy, uneventful capture.

"His followers" - hardcore ones - were an insignificant minority - IMO. You have to remember that Saddam Hussein moled up the minute the invasion started and the country fell into chaos - no army, civilians going bananas. And, even if it were otherwise, there is a particular strain of moronism in that part of the world. Example: Kurdish terrorist leader Ocalan is kidnapped off Kenya by Turkish secret service (this happened about half a decade ago), and what he says on the plane back home is, "I love my country" (Turkey) "I wanna serve it" - no Kurd cries foul, that I know of. In fact, just last year, you still have adoration of him in flags and such of the organization (guess whose portrait is on the flag):

 

http://www.armeniaweek.com/april262002/photos/kurds_1.jpg

 

http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2838&hl

 

Maybe it's just best to wait and see, but the situation is never going to get "better" no matter how much "improvement" there is - IMO.

[Stormig]

And I'm sure there are plenty of people like Kashid Saleh - and they're not buying the "liberation" line.

 

 

 

We Caught the Wrong Guy

 

By William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.com

December 15, 2003

 

Saddam Hussein, former employee of the American federal government, was captured near a farmhouse in Tikrit in a raid performed by other employees of the American federal government. That sounds pretty deranged, right? Perhaps, but it is also accurate. The unifying thread binding together everyone assembled at that Tikrit farmhouse is the simple fact that all of them – the soldiers as well as Hussein – have received pay from the United States for services rendered.

 

 

It is no small irony that Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, the monster under your bed lo these last twelve years, was paid probably ten thousand times more during his time as an American employee than the soldiers who caught him on Saturday night. The boys in the Reagan White House were generous with your tax dollars, and Hussein was a recipient of their largesse for the better part of a decade.

 

 

If this were a Tom Clancy movie, we would be watching the dramatic capture of Hussein somewhere in the last ten minutes of the tale. The bedraggled dictator would be put on public trial for his crimes, sentenced to several thousand concurrent life sentences, and dragged off to prison in chains. The anti-American insurgents in Iraq, seeing the sudden futility of their fight to place Hussein back into power, would lay down their arms and melt back into the countryside. For dramatic effect, more than a few would be cornered by SEAL teams in black face paint and discreetly shot in the back of the head. The President would speak with eloquence as the martial score swelled around him. Fade to black, roll credits, get off my plane.

 

 

The real-world version is certainly not lacking in drama. The streets of Baghdad were thronged on Sunday with mobs of Iraqi people celebrating the final removal of a despot who had haunted their lives since 1979. Their joy was utterly unfettered. Images on CNN of Hussein, looking for all the world like a Muslim version of Charles Manson while getting checked for head lice by an American medic, were as surreal as anything one might ever see on a television.

 

 

Unfortunately, the real-world script has a lot of pages left to be turned. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, reached at his home on Sunday, said, "It's great that they caught him. The man was a brutal dictator who committed terrible crimes against his people. But now we come to rest of story. We didn't go to war to capture Saddam Hussein. We went to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons have not been found." Ray McGovern, senior analyst and 27-year veteran of the CIA, echoed Ritter's perspective on Sunday. "It's wonderful that he was captured, because now we'll find out where the weapons of mass destruction are," said McGovern with tongue firmly planted in cheek. "We killed his sons before they could tell us."

 

 

Indeed, reality intrudes. The push for war before March was based upon Hussein's possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 1,000,000 pounds of sarin gas, mustard gas, and VX nerve gas, along with 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, uranium from Niger to be used in nuclear bombs, and let us not forget the al Qaeda terrorists closely associated with Hussein who would take this stuff and use it against us on the main streets and back roads of the United States.

 

 

When they found Hussein hiding in that dirt hole in the ground, none of this stuff was down there with him. The full force of the American military has been likewise unable to locate it anywhere else. There is no evidence of al Qaeda agents working with Hussein, and Bush was forced some weeks ago to publicly acknowledge that Hussein had nothing to do with September 11. The Niger uranium story was debunked last summer.

 

 

Conventional wisdom now holds that none of this stuff was there to begin with, and all the clear statements from virtually everyone in the Bush administration squatting on the public record describing the existence of this stuff looks now like what it was then: A lot of overblown rhetoric and outright lies, designed to terrify the American people into supporting an unnecessary go-it-alone war. Said war made a few Bush cronies rich beyond the dreams of avarice while allowing some hawks in the Defense Department to play at empire building, something they have been craving for more than ten years.

 

 

Of course, the rhetoric mutated as the weapons stubbornly refused to be found. By the time Bush did his little 'Mission Accomplished' strut across the aircraft carrier, the occupation was about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of the Iraqi people. No longer were we informed on a daily basis of the "sinister nexus between Hussein and al Qaeda," as described by Colin Powell before the United Nations in February. No longer were we fed the insinuations that Hussein was involved in the attacks of September 11. Certainly, any and all mention of weapons of mass destruction ceased completely. We were, instead, embarking on some noble democratic experiment.

 

 

The capture of Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqis dancing in the streets of Baghdad, feeds nicely into these newly minted explanations. Mr. Bush and his people will use this as the propaganda coup it is, and to great effect. But a poet once said something about tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.

 

 

"We are not fighting for Saddam," said an Iraqi named Kashid Ahmad Saleh in a New York Times report from a week ago. "We are fighting for freedom and because the Americans are Jews. The Governing Council is a bunch of looters and criminals and mercenaries. We cannot expect that stability in this country will ever come from them. The principle is based on religion and tribal loyalties," continued Saleh. "The religious principle is that we cannot accept to live with infidels. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, said, `Hit the infidels wherever you find them.' We are also a tribal people. We cannot allow strangers to rule over us."

 

 

Welcome to the new Iraq. The theme that the 455 Americans killed there, and the thousands of others who have been wounded, fell at the hands of pro-Hussein loyalists is now gone. The Bush administration celebrations over this capture will appear quite silly and premature when the dying continues. Whatever Hussein bitter-enders there are will be joined by Iraqi nationalists who will now see no good reason for American forces to remain. After all, the new rhetoric highlighted the removal of Hussein as the reason for this invasion, and that task has been completed. Yet American forces are not leaving, and will not leave. The killing of our troops will continue because of people like Kashid Ahmad Saleh. All Hussein's capture did for Saleh was remove from the table the idea that he was fighting for the dictator. He is free now, and the war will begin in earnest.

 

 

The dying will continue because America's presence in Iraq is a wonderful opportunity for a man named Osama bin Laden, who was not captured on Saturday. Bin Laden, it has been reported, is thrilled by what is happening in Iraq, and plans to throw as much violence as he can muster at American forces there. The Bush administration spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this Iraq invasion, not one dime of which went towards the capture or death of the fellow who brought down the Towers a couple of years ago. For bin Laden and his devotees, Iraq is better than Disneyland.

 

 

For all the pomp and circumstance that has surrounded the extraction of the former Iraqi dictator from a hole in the ground, the reality is that the United States is not one bit safer now that the man is in chains.

 

 

There will be no trial for Hussein, at least nothing in public, because he might start shouting about the back pay he is owed from his days as an employee of the American government. Because another former employee of the American government named Osama is still alive and free, our troops are still in mortal danger in Iraq.

 

 

Hussein was never a threat to the United States. His capture means nothing to the safety and security of the American people. The money we spent to put the bag on him might have gone towards capturing bin Laden, who is a threat, but that did not happen. We can be happy for the people of Iraq, because their Hussein problem is over. Here in America, our Hussein problem is just beginning. The other problem – that Osama fellow we should have been trying to capture this whole time – remains perched over our door like the raven.

 

 

William Rivers Pitt is the managing editor of truthout.org.

[Stormig]

Now THIS belongs in the humour section.

 

Gloom in Saddam's Sri Lanka village

Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 11:24pm by kirkhope

As many Iraqis celebrate the capture of their former leader Saddam Hussein, a state of gloom has descended upon a Sri Lankan village. The village of Saddam Hussein, just north of the city of Batticaloa on the island's east coast, owes its survival - and its name - to the man now facing trial for crimes against his countrymen. The Muslim residents of the village are in shock. Saddam Hussein donated funds to rebuild the village after a cyclone laid waste to it in 1978. He was among many Arab leaders who offered to aid the disaster's victims - and the people of the village have not forgotten this.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3323455.stm

[THOTH]

Isn't it ironic that David Kay - the head of the current onging effort to find WMD in Iraq - annonced today that he is giving up the hunt and stepping down. Funny in the face of such a potential breakthrough as the capture of Hussein.

 

etc

 

and don't you think we have captured enough Iraqis who would be in the know to have found at least something by now?

 

And along the lines of some of the former posts - I think it wil be very interesting what comes out in any (eventual) trial of Saddam...and it may not be what we (the US) want to hear.

[Stormig]

Well, if he is tried in Iraq or in Iran instead of some other place (perhaps not necessarily with the best qualifications for the job but at least standing a change of impartiality), I wouldn't count on hearing or being allowed to hear unwanted stuff.

[MJ]

I wonder if he will spill the beans on the entire international communities weapons deals with Iraq. It is evident from the news agencies of these nations that the race to accuse one another of having supplied him with the most arms is on.

This issue has a very simple answer:

 

Who Iraq owes substantial foreign debt (by some estimate close to $120 bln - primarily to the countries belonging to the Paris Club) are those who have supplied - Germany, France, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

[Accelerated]

Sorry, couldnt be bothered finding a more appropriate thread for this article, a little related nevertheless....

 

Paris beats the president

December 19, 2003 - 11:49AM

 

He may have beaten Saddam Hussein, but George W Bush got clobbered by slinky socialite Paris Hilton when her TV show rated higher than an exclusive interview with the US President.

 

More Americans watched Fox's The Simple Life, which depicts the 22-year-old hotel heiress working on an Arkansas farm, than saw Bush being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC television, Nielsen Media Research said.

 

The Simple Life may have been helped by the public saga of a video, making the rounds of the Internet, showing the granddaughter of hotel chain founder Conrad Hilton engaged in various sex acts with ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon.

 

The Simple Life drew 11.8 million viewers while Bush's ABC Prime Time interview drew 11 million, Nielsen said.

 

In the interview, the President made headlines by saying the recently captured ex-Iraqi leader should be executed -- the "ultimate penalty" -- for his iron-fisted rule in Iraq.

 

But Hilton won more viewers with her performance baking pies and working the town fair's kissing booth in a mini skirt.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1071337139782_2003/12/19/home_parisbush.jpg

[Anonymouse]

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesF/oyster.jpg

[Armat]

...

Man your Avatar is helerious

[Stormig]

Been reading, "Dude, Where's My Country?" of Michael Moore's, short of halfway through... Nothing we would at all be unfamiliar with in one way or another, lots of comedy so far. Brilliantly crafted, I just love the way the guy plays with American relativism with his sarcasm. (Example among many: three thousand people were killed in 9-11, and according to official figures three times that were killed in Gulf War II with "precision missiles" - we had heard about "precision missiles" in Afghanistan, too, my pooper...) Then again, what is it the guy was saying about being with the Sinn Fein just at the very beginning of the book...?

[Stormig]

Oh, what I really was going to post about was the info about goody-goody Amerikanski-Saddam relations. American relativism: Chirac deserves punishment for criticizing Amerikanskia and has his pics with Saddam from the '70's put on screens several hundred times, whereas the only party that dares put one of Rummy with Saddam is - Oprah.

Rednecks. The majority of the whole bunch, starting with the redneck in chief. Some are less rednecks than the others and just try to deny it and keep up at it. Just like ignorant Turks, no better. No offense to those that just got the citizenship, but if I were an American and I actually read all of what's been said in the last months in one book in the delivered manner, I'd feel humiliated in front of the big picture.

OK, we've been saying this all along - first it was the WMD, then when it looked like there was no WMD to be found, it was the dictatorship (and liberation), then I don't know what the heck else, as suited, and now Saddam has actually been captured. Happy? Disposable puppets.

[Armat]

Been reading, "Dude, Where's My Country?" of Michael Moore's, short of halfway through... Nothing we would at all be unfamiliar with in one way or another, lots of comedy so far. Brilliantly crafted, I just love the way the guy plays with American relativism with his sarcasm. (Example among many: three thousand people were killed in 9-11, and according to official figures three times that were killed in Gulf War II with "precision missiles" - we had heard about "precision missiles" in Afghanistan, too, my pooper...) Then again, what is it the guy was saying about being with the Sinn Fein just at the very beginning of the book...?

Wow Stormy I am impressed...I love that book!helerious staff.

[MosJan]

http://i23.ebayimg.com/01/i/01/04/79/94_1.JPG

[Armat]

David

I have always been against the war but Saddam had many opportunities to avoid the catastrophe, which fell on him and his nation. He could of easily let UN inspectors do their job properly instead of making obstacles on every turn. The invasion of Kuwait also was suicidal. I really don’t want to argue this case (it’s pointless now)