The Iranians are hoping this won't mean that the Iran-Iraq war will not be discussed in court -- which would be a chance for them to advance their cause of establishing a Shi'ite Arab client state in Iraq. From AP:
Tehran, Nov. 5(AP): Iranian officials praised Sunday's death sentence against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and said they hoped he would continue to be tried for other alleged crimes against humanity.``The death sentence for Saddam was a matter of happiness for me. He was a war criminal and a vampire in the current history,'' said Kazen Jalai, a spokesman for Iran's parliamentarian committee of national security and foreign policy.
Just after Saddam was sentenced in a Baghdad courtroom, Iran' state-run television interrupted its regular program to announce: ``A court in Iraq sentenced Saddam, the collapsed dictator to death.''
Saddam and two others were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail. The former Iraqi leader shouted out in the court, condemning what he called the occupation of Iraq by U.S.- and British-led coalition forces, and his attorney vowed to appeal the verdict.
For many Iranians, the memories were still fresh from of the destruction they suffered after Saddam invaded their country in 1980, setting in motion a deadly war that would last eight years.
Before Saddam's verdict was announced, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said he felt that execution was the minimum sentence expected.
``Of course, it (the verdict) doesn't mean that other issues like the Iran-Iraq war should not be reviewed in court,'' Hosseini said.
I wonder if the Iranians will show any gratitude towards the US for this?
Nah.
After we execute him, they will nuke us. That's gratitude islamic-style.
Executing S.H. won't solve the problems in Iraq. Everybody knew that he was going to be hanged or shot eventually. The Iraquis can never see this as justice as long as the same american politicians who supported S.H. when he was in power, are the ones who are responsible for the occupation of their country. He knows too much about Rumsfeld, Bush and the other peopel in the US administration, so he has to be silenced.
I hear he is going to be hanged along with his brother. Now that we are in the business of hanging whole families, why not hang Bush Junior and Bush Senior along with them? They also have a fair share of blood on their hands. Justice can never be served if you only see half of the truth.
What does Saddam know? Please tell us.
Are you a muslim?
seville844:
"He knows too much about Rumsfeld, Bush and the other peopel in the US administration, so he has to be silenced."
Asma cousin,
If he knew too much about Rumsfeld, Bush and others he would never have been tried or convicted!
Deranged conspiracy theories like yours are usally the result of cult beliefs like those invented by propagandists for Islamic Jihadis.
My guess is his billions of dollars will buy him a cyanide tablet like Hermann Wilhelm Göring. It will be worth every dinar as hanging hurts. Allahu Akbar!
Yes, and so the Iranians can praise Saddam's death penalty, and not in the same way that I would.
Because I would say - look, there is a man who 4 years ago was obliterating whole villages if he found one enemy that came from that place. I would say, look on and tremble all you mighty dictators. As many skulls as you might have crushed benetah your feet, there will come a time when you will be visited by the justice of men.
There is an argument being used by those of the opposite opinion of mine that things have got worse since the end of Saddam. I would say yes, but then freewill is chaotic, and life out there on your own is dangerous. There might be torture and fighting now, but the intention of those in power in Iraq now is to have rule of law. That could never have happened before. Under Saddam, there would be torture today, and then the neverending prospect of torture. And if Iraq has to split up into 3 countries to provide the solution, then so be it. That is for the Iraqis to decide, and that is the gift that has been granted them. American soldiers aren't fighting for the idea of Iraq, they are fighting for that gift of choice for the Iraqi people.
However, the Iranian officials see the death of an old adversary, and their satisfaction is all the more because they know that it can never happen to them. Why?
Because some of us here in the west believe in tyranny or blood shed to keep the people of the Mid East oppressed, to delay the onslaught of Jihad - to save our own skins. They think that people in the Mid East are slaves to a certain religion or a certain method of oppresion. And this view holds too much sway in the political parties, and in the press.
I believe that if people cannot make necessary changes themselves, then they should be helped to do it, and that we should make a sacrifice.
I can just about understand those who don't have the moral and physical courage to do their duty to their fellow man, but I am afraid that I cannot forgive the gutless and mean spirited wretchedness of those who would withdraw their help just to see the downfall of their political opponents at home. These types are my enemy.
To the writer who would hang the President and his Father.
If you are an American, and If you are a registered voter. You may have heard of a process that we have to express or disapproval of our leaders.
It's called a vote.
You are in luck. You can meander on down to a polling place on Tuesday and make your views known.
One vote one person, not one threat one person here.
No doubt when the Americans decided to put Saddam Hussein on trial, rather than simply kill him or let the government kill him, their minds were full of a blend of the Nuremberg Trials, and those "Truth and Reconciliation" businesses that are all the rage these days. No doubt, too, they thought that "the Iraqis," suffused with eternal gratitude toward their "liberators" ("The liberation of Baghdad will make the liberation of Kabul seem like a funeral procession" -- also sprach Bernard Lewis, and so many others after him), would all be able to unite around their indignation and fury at mass-murdering Saddam Hussein.
But Saddam Hussein's mass murder of Kurds never did elicit a single syllable of protest from the Arab League, or any Arab government, or any significant Arab body or indeed from any Arab at all, save for Kanan Makiya and one or two others. And Saddam Hussein's mass murder of Shi'a, similarly, was never a cause for indignation among Sunni Arabs inside or outside Iraq.
It should have been expected that, if Saddam Hussein were permitted to live and stand trial, that he would become a symbol of a Sunni put on trial by a Shi'a-dominated government, and hence, for many Sunnis (even for those who suffered under him) a symbol of their former status and supposed well-being, and of their -- to them, in their refusal to recognize their real numbers or to acquiesce in the loss of power -- new, unjustly humbled condition. For they do not care what happened to them under Saddam Hussein. Their memories are fluid, picking out what they wish to remember, forgetting what they don't. Why would it be otherwise, in people raised in societies suffused with a belief-systerm where what happened in the seventh century, or eighth, or ninth, or eleventh, the battles, the men, the deeds of valor and of treachery, are kept fresh, and mean far more, than what happened, say, a year ago when the Infidels sent aid to Pakistan or to Aceh, or a few years before that, when they rescued Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Yes, Saddam Hussein if allowed to live to stand trial would not be a rallying point for "Iraqis" but would become a martyr for all except the most morally aware Sunnis. And so he has. But the Shi'a and the Kurds remember him as murderer rather than as martyr. And so his trial, his sentence, and his execution will not serve, as dreamy and endlessly ignorant and obstinate policy-makers in Washington, and their confused and besieged claque, once thought, to unite and rally "Iraqis" to "Iraq."
How silly those Americans were, how uncomprehending, how little able to think or plan ahead.
So much nonsense. So much vzdor. So many stupidaggini. So much crap.
It will not take long for violent acts to be committed in the name of “Saddam the martyr” but then again it is just that, an excuse. They will commit the same acts with or without a reason. They will be quick to point to US atrocities and blame our President is just as bad saddam (or worse) but that argument is quickly vanquished. President Bush never ordered gas used on his own people, never personally participated in torture and I doubt enjoys watching it. No, its an apple and oranges argument and makes you question the mental processes of anyone using it.
Saddam will probably become a rallying cry more so in future jihad than this one. The muslim rewriting of history will prove to future muslim generations that saddam never committed any acts of violence and was a model of moderate muslims. He was taken down but the evil plans of a Zionist American alliance and revenge will be called for. Quite a legacy for a hardened killer but not surprising. In the end the life and death of saddam changes nothing, the jihad continues.
But Saddam Hussein's mass murder of Kurds should be avenged at least for the Kurds if not for anybody else, and that vengeance should be visible to them so that the families of the countless people he killed can see justice as been done.
As for the Sunnis, who cares if they have his martyred soul to drive them on? If it isn’t his memory, it will be someone or something else that calls them. They create reasons to fight as they go along, just like every other Muslim in the world. Hooper fights his little war against you and Choudary fights his against us. Iran bangs on about some grand Kung Fu master living in a well. Its all just bullshit at the end of the day and Islam is the master of bullshit.
So let him hang. And encourage the Sunnis to fight as hard as they like against the Iranian backed Shia’s. Make Iran pay with as much treasure as possible.
Ironic-Saddam's only good point was to wage war against Satan Khomeini. Too bad it lasted only 8 years. But he deserves death for his crimes against the Iraqi people. After all, who thought back then that they really did deserve him?
Saddam's real "crime" was that as a dedicated secularist ruler he did not believe in Islam. He protected and promoted Christians and kept the Muslims on a short and very violent leash. Even "worse" he gave aid to Lebanese Christian General Aoun against Hezbollah back in the 1980s, and then he invaded Iran with the intention of overthrowing Khomeini.
It is for this that he will be hung. Yes he was a thug... so what??? I, for one, believe that he deserves respect not execution. But like Slobodon Milosevic, another hero in the struggle against radical Islam, he will lose his life after a farce showtrial. Stalin would be proud.
After Saddam's been executed we'll have many more of his mold. Let's just move on to the next one. We need to take them all down while we work on disassembling the belief system and culture behind all of them that enables them to seize power.
Just keep on keepin' on. Next one, please.
Of course they're happy. They have the unaccounted for WMD's that have not been found in Iraq. If President Bush had not given so much warning before we actually went into Iraq, Saddam would not have had all the time in the world to transport them into Syria and Iran.
After watching the joyous celebrations in Iraq after the announcement of Saddam's sentence, it suddenly struck me. The only way to have a peaceful Muslim gathering is by sentencing someone to death, this makes them happy.
Niv