Saddam's Death: A Sad Ending to a Sad Chapter in History
By Rick Moran Posted in Spotlight Blogs | War — Comments (98) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I see nothing remotely funny about the impending hanging of Saddam Hussein - a verdict I agree with but devoutly wish could have been handled better by all parties concerned.
Neither do I see anything at all to celebrate. It is embarrassing the way that some of the righty blogs are playing with this story. It is not a time for snark. Nor is it a time for juvenile posturing or ginned up, testosterone-laden high fives. Before you engage in such celebratory behavior, please imagine the million ghosts Saddam and his henchmen created and then imagine them screaming out their last agonizing moments on this earth. Think of the grieving families they left behind. If that doesn't sober you up, try conjuring up images of the tens of thousands of women who were brutally raped in front of their fathers or husbands or the many thousands of children who were tortured in the presence of their parents.
Read on . . .
No, there is nothing funny about killing this brute, a man who has shown no remorse nor the slightest flicker of regret at the trail of dead bodies he has left in the wake of a life spent torturing and murdering anyone who opposed him. The fact that the world knew of this brutality and did nothing about it - including the US government who marginally assisted the beast in his war of conquest against Iran - only goes to show that anyone who believes in the efficacy of the UN is only kidding themselves. Tyrants like Saddam will exist as long as the governments of the world carry on business as usual with the despots while trying to block the screams of their victims from conscious thought.
Saddam may have been a particularly brutal tyrant. But the difference between his regime and the regimes of dozens of others around the world is only a matter of degree - thousands dead or tortured instead of hundreds of thousands. It says a lot about humanity at this stage of our evolution as a social species that we can be so sanguine about the murderous depredations of a Robert Mugabe or a Islom Karimov simply because the body count hasn't achieved the elevated status of a Saddam or a Kim Jung Il. We in the civilized world can tune out the cries for succor from the oppressed rather easily - international law, free flow of oil, international commerce, even the War on Terrorism - take your pick. One excuse is as good as another.
I wish I could believe that hanging Saddam will make other tyrants pause and clean up their acts, hoping to avoid suffering a similar fate. But you and I know that is wishful thinking. What is more probable is that the dictators will redouble their efforts to stifle opposition thinking it will guarantee their security - at least from their own people.
But in the end, whether it's having your neck snapped by a taut rope or dying peacefully in your bed, the criminal oppressors who cause so much human misery and suffering will all come face to face with their own mortality. And I have to believe that as the curtain rings down on their existence, the cold hand of fear will grip their failing heart as they contemplate an eternity that may include torments far surpassing those they meted out during their useless, failed existence on this planet.
There's never any joy in killing a human being. But the world and especially the Iraqi people need Saddam Hussein dead because to this day he hasn't abjured the will to power and the utter disdain for the humanity of others that led him to murder without conscience. It's a sad fact of human life that we sometimes need to adopt the odious behavior of the enemies of human dignity and thus lose some of our own human dignity. The people who (with the best intentions) would spare Hussein's life are in effect willing to allow others to die in order that they themselves may not feel the pang of a guilty conscience. I'm sorry, but life just isn't that easy.
but again, respectfully....joy may be a bit strong...but there is satisfaction when justice is handed out. if it means that a life has to be taken, so be it. i don't want to sound like a cold hearted person, but this is just.....
Satisfaction is a word that refers to the completion or "making enough" of a need or obligation. Grim, joyless, tight-lipped, stony-faced and ultimately very sad. But yes, satisfaction.
I'm not sure that it isn't possible to conjure up the images you require and at the same time take exquisite pleasure, perhaps even elation, at the removal of this monster. I for one don't see the two as incompatible.
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
An execution, however just and necessary (this one is both), is never occasion for joy. At best it may be occasion for a sober relief, much as when someone who has long been incurably and miserably ill finally passes on.
If a dictator allowed or ordered the death or torture of your family members before your very eyes, or had your wife or sister or mother or daughter or son raped before your eyes, then tortured, and then murdered, I bet you'd be dancing in the street tonight as he hangs from the end of that rope he so richly deserves.
I know I would be.
Walk a mile in the shoes of the victims before you're so quick to say no joy should be found in the end of a monster who created a hell on earth and murdered hundreds and thousands.
Frankly, I think the original post is ridiculous, and that one and this one is nothing more than an attempt for some to get on thier moral high horse.
--------------------Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils.--------------------
Re: I bet you'd be dancing in the street tonight as he hangs from the end of that rope he so richly deserves.
I certainly hope not. I am a Christian, and while I often fall short I do try to hold myself to Christian standards of morality. The joy of the vendetta is not a virtue.
And yes, Saddam's death is nothing to be regretted, but also nothing to celebrate. None of his victims will be restored to life by his death (if they could be, I would agree to celebration). it's just an ugly, evil, vile mess being finally cleaned up and tossed into the cesspit of history. More something to avert one's eyes from and hold one's nose at, with sad wonder at the depths of the depravity to which we humans can sink.
So what's YOUR reason for joy over his death? You don't have a visceral investment in his life or death. So why do you feel joy is the right response?
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." George Bernard Shaw
Because a horrible, horrible man will trouble this earth no longer. A man who is personally responsible for the willful deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands will trouble this earth no longer. A man who took personal pleasure in death will trouble this earth no longer. A man who waged a 10 year war against his neigbor, a war that killed hundreds of thousands on both sides will trouble this earth no longer. A man who used poison gas against his own countrymen will trouble this earth no longer. A man who condoned his sons and henchmen treating the country and its people as their own personal playthings, stealing, killing, raping, abusing as their whim, will trouble this earth no longer.
One might better ask "Why do you not feel joy at the elimination of this scourge?"
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
relative freedom preserved due to deterrence (see Libya re overt; the less visible is incalculable). I also think, however, that deterrence is maximized when the King is killed in closer proximity to the fall of the regime.
These trials are quite redundant to my mind. When we decided to remove the regime and when the Iraqi people DID WELCOME us as liberators and celebrated the fall of Baghdad and pulled down the statute, that was the verdict and sentence.
This is war. This ain't crime. Amen?
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
First, Rick, your work here is well assembled, and clearly states your position...well done, and I respect you for standing up with it.
Second-while there may be testosterone laden high fives in some circles, that really isn't the overall tone of where I personally come down on Saddam's execution, nor where many folks I talk to come down with it either.
For me, a strong believer in the sanctity of life, I can easily suggest that being pro-life means not picking and choosing which lives are valuable and which are not...and subsequently that his life should not be taken by man, rather taken when our Creator so chooses to take it. But that said, none of us have the power or authority to influence this...only the Iraqis do.
Further, and MOST importantly, any high fives I do will be exactly because our soldiers sailors airmen and marines gave the Iraqi people a shot at freedom, liberty, and a democratic way to live, judge, and deliver justice within their own, freely elected government.
For that, I will be high-fiving every member of the military I find...for me, Saddam's fate is in God's hands...not in the hands of the hangman.
But congratulations to the Iraqi people for finally being free and able to mete their own justice on their own terms.
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius
and hopefully, it can show others out there that they to can overcome the evils that beat them down.
But like many other posters, this is one execution that I feel no guilt about. I am not a great believer in the death penalty, but as Dennis Miller once said, " sometimes you have to cull the herd". Heaven knows there are more just like him out there, but now there will be one less.
we're supposed to feel some sympathy for this guy because he killed hundreds of thousands of people. Why? Do you think the families of his victims are all weepy over his demise?
People in Europe and America celebrated on 1 October 46. The people of Rumania celebrated on 25 December 89. And we can be sure that something over 80% of the Iraqi people will celebrate tomorrow. Anyone who wants to snark or cheer when Saddam plunges through the trap has my approval.
Why we owe this monstosity anything but a glob of spittle in the eye on his way to the gallows is just beyond me.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
For saying want I wanted to say so much more elegantly than I could say it.
For anyone (like the original poster) to say we should have a bit of sympathy for a mass murderer who has no remorse whatsoever is political correctness and stupidity run amok.
--------------------Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils.--------------------
If you can find anyplace in my post where I recommended sympathy for Saddam, more power to ya.
Setting up a strawman, Streiff...
I didn't set up as strawman, what you did was throw out a huge logically indensible non sequitur tarted up with an ad hominem attack on anyone who happens to feel a bit different. "Testosterone-laden high fives," indeed. Something I'd expect from someone craving acceptance from the left, balloon-juice comes to mind, but not here.
That was the point, hence the title.
Unless you believe Saddam deserves sympathy your second para is simultaneously maudlin, silly, and deeply offensive.
...as if we needed more proof. In the linked story, there's this gem: "After his sentence was given, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld."
I wonder how Dillhole Anderson Cooper felt regarding the appeals process Saddam offered them. Oh, that's right, nerve gas bombings don't have an appeals process.
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
Kudos to the Iraqi court system for its alacritous handling of the appeals process. The U.S. system would have taken years and produced hundreds of pages of negligible verbiage.
Very nicely written.
As Americans and as members of the world community, we should never be happy when we are compelled to put someone to death. As Americans we helped make Saddam what he became. We armed him and we turned our heads as he took the path he did.
Death is a suitable sentence. But, vengence does not belong to me. I may not be sad when Saddam is hung, but I will not rejoice either.
AE addressed this in her comment about self-loathing being the new American national pasttime.
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
Why read something into the post that's not there? Where do I say that we are "bearing a cross" or should feel guilt?
I'm talking about approaching this event with the gravity it deserves. That doesn't mean feel sympathy. That doesn't mean we should feel guilt.
It means only and exactly what the words on the page say - not what you pretend they do.
pantload.
We didn't arm him. And he was a sovereign ruler who did what he did whether we liked it or not.
We armed him when he was fighting the Iranians in the 80s. That doesn't mean we are complicit in any of his domestic atrocities. However, there is no reason to ignore or deny that he was an "ally" while he was checking the Iranian Mullahs' power.
all those Russian tanks? All those AK-47s? All those French and Russian jets? All those Russian artillery pieces? All those chemical weapons he used against the Iranians? You mean those armaments he got from us?
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
He did buy most of his hardware from the Soviets and some fighters from the French.
There is no shame in what we did. We did what had to be done to keep Iran bogged down.
we shared some satellite imagery with him, that's all.
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
how's the reading going?
I Get My News at TheHinzSightReport!
I think of Chris Matthews revealing his kids wear Che' and Mao t-shirts.
You know thta lib I dated in jawja wore a mao quote t-short in my car...
ONCE.!!
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
over $100/gal it would be if Iran dominated the region rather than being surrounded on two borders by the USA. They are bogged down in Persia with a population increasingly combative against mullah rule.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008.
no we didn't.
We gave him satellite imagery of Iranian positions. He was armed by the Soviet Union. The fact that they used T-62 tank, BMP personnel carriers, MiG fighters (with the odd Mirage thrown in), carried AK-47s, fired SCUD missile during the War of the Cities and sent their officers to staff colleges in the USSR should be a big hint.
He went to war of his own volition with Iran over a decades long boundary dispute over the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and we gave him intelligence aid to keep him in the war and prevent an Iranian win.
And he wasn't an ally. As George Schultz said, "It's a shame they both can't lose."
It's basically a clip showing Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in Iraq, for the benefit of anyone who somehow missed seeing that picture the last 10,000 times it was pushed in their faces. (It seems that we should have not engaged in diplomatic contacts with our enemies back then, although its demanded that we do it now.) Links with "edu" extensions should be taken with large doses of salt.
I seem to remember something about Reagan selling weapons to Iraq to give money to the Contras. Something about Congress wouldn't let Reagan finacially support the Contras or something. For some reason the term IRAQ-CONTRA AFFAIR sticks out in my mind.
But then, I may be wrong---NOT.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Did you get that from a Michael Moore movie? I hear there's a bank somewhere that gives you a free loaded machine gun if you open a checking account, too.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
are still using it, sir. I expect it will be "tied up" for awhile yet.
John
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Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
any other spineless politically correct apologist couldn't have said it any better.
Here is the tired message:
We helped Saddam at one time so we get everything we deserve. I have heard this countless times said in code. Why don't the spineless apologists just come out and say it? I'd respect you for it.
If you always find yourself arguing the exceptions rather than the rule you just might be rapidly sliding down your own slippery slope to irrelevance. -CommonCents
She made the same mistake. And, by the way, numbskull, your last line-yes, you are wrong...horribly, horribly wrong.
Next time you post, do a little research. Even a dyed-in-the-wool Kossack usually comes a little bit more prepared than this.
Don't be afraid to see what you see.-Ronald Reagan
For more common sense conservatism, visit the Show Me Conservatism blog.
in another blog and someone corrected him with IRAN/CARTER!
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
...and I was most assuredly joking. I am old enough to remember the Lawrence and Ollie show that was Iran Contra... unlike crshedd, who probably was a gleam in his daddy's eye at the time, and I'm being charitable;>)
you were joking & I thought it was hilarious. Sorry my reference above didn't convey that.
And FWIW, for his appearance before the US Congress, Ollie will always have a special place in my heart.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I was quite looking forward to assigning you a 2,000 word essay on the difference between the letters 'N' and 'Q'.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
What, you mean SCUD isn't just a figure of speech?
Oh wait, we STOLE all that stuff from May Day parades and gave it to Saddam. Jimmy Carter was personally commanding the raids I guess, and that's the REAL reason we won the Cold War!
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Run like Reagan!
an attempt was made to reel him in as a client (the Soviets made that attempt to) but he was a true psychopath and nobody's fool but his own. He took the money and guns then spit in his benefactors' faces.
We did allow Iraqi ships to fly American flags in the Gulf for a while.
Certainly he was at best a tepid ally of ours simply because of his war with Iran. But he was an ally at least until he started gassing people. At that point US foreign policy could no longer rationalize their support of him.
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." George Bernard Shaw
We did allow Iraqi ships to fly American flags in the Gulf for a while.
I know we allowed Kuwaiti tankers to fly our flag.
and ran up billions of dollars of debt to the USSR which Putin's Russia has yet to repudiate or forgive.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman
That "[t]yrants like Saddam will exist as long as the governments of the world carry on business as usual with the despots while trying to block the screams of their victims from conscious thought" is, I think, blaming the civilized for the crimes of the uncivilized. Tyrants like Saddam will exist as long as the tyrannized do not rebel. Yes, the civilized world has obligation to assist in the "sic semper tyrannus", but the tyrant is his own evil. Saddam bears responsibility for all that he has done, and any sort of introspection regarding this and/or his end is banal and counterproductive.
Saddam Hussein's life is devalued to the extent he devalued the lives of others. The world loses nothing tonight. Likewise, for me personally to cheer his death would be to applaud that which rendered his life meaningless. His atrocities.
No, I'll wait for him to die. I'll sigh, relieved, when it is done. And I hope they dump his corpse in the Euphrates.
So do lots of people. Given the arbitrariness of the process by which he will have arrived at the end of the rope, it is hard for me to conclude that this is anything other than a political execution. Victor's justice, in other words. I'm too wedded to the Westphalian nation state, perhaps, but I find this troubling, and would, like Churchill did with respect to the Nazis, would prefer that he had died inside his spider hole "resisting arrest."
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"...social order depends upon reasons that will never be grasped as reasons by the overwhelming majority of the people, and hence must be protected and enforced as dogma."
this line of reasoning at all. Unless you're saying he's innocent what objection is there to his trial and execution. You make "victor's justice" sound like a bad thing and seem to be saying that Saddam deserves a bye because he murdered his way to the head of a "Westphalian nation state."
There is no objection to his trial and execution. My stance is that we should not rejoice when an execution happens, especially since we helped arm him (see Iraq-Contra Affair). His execution is quite fitting, but we must remember that vengence is not ours to take. I am not saddened that Saddam was hung, but I will not drink a toast to the execution.
especially since we helped arm him (see Iraq-Contra Affair)... I will not drink a toast to the execution.
Which is good... since it seems like you've had plenty already.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Some things in life are indeed very simple, he killed about a half million human beings, he dies, simple as that, its called justice, or at least as close to it as we can get. You sound like one of those hang wringing UN types.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
While I would have preferred a summary execution. Obviously, not having shot him at the time of capture, his hanging is the best that can be expected, but let's be frank: Hussein isn't being hanged because he killed his own people, but because he lost a war. It's the offense to the principle of sovereignty that troubles me, not Hussein's death per se. Napoleon was a worse monster than Hussein, but got to live out his days in well-guarded exile.
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social order depends upon reasons that will never be grasped as reasons by the overwhelming majority of the people, and hence must be protected and enforced as dogma. -- "Maximos"
In the nation of Iraq? Or in the person of Saddam Hussein himself? Are you suggesting that the sovereign nation of Iraq somehow lacks the right to execute a man who murdered innocent Iraqis on a grand scale?
If Saddam Hussein had not lost his war against us, he would most likely be alive and in power tonight. That much is true. But it's also true that the world would be a far less just place than it is now, with him dead. I don't accept that in removing Saddam (and leaving him to his fate at the hands of the sovereign nation he brutalized) that we committed an atrocity against sovereignty. And even if we had, it would be outweighed by the justice that was done tonight.
He was recognized as such by other nations, including the United States, and acted as such. Furthermore, as our own experience has subsequently shown, there isn't, with all due respect to the rosey predictions of Bernard Lewis, much of an Iraq to be sovereign without him. There's just a piece of land in Mesopotamia where clans, ethnic groups, and foreign powers are fighting. We're not talking about an orderly sort of place such as the US or Sweden where there exists some shared sense of nationhood and where heads of state and whole governments can be replaced routinely and in accordance with widely accepted principles. All of which is to say that the usual poli-sci theory (myth) of sovereignty residing in "the people" doesn't apply there, where there is no people, no unified state, no control of borders, and no monopoly on organized violence.
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social order depends upon reasons that will never be grasped as reasons by the overwhelming majority of the people, and hence must be protected and enforced as dogma. -- "Maximos"
Sure Saddam had Iraq sovereign and "under control" as often time s pointed out by the MSM. What many on the left mean is Saddam kept his skeletons in the closet. Out of sight, out of mind.
The key question is AT WHAT PRICE?
Any government can keep order in any country over its people when it uses unbridled force and torture. That is the easy way out.
Every time anyone says or implies that Saddam had control just add "at what price." Kinda like adding "in bed" to your fortune cookie wisdom when out w/ your mate.
If you always find yourself arguing the exceptions rather than the rule you just might be rapidly sliding down your own slippery slope to irrelevance. -CommonCents
The United States and the titular Iraq government have so far failed to do so, and the cost of that has been quite high, too.
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social order depends upon reasons that will never be grasped as reasons by the overwhelming majority of the people, and hence must be protected and enforced as dogma. -- "Maximos"
and Hitler cured inflation...
and Stalin ...and Mao...and Pol Pot...and Iran's Mullahs
Everybody's got their good points, eh?
Think that whole desegregation in the 60s, and heck, the half million that died in the Civil War to end slavery were at too high a price? Saddam "only" killed 400,000 and started wars that killed 600,000.
We kind of "lost control" here in the 1860s and 1960s. At least Simon LeGree and George Wallace had maintained control.
RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!Cy-MORAL RELATIVIST-rus?
The best decision of my life was to leave the morally bankrupt Democrat party.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
just what a feat that really was.
Mussolini made the trains run on time
having been in Italy I realize it would take a tyrant to make it happen!
friend from Greece who is also one of the best American college soccer players in history and who was the star of the Atlanta Cheifs pro soccer team in the 60s and 70s.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for The Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008 and The Minority Report. “One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
has any problems with the ski-masked thugs chanting "Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!" Is this really the kind of sovereign Iraq we should be happy about helping to create?
of course some of us have a problem but I'd feel the same if they were chanting Boowa-Boowa. It made tawdry an event that should have demonstrated a final triumph of law.
I don't particularly like Sadr but the fact is that he is, for the moment, part of the political landscape and it would be best for all concerned if he could be peacefully dealt with. His existence and presence in the government says nothing about whether or not that government is deserving of our support.
As to the ski masks, when the state of Delaware hanged Billy Bailey in 1996 the executioners wore ski masks, so how you come to the conclusion that Saddam's executioners were "thugs" and not prison employees is beyond me.
But what is significant is that his executioners and guards were chanting the name of the head of the largest Shiite militia/death squad--the one we were supposed to deal with in Sadr City near the beginning of the war, the psychopathic killer who is Iran's top ally in Iraq. We need to wake up to the fact that there are very few "public servants" in that country, and that with the death of Saddam (and the emboldenment of the Shia theocrats), it has reverted to its ethno-religious tribal roots. It's time to start acting to check the power of Iran.
The Contributors are quite keen to find out if you can actually post on any subject without fulminating against either the Shia or Iran.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
Ask me about Dubai Ports World. (Or the Saudi purchase of a 5% stake in NewsCorp). I'm not so happy about China either. Anywhere we are surrendering our national interests without a struggle, I get my hackles up.
to many others, not so much.
Sadr's political bloc controls 1/3 of the votes in the Shi'a coalition. That's a fact that we probably can't kill our way out of in the current political environment. Whether that is of long term consequence is arguable.
I don't think we need to "wake up" to the idea of there being few public servants in Iraq, I think we've known that all along. One only has to visit its neighbors to see that selfless service and incorruptibility are not values widespread in government.
Iraq's 'ethno-religious tribal roots' are distinctly Arab, of a different variety of Shi'a than that practiced in Iran, and distinctly anti-Persian. For 10 years Saddam kept a predominantly Shi'a army in the field against Iran when the logical, not to mention easiest, course of action would have been to surrender en masse and facilitate an Iranian march on Baghdad. It didn't happen.
I don't know how that fits into your theory of the Iranian Drahtzieher but it is something that should be considered.
That's what Wolfie and his "Sociology 101" crowd were counting on when they went in. Turns out it didn't pan out. Do you really believe Arab nationalism was motivating Saddam's Shia conscripts, rather than brute fear of retribution? The Persians don't need to march on Baghdad, we've given it to them as a present by proxy.
the Iran-Iraq War in some detail professionally, including having talked to some Iraqi officers involved, I have no doubt that the Iraqi Army was held together by Iraqi nationalism and hatred of Iranians.
Granted they didn't have acid showers in Napoleon's time, or for that matter shredder machines in which live humans could be fed.
It's possible that Napoleon used the systematic rape of wives and daughters in front of their fathers and husbands...but my history book failed to mention it!
courage of the last 200 years vilified like this. Thanks for your contribution! More later on Napolean (I defended him in college and High School as a dem hawk!)from Gamecock. (Bonaparte liked cockfighting as well, and he wasn't a Mexican or Oklahoman, much less a Spartan (Greek of Carolinian).
enough -olinians already GC...
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
married Scots and the rest is history...
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
In battle or immediately upon capture. The verdict was rendered when we decided to remove his regime and issued shock and awe and again when the Iraqi people rose up against him upon the fall of Baghdad. Had his death coincided with or been in close proximity to the liberation of his people from his tyrannical rule, I suspect things would have gone better given the message sent by such a coincidence of events. Much as most of Saddam's victims were killed in a rush of events in the middle of the night. For Saddam
Its called justice.
Gamecock, DeVine Op-Ed for Charlotte Observer, blogs at Race 4 2008
how about satisfaction ? Is that acceptable ? Saddam went the way of Adolf Eichmann, who had more horrific numbers but for raw brutality couldn't match this guy. What happened thru the execution barely qualifies as justice given the measure of the atrocities, so something other than a moralizing lecture and weak attempt at saintly detachment may be in order.
The rememberance of those who suffered unspeakable torture and death is better reserved for the left, who seem to have different and domestic enemies, and who happen to be American.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
You just ain't seen nuttin yet. The volume is really fuzzy, so turn up your volume. The money quote is right at the end...
Yep. You heard it here first.
Sincere condolences to our friends in Orlando, the home WESH and their BreckGirlNewsReader™.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Before tou judge him, you should know this:
"Raoul Martinez doesn't just use words to tell his stories. He throws his whole body into it -- waving his hands, swinging his arms and furrowing his brow.
Raoul injects life to every story he tells, whether it's about a family struggling to get back on their feet after a hurricane, or a local hero just back from the war. Call it his "Latin flair" or just his infectious personality. Either way, Raoul is the type of person who truly cares about the stories he tells and the people he meets on the streets of Central Florida every day.
Raoul focuses on the individuals who make news, not just the events."
http://www.wesh.com/station/1200307/detail.html
I feel the presence of Chuck Norris.
i don't get your post. for the exact reasons you've mentioned, I'd high 5 all day. I'd high 5 every decent Iraqi I could if I was over there...starting w/ the executioner.
quite honestly, i found joy in the death of McVeigh...and in the future will still find joy in every moment we can rid the earth of these monsters.