He's Dead
By Erick Posted in War — Comments (60) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Good riddance!
Multiple Kossacks call for Cheney and Rummy to hang too and some say Bush has killed more people than Osama and Saddam.
« We need more COIN in the Afghan realm — Comments (0) | An Open Thread — Comments (134) »
He's Dead 60 Comments (0 topical, 60 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
He's just sleeping.
We glued him to the operator's chair in the chipper truck. Doesn't he look lifelike? I think that's how I want to remember him, proudly grinding away at Shi'ites, parents who complained about his method for selecting girlfriends, and other traitors.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
One down, oodles to go.
"Life is too short, can't we all just eat pork and kill some terrorists?"
choking anchor woman at MSNBC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkjbZZ8vqfU
life is worth living
Saddam basicly committed suicide. He made his own decisions and paid the consequences. He had plenty of options and opportunities to spare his own life over several years. He had over a decade of warnings from UN resolutions. He knew the US was serious about taking action after the Gulf War. Food with the bull and get the horns. Good to see there is justice in Iraq. I progress can continue and rise up into a nation of the people for the people, by the people.
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
that it is official - Saddam Hussein was executed in accordance with Iraqi Law on Saturday, December 30, 2006, between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM local Bagdad time.
"May God have mercy on his soul."
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Correction: Time of Execution was 6:05 AM (Bagdad).
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Zippity-doo-dah!
Retire Lindsey Graham. Support Thomas Ravenel for Senate 2008
I wonder if they will post those pictures, the way they did with others? Not necessarily sure it's something I need to see, but it's good to know if I want to avoid the internet to avoid seeing them for 2-3 days. Nothing like having it scroll down my page 20 or 30 times a day.
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
do you take turns logging off and on so that you can both post?
just curious...
I Get My News at HinzSightReport!
My classes were not too bad at all. I've taken a shine to grad school. Next semester I'm overloading AND starting my thesis, if you can believe it. That should provide me with enough of a challenge. I think what my classes HAVE done is made me somewhat apolitical, which is what they are designed to do (aka help me keep my opinions to myself and listen to others in a nonjudgemental way when I'm helping them focus on their issues). Being on here tends to inhibit my ability to be as open to certain *ahem* opinions. ;D That and I'm semi-ticked off with team red right now. Just kind of waiting and holding my breath like a child to see if they are going to behave again.
I've been missing y'all, though. What's new?
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
I really can't think of anything. Yep, pretty much all the same here.
Oh, ah, there was some sort of election in November, Congress I think, but only the Democrats showed up. "Team Red" got theirs handed back to them.
As far as balancing your professional training with the need to blog, well, even Jesus had to take scourge in hand sometimes. But I find that I'm most effective when I take the time to thoroughly understand someone else's position, to the extent of rewriting their points to make sense of them. Active listening, blog style. I suspect that you would be far better at it than I am.
Which is why I'm just chillin on it for now. :D
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
managed to get through another Fedex peak season while keeping most of whats left of my sanity. Quiet Christmas with family.
If you follow my new tagline, you will notice that we are putting together a new website. Gordon does most of the work, I just write! When we get it up and running, I will be doing a heck of a lot of writing.
Finished the novel a couple of months ago. Now searching frantically for ANY publisher who will give it a fair look-see. First time novelists don't get a lot of respect.
Hope your Christmas was great, and here's hoping you have a wonderful New Year!
I expect a gratis copy when you get the publisher in the new year. ;) I agree with you that first timers have a difficult time of it. Here is to a new year and a new book deal for you!
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
Writing a book is some hard stuff. I, personally, wouldn't endeavor to take it on because I know that even writing one chapter is incredibly difficult. Excellent job!
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
I wonder if they will post those pictures, the way they did with others?
But Reuters needs time to photoshop in a bunch of IDF soldiers killing civilians in the background so it might be delayed.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
The old lady that lost 3 different homes that she lived in should be available. She must have her SAG card by now, starring in so many productions.
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
http://www.foxnews.com/images/250338/1_62_123006_saddam_head.jpg
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
Justice has been done by the people of Iraq.
In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a true blue Democrat and a regular contributer to DailyKos. I'm thrilled at the outcome of the last elections. I'm hardly thrilled that Saddam is dead, although I can't think of anyone, myself included, who will lose any sleep over it.
Now, here's what I'm trying to understand: According to conventional wisdom, Ronald Reagan is the patron saint of the modern conservative movement. It's no secret that, when he was president, he aided Hussein's regime in the Iran-Iraq war. So, those of you happy with Saddam's execution for his brutal crimes against humanity, how do you square that with Reagan's relationship to Iraq and American complicity with Hussein's war crimes? I didn't hear any Republican indignation with Hussein's brutality under Reagan. Why now? Forgive me, but it's hard for me to understand, given the lack of moral outrage under Reagan, the outrage and righteousness now.
I'm not asking this question rhetorically. I imagine that some will offer that we've 'corrected' our oversight of his war crimes under Reagan with this execution; however, why the deify Reagan when he enabled Hussein to gas the Kurds? It just seems to me that many conservatives just support whatever the Republican president supports, no matter how morally inconsistent. Where's the moral clarity here?
Asking rhetorically. You don't actually want a response: it might contradict the rather carefully designed narrative that you've created for yourself.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to scrape you off of my shoe.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
"Debate," for example, does not merely have a dictionary meaning, but a connotation, as well; in this case, it implies that the one opening the conversation is actually interested in the answer, and a resulting back and forth.
Both the founder of this subthread -- and you -- have evinced a clear lack of interest in "debate." Accordingly, we're granting you both your wish: The ability to self-validate your pre-existing worldviews.
Farewell.
-----------
Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
Classical reference.
Moe
PS: Be sure to let us know when you've created your anti-RS website! Remember, it'll be Thomas who'll be your evil blogfather...
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
... but somehow I expect not.
--
We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
(See below.)
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
There is really no straight answer to this question. Now, I don't claim to speak for the traditional Republican since I am more of a libertarian than a true Republican or social conservative. But I think the only answer you're going to get is that in the 80s it was in our national interest to ally with Saddam, period.
This answer might be ok for many, but certainly not for the moral absolutists out there. Which is indeed perplexing since while many social conservative do indeed claim to adhere to absolute morals, they still support some foreign policy that is clearly not so. But such is life. The fact of the matter is that when Saddam was committing his crimes against humanity, the west did not stand up to him, but allowed him to do it. Most of the companies that sold Saddam components for chemical weapons were based in the West and the transactions went on with the approval of the West's leaders. For me this is indeed heartbreaking - the Soviet union would have collapsed regardless of whether we allowed Saddam to purchase those components or not. But such is foreign policy. Personally, what really pisses me off is when highly partisan folks claim that their party doesn't do that kind of thing, when in fact ALL parties in control here and in Western Europe are guilty of sometimes allowing or even actively assisting dictators in the oppression of their people.
That sounds really damming, until you realise that "chemical weapons" in most cases are just fairly ordinary chemicals employed in high doses and high concentrations. Chlorine is widely used for peaceful purposes but is also used as a chemical warfare agent, for just one example. Many "nerve agents" are simply ordinary insecticides with the concentration increased so as to be more injurious to humans.
Let's just assume the level of complicity you are asserting is correct, for the sake of argument.
Why the deification of Roosevelt by Democrats (and many others)for allying himself with the USSR? After all, in sheer numbers, Stalin made Saddam look like a minor league monster.
Roosevelt = Democrat = good
Reagan = Republican = bad
Got it straight now?
:-)
John
----------
Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
So, by that logic, the Iran-Iraq war was on the same scale as World War II, with the Iranians filling in for the Third Reich?
The US sided with Saddam in the 80s out of a strategic national interest that involved everything from Cold War gamesmanship to projecting American strength in a vital region... but let's be real: the Iran-Irag war was hardly the epic struggle of WW II. Any US president in 1942, be he Republican or Democrat, would have had to work with Stalin in order to handle the Axis Powers... and if he didn't, it would be a different world today.
What is the problem with facing certain facts about our past involvement with Saddam? We shouldn't run from the truth that our great nation (along with many others) did at one time offer support this now thankfully deceased monster. If we have any guts, we can look our recent history in the eye and learn from it... for we have a vested interest in making sure we don't create more monsters than we kill.
We should celebrate the fact he is gone, but if we don't learn all we can from this entire episode than it is hardly the complete victory for the US that it could be.
was considerably less than the Left claims. It is true that the US courted him for a while as a potnetial client. So did the Soviets. And he took our money and weapons (and the Soviets' as well) then flipped us (and the Soviets) the middle finger. And that was the end of the courtship.
There was no one particular hot war during the Cold War that compared to WW II, but sum of all those parts was as big; Vietnam, Korea, Central America and the Middle East. They are were all important in America's ability to defend freedom around the world in the face of communism.
The Middle East was strategic in the free flow of oil to the West. The West would have to remain strong economically to defeat the Soviet Union and conceding Iraq to Iran would not have made that possible.
It's foolish to compare one particular war around the world during the Cold War, be it Vietnam, Korea or the Iraq/Iran to WWII as a whole and begin to make an argument of scales. If that's the best you can do, that says enough. Then again, yours is the crowd that can't put the dots together between Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the war on Islamo Fascism.
...at the time, and our support for Saddam was scant. Saddam received less than 1% of his weaponry from the U.S., and this was before he started gassing Iranians and his own people. France, Russia and China provided 85%. Why aren't you more upset about those nations that gave more than 85 times more support to the dictator?
Also, if you didn't hear any indignation from Republicans about Saddam's war crimes in the 1980s, then I suggest that you weren't listening.
Support comes in many forms, and we should not whitewash our past dealings it this now burning-in-hell monster.
From the WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=print...
[QUOTE]"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."
To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.
The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.
Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the Rumsfeld visit, which had "elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to a new level." [/QUOTE]
It forced the United State to choose more than once between two evils just to defend its own existence on a larger stage. There's no correcting our oversight about it.
Spare us the lectures on moral clarity. It's the Republican Party that is on the right side of history with slavery, communism and now terrorism while your party has been indifferent to or on the wrong side of each.
Your pathetic party once could as least lay claim to being the party of freedom and democracy around the world (Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK) but you've jettisoned yourself of those guys all together and are now the party of "who are we to tell them how to live?".
So you enjoyed watching one Democrat after another win last month as a "conservative" Democrat, running from your kook crowd and towards us in the rhetoric and issues? What will be more fun is watching it all come home to roost over the next two years when they either have to abandon the "centrist/swing" voters that got them elected or infuriate the nuts at Kos.
Now get back to your Che CD case and backpack and do another bong hit.
Honestly, I expected even the people over at DKos to be happy to see Saddam dead. But reading the comments, I guess I overestimated their saneness and goodness.
Ghouls - They can't comprehend the basic immorality or the insanity of putting this man to death.
I don't think you can call it anything other than insane and perverted when someone thinks it's immoral to put Saddam Hussein to death, yet surely supports the mass murder of millions of American children.
George W. Bush? After all, he is responsible for more deaths than either of those you mentioned. I am quite serious. Bush is as much of a criminal as either Hussien or Bin Laden.
I am stunned some Americans actually think this. I thought the anti-bush stuff was mostly rhetoric...but they really do think he and America are just as bad as the terrorists.
650,000 Iraqi deaths (20+ / 0-) Saddam didn't come close to matching that. Bush is responsible for more American deaths than the 9-11 terrorists. He is a war crimnal. You can attempt to nuance that fact all you want, but the fact remains...he is a war criminal.
And while we are at it... (12+ / 0-) for those who believe in the death penalty, Rummy, Cheney, and all the others who enabled Saddam (while he was our thug) should be on the gallows with him.
Look at the recommendations. These people are flat out dangerous to our country.
I wonder though whether the rabid dog who posted that, and other rabid dogs, also want to hang both houses of Congress.
The little matter of the war authorization and the continued and ongouing funding of the war do complicate things for those with advanced cases of rabies.
Unless their minds are totally destroyed.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
I am stunned some Americans actually think this.
Americans don't think this. There are people living here, stealing our oxygen, who believe this, but Americans don't.
of that O2 these residents are stealing from us is reaching their nit-sized brains.
No offense intended toward nits. :o)
With all the crap that goes on in the world, it sure is nice to see that justice does still occur.
And I do hope he repented; even Saddam Hussein is not beyond the grace of GOD.
Not that I'm going to get particularly worked up if he didn't. Neither will you, I suspect. :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
It isn't for us to decide what God will say to people like [Hussein]. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.
President Reagan's actions regarding the Iran-Iraq War must be taken in historical context, considering the Soviet Union's doctrine of expansion and the president's constitutional obligation to limit Soviet influence in the Middle East.
President Reagan's "moral clarity" was focused squarely on the national security interests of the American people.
And rightly so.
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
That's what I titled my post on Saddam's hanging. It seems he went out with a whimper, not a roar.
no martyrdom. Nothing. This is the full video shot from a cell phone of his hanging: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=863ce7d4a3&p=1
He's pining for the fjords!
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill