... A defiant Saddam Hussein has rejected charges of war crimes and genocide, telling a judge: "This is all theatre, the real criminal is Bush.'' “I am Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq,'' Saddam twice said. Saddam defended the invasion of Kuwait, saying it was "for the Iraqi people''. The seven broad charges against Saddam are: the killing of religious figures in 1974; gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988; killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983; killing members of political parties in the past 30 years; the 1986-88 'Anfal' campaign of displacing Kurds; the suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites; the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Specific charges will be filed later, said Salem Chalabi, director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Those charges were expected to include war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
good im glad he got charged, wat is his punishment? hopefully death...but im guessing its like 500 years in prison or something
He also chose to not recognize the new Iraqi government. I think we should have him tried by a Kurdish/Shitie court, they have plenty of reason to give him death.
lol ya, he says he is still the president of iraq, maybe he went a little psycho while in his little hole 0_o, o wait...he is psycho..
I don't think we should put him to death. I say let's send him to Alcatraz, lock him up in maximum security, and let him rot for the rest of his life. Then he will be wishing we gave him the death penalty.
Hmm... aren't we missing a few points here? 1. No mention charges against him for hiding WMD (funny that!) 2. He has a good point about Bush? (after all it was the UK and USA that put him there in the first place and chose to ignore his Human Rights attrocities for many, many years) Love Learning and Freedom Clairexxx
I suspect that a great many even on the right would decry the sort of process that is being touted as a legitimate test case for the IIG if it were carried out in the US. Lets examine this for moment. Facts that have long since emerged put some of the claims against Saddam (as bad as he was, let us not forget that war media often inflates claims to achieve public moral outrage and support) as highly dubious if not utterly historically false, such as the gassing at Halabja (of which the sole source of information was discovered to have the Kurds themselves, longtime political opponents of Saddam and close cohorts of the US control and containment of Iraq since '91). Considering further that amongst the brief list of charges is included the admittedly brutal repression of the Shia uprising, one should exmine the event its full context. Post Gulf War I, then President Bush (Sr.) ardently encouraged the Shias to revolt and overthrow the Baathist regime, promising them full US financial and military support. No sooner thad they raken Bush at his word and risen up, they found themselves abandoned and subsequently crushed. Now that event, which the right has seized upon with glee as further ammo to justify eventual unprovoked foreign invasion and occupation, it has failed to (not unsurprisingly) subject to intellectually honest assessment. Can we who have seen Washington gun down protesting students at Kent State or (in another example recalled by our parents generation) the gunning down of veterans during the Bonus March of the Korean War era rightly say that Saddam acted in a fashion out of keeping with any nation's government when confronted with an armed insurrection? Was that not the terminology employed by Lincoln to justify the fullscale invasion of the Secessionist states in his day? Looking further into the current Iraqi process, who, we should ask ourselves, is heading up the installed group of protagonists in this judicial procedure? The answer would be Salem Chalabi, nephew of the former US hopeful to lead Iraq (and known embezzler wanted in Jordan for his own set of crimes) Ahmed Chalabi. Here is a man whose own business partner runs a law firm in partnership with Doug Feith (one of the central PNAC architects and overseer the ongoing scandals surrounding lavish "no bid" contracts to corporations close to the US administration. Salem Chalabi Now, lest you think this an apologetic in defense of Saddam himself, let me point out that my contention here regards the Kangaroo Court nature of this judicial process, which is no more truly "sovereign" on the part of Iraqis than was the secretive close door "handover" to US administration approved lackies (including Allawi who is commonly known in Iraq as well as surrounding Arab states as being a darling of the CIA). Saddam MUST have his day in court, without doubt. However, with so many inflated and politically inspired charges (some, as noted above, based on transparent double standards) it must be added that no IIG controlled process can be expected to be a full and unprejudiced examination of all the facts in their full historic context. The media certainly hasn't asked any hard questions since the start of the build up to the invasion, nor throughout the course of its execution, and isn't showing any indication of doing so in regard to this judicial process. I very much wish to see Saddam tried, but tried fairly, transparently, and with international oversight. Otherwise we have ourselves nothing more than a closed shop exercise in political whitewash. What is needed in this case is extradition to the Hague just as we have seen with Milosevic.
So when the Kurds decided they had enough of Anfal genocidal campaigns and set up their own government protected by US military power, all these gets is your scorn that they are "cohorts in US control and containment"? Not that this will stop the apologists.
Ahh, running afoul of your own condemnation of "cut and paste" ah? (not that you even bothered to note the point I was making before piping in with your typical intellectually dishonest retort) However, now that you've opened the flood gate... http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Miller_Iraq-Genocide.htm Since you prefer to focus on the charges themselves then at least have the legitimacy to admit that there is sufficient doubt surrounding some of the charges to warrant a judicial proceeding wholly independent from any possible Coalition or long time political opposition control in order to ensure greater transparency and balanced examination of ALL the facts (not merely those repaetedly reported by the mainstream media to elicit public outrage without any consistent contextual analysis. Obviously you live in denial that Kangaroo Courts even exist (or is only when a personage of your political persuasion is put on trial?).
You're right LickHERish as always, the bad guy is America and Saddam was framed, depicted only by the media as an evil fellow. A 'fair trial'? Not gonna happen. After running a country the way he did, refusing to step down from power even though UN resolutions were tearing his country apart, he dosen't deserve a fair trial. He deserves to be killed. And saying he's the president of Iraq? Come on, he's not even willing to play the game! That's what it is of course, a game. Regardless of the court or the charge, Saddam will never breathe free air again (unless someone breaks him out). It's death or life in maximum security prison no matter who is doing the judgeing.
Indeed I have opened the floodgate... to a who is Well I'd better run for cover then. One of their interesting points, which you accidentally left out, is that Well I fear for a left that cannot compare Bush to Hitler then, since that invalidates pretty much half of Bush's critics here. Of course as it happens the home page of Dissident Voice has a picture of hitler and bush with the caption "same shit different asshole". Ah tripped up by their own bullshit, something you should be able to relate to. Anyway good luck with the apologies, should keep you busy for quite a long time i would imagine. And after all, if an Iraqi general saying "I am going to gas the kurds" on camera isn't evidence, well, hope really springs eternal for apologists doesn't it?
LOL. My god you are perhaps two of the most evasive diatribe artists I have yet come across in any online debate forum. Bravo for reading only what you wish, you both rate on a par with Wolfowitz, Cheney and co for desperately regurgitating the same mantra regardless of the topic under examination and utterly failing to comprehend what has been written. Intellectual dishonesty at its finest. Thank you for showing us just how lacking in substantive analysis you truly are.
With time off for good behavior, he could get his sentence cut in half....(a variation of an old Woody Allen joke.) The odds are good to excellent he and his top cronies will be executed. The new government cannot risk have the likes of those guys hanging (even in exile) around stirring up further trouble and possibly escaping. Their activities is much more limiting if they're dead; also there's no possibly of escape from the grave.
my thoughts for saddam: two words: Meat Hooks. Then again those are my thoughts for rummsfeld, cheny, wolfowitz, ashcroft, condi rice. Colon powell has been through enough already. And I think bush just needs a stern lecture and some time in the 'time out chair'.
every ruler, Bush-G. Washington ect. ect., from day one iz a ripoff killer pig. The genetic defect in the human genome causes their ability to pull the wings from a butterfly and fell nothing. You dumbass phsiced scared peasants act stupid and hope they will not be next in line for duh meathook. duh. ah, hip with my long hair
