by Xandria 79 Replies latest social current
Time will tell. Personally, I hope he receives a very public trial at the hands of the Iraqi people without interference from any outside nation, before they execute him in a heinous manner.
I also hope some of his supporters take note of his cowardly actions, hiding in the dirt and not even firing a single shot, after all his calls on them to fight to the death. Some reports have said Palestinians are a bit dismayed at his cowardice, but time will also tell there.
I am very happy for America! Bush / Blair maybe completely vindicated as to the reasons they lead the attack on the Iraqi dictatorship!
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/12/14/ixportaltop.html
"Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist......."
Lived like a rat and caught like a rat:
Yeah a pathetic, frightened old man that was not in the position to threaten anyone. Makes me wonder about the stories of him master minding all the "terrorist" attacks.
Will
Will,
And ol' "Uncle Joe Stalin" was really a very nice old guy as well...??!? How many millions was that gentle-looking soul responsible for killing?
It's a pity that Saddam came to this, but it was all his own choice.
bebu
They interviewed an American soldier that was there when Saddam came out of his hole. His first words were:
"I'm Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq. I am willing to negotiate".
Another soldier replied back to him... "Yeah, President Bush sends his regards".
I heard that Saddam had head lice..... poor lice.
Sometimes the West has to choose the lesser of two evils
By John Keegan (Filed: 16/12/2003)
Some people are never satisfied. Yesterday, Americans, Britons and Iraqis were celebrating the news of Saddam's capture. Today, some Western commentators are anticipating more trouble as a result.
Robert Fisk, the Independent's celebrated Middle East correspondent, writes that "the nightmare is over ? and the nightmare is about to begin". His reasoning is a little difficult to follow but seems to run like this. The circumstances of the capture of Saddam, as a troglodyte fugitive, dispose of the idea that he was co-ordinating the Iraqi resistance to Western occupation of the country of which he was recently president. Most of Saddam's former subjects would not, however, join the fight against him because, while he was at liberty, they feared he might return to power.
Yet all Iraqis agreed yesterday, according to Fisk's hasty soundings, that internal disorder would continue. The responsibility for that is the West's, because, in his heyday, Saddam was courted by Western statesmen. The French sent doctors to treat him. Chirac fawned on him. Donald Rumsfeld led a diplomatic mission to his capital. It is the West, therefore, which has destabilised the politics of the country it is now attempting to turn into a democracy and the West will therefore have to pay the price of the instability it has caused.
There is a tiny kernel of sense in what Fisk alleges. Saddam was indeed once courted by the West, at a time when the real menace in the Middle East was seen to be the fundamentalist ayatollah regime in Iran. The ayatollahs preached holy war against the Great Satan, the United States, and openly sponsored anti-American terrorism. They violated the most ancient rules governing relations between states, by invading the American Embassy in Teheran and imprisoning its staff.
Saddam, at that time, seemed a desirable ally. He was fervently anti-Iranian in his foreign policies. In his domestic politics he was all that any Western country sought of a Middle Eastern ruler. He was a genuine secularist, dedicated to keeping Islamic clerics safely in their mosques. He encouraged the education of his population, the emancipation of women and the economic development of his country and spent his vast oil revenues to achieve such ends. He was not, at the time, obviously anti-Western.
Little wonder that the leaders of the West flocked to Baghdad. If the Middle East were to be modernised, as had been the Western dream ever since Napoleon led his expedition to Egypt in 1798, it would be through the leadership of men like Saddam, apparently genuine patriots with enlightened development programmes. The West had reposed hopes in other Middle Eastern rulers before, notably Nasser of Egypt and the Shah of Iran. The Shah, however, though a genuine moderniser, had insisted on ruling from too narrow a political base and on being too brutal towards the Iranian Islamic establishment. He had provoked an internal religious revolution which brought his project down. Nasser, also a genuine moderniser, had combined his ambition for domestic reform with that for leadership of the Arab world, which required him to attack Western financial interests and fight Israel. He had thereby provoked the West's hostility and isolated himself from fruitful Western contacts. Sadat, Nasser's successor, proved too pro-Western and suffered an all too frequent Middle Eastern fate: assassination at the hands of anti-Western fanatics.
The expulsion of the Shah and the deaths of Nasser and Sadat left only one hopeful candidate for Western favour in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein. Many then felt, and some still do, that correct Western policy was to cultivate Saddam and draw him into the Western system. He was certainly given encouragement in plenty. Western policy could not, however, accommodate the irrational side of Saddam's character. He did not want to be the junior partner in any foreign scheme, nor a subordinate of the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party, Ba'athist though he was, nor a protégé of the Egyptian free officers, certainly not a Western place man. He had formed the aim of himself becoming the leading statesman of the Arab world and, greatly overestimating the power that his oil wealth gave him, set out to achieve his ambition.
It was from that misconceived policy that after 1980 all his troubles flowed. First he decided to defeat Iran, over a trifling frontier difference. The eight-year war cost him so much that he became indebted to his Arab supporters, who like him feared the ayatollahs' influence over the Islamic masses. When he annexed Kuwait in 1990, to wipe out his debt, he outraged the world but fatally also Western opinion and suffered a crushing defeat in the war that followed. Even after his humiliation, he persisted in seeking ways to restore his prestige, pursuing the development of weapons of mass destruction as a cheap means of achieving revenge.
The consequences we know. It is difficult to see why the West should be blamed for the outcome. The West has been here before. Time and again in modern history a leader, party or power whose policy seemed at the time the least bad option for democracy's support has been revealed, through the course of events, as a shaming ally. Mussolini, in the 1930s, was thought to be a useful counterweight against Hitler, even though he was a flagrant imperialist. Hitler, himself, at a time when Bolshevism seemed the great threat to the West, was given the benefit of the doubt. It was with expressed reluctance that, in June 1941, Winston Churchill brought himself to promise support to Stalin after Hitler's invasion of Russia. And so it goes on. The roll call of unworthy beneficiaries of democratic support is almost endless. Noriega in Panama, Pinochet against Allende, the Diems in Vietnam, Ceausescu when he seemed anti-Soviet, Bokassa, the cannibal emperor of Central Africa, even Idi Amin, who may have been a cannibal also.
Citizens of democracies do not like to be reminded of the bad friendships their rulers have made. We think our countries should behave as if they had moral characters. Robin Cook, indeed, began as New Labour's Foreign Secretary by announcing the inauguration of an "ethical foreign policy". But countries do not have moral characters. They only have interests. Sometimes the pursuit of interests leads us in directions that are difficult to defend. Our former involvement with Saddam the secularist was just such an interest. It should not be held against our rulers now.
Do you think they are addressing Saddam by his title: Saddam Hussein, the Anointed One, Glorious Leader, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, President of Iraq, Chairman of its Revolutionary Command Council, field marshal of its armies, doctor of its laws, and Great Uncle to all its peoples????????
Bisous,
c'mon now ... we all know our current gov't did everything possible to paint Iraq and Al Qaeda with the same brush to gain support for the war...it's foolish to argue otherwise unless you were in a coma the last 2 years...as far as "position of power"...that's how it works...get all your buddies to say what you don't want to be quoted as ...
actually the record shows that the Bush Administration went to pains NOT to connect Iraq with 9-11. That Iraq aided terrorists is just a plain and simple fact and did indeed figure into the war...but wasn't it's cheif reason.
Getting Osama is going to be tough until we get the BIG BRASS BALLS needed to go into Pakistan and pick him up.
