Saddam, 2 others sentenced to death

[Guest oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]Saddam, 2 others sentenced to death [/b][/size]
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town, as the ousted leader, trembling and defiant, shouted "God is great!"

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal, Saddam yelled out, "Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!" Later, his lawyer said the former dictator had called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and refrain from revenge against U.S. forces.

The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its slaughter of 6 million Jews in the World War II Holocaust

"The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that has was unmatched in Iraq's history," Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shiite prime minister, said.

Some feared the verdicts could exacerbate the sectarian violence that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war, after a trial that stretched over nine months in 39 sessions and ended nearly 3 1/2 months ago. Clashes immediately began Sunday in north Baghdad's heavily Sunni Azamiyah district. Elsewhere in the capital, celebratory gunfire rang out.

"This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed," Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told the Al-Arabiya satellite television station.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants were on trial for a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on the former dictator. Al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa party, then an underground opposition, has claimed responsibility for organizing the attempt on Saddam's life.

In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read.

Saddam's chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi condemned the trial as a "farce," claiming the verdict was planned. He said defense attorneys would appeal within 30 days.

The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted.

During Sunday's hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge's order to rise; two bailiffs pulled the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing, sometimes wagging his finger at the judge.

Before the session began, one of Saddam's lawyers, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the trial a travesty.

Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman pointed to Clark and said in English, "Get out."

In addition to the former Iraqi dictator and Barzan Ibrahim, his former intelligence chief and half brother, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted and sentenced Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the head of Iraq's former Revolutionary Court, to death by hanging. Iraq's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid were party officials Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.

Mohammed Azawi Ali, a former Dujail Baath Party official, was acquitted for lack of evidence and immediately freed.

He faces additional charges in a separate case over an alleged massacre of Kurdish civilians — a trial that will continue while appeals are pending.

The guilty verdict is likely to enrage hard-liners among Saddam's fellow Sunnis, who made up the bulk of the former ruling class. The country's majority Shiites, who were persecuted under the former leader but now largely control the government, will likely view the outcome as a cause of celebration.

Al-Dulaimi, Saddam's lawyer, told AP his client called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and called on them to refrain from taking revenge on U.S. invaders.

"His message to the Iraqi people was 'pardon and do not take revenge on the invading nations and their people'," al-Dulaimi said, quoting Saddam. "The president also asked his countrymen to 'unify in the face of sectarian strife.'"

In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city's favorite son through the streets. Some declared the court a product of the U.S. "occupation forces" and condemned the verdict.

"By our souls, by our blood we sacrifice for you Saddam" and "Saddam your name shakes America."

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad issued a statement saying the verdicts "demonstrate the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them (Saddam and his co-defendants) accountable."

"Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future," Khalilzad said.

U.S. officials associated with the tribunal said Saddam's repeated courtroom outbursts during the nine-month trial may have played a key part in his conviction.

They cited his admission in a March 1 hearing that he had ordered the trial of 148 Shiites who were eventually executed, insisting that doing so was legal because they were suspected in the assassination attempt against him. "Where is the crime? Where is the crime?" he asked, standing before the panel of five judges.

Later in the same session, he argued that his co-defendants must be released and that because he was in charge, he alone must be tried. His outburst came a day after the prosecution presented a presidential decree with a signature they said was Saddam's approval for death sentences for the 148 Shiites, their most direct evidence against him.

About 50 of those sentenced by the "Revolutionary Court" died during interrogation before they could go to the gallows. Some of those hanged were children.

"Every time they (defendants) rose and spoke, they provided a lot of incriminating evidence," said one of the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Under Saddam, Iraq's bureaucracy showed a consistent tendency to document orders, policies and minutes of meetings. That, according to the U.S. officials, helped the prosecution produce more than 30 documents that clearly established the chain of command under Saddam.

One document gave the names of everyone from Dujail banished to a desert detention camp in southern Iraq. Another, prepared by an aide to Saddam, gave the president a detailed account of the punitive measures against the people of Dujail following the failed assassination attempt.

Saddam's trial had from the outset appeared to reflect the turmoil and violence in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

One of Saddam's lawyers was assassinated the day after the trial's opening session last year. Two more were later assassinated and a fourth fled the country.

In January, chief judge Rizgar Amin, a Kurd, resigned after complaints by Shiite politicians that he had failed to keep control of court proceedings. He, in turn, complained of political interference in the trial. Abdul-Rahman, another Kurd, replaced Amin.

Hearings were frequently disrupted by outbursts from Saddam and Ibrahim, with the two raging against what they said was the illegitimacy of the court, their ill treatment in the U.S.-run facility where they are being held and the lack of protection for their lawyers.

The defense lawyers contributed to the chaos in the courtroom by staging several boycotts.[/quote]


[url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061105/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_verdict"]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061105/ap_on_.../saddam_verdict[/url]

[Guest RudiRudiRudi]

Pay Per View anyone?

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='RudiRudiRudi' post='378498' date='Nov 5 2006, 09:28 AM']Pay Per View anyone?[/quote]
As long as they don't put one of those hoods over his face so we can see his eyes popping out during the hanging.

[STRAYCAT]

[img]http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/hang4a.jpg[/img]



much deserved [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/23.gif[/img]

[ChicagoBengal]

I was kind of hoping that he'd get off so he could replace Bob Barker as host of "The Price Is Right".

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='ChicagoBengal' post='378527' date='Nov 5 2006, 10:59 AM']I was kind of hoping that he'd get off so he could replace Bob Barker as host of "The Price Is Right".[/quote]

He's certainly got the womanizing credentials....

[Guest Coy Bacon]

I can think of a number of countries in which this needs to happen.

[Guest Coy Bacon]

The Case for Iraqi Genocide
By Ghali Hassan
Oct 22, 2006, 09:20




[b]For nearly sixteen years, U.S. and British forces have been killing Iraqis with impunity. [/b] The number of Iraqis killed is increasing rapidly and could easily reach 3 millions if the U.S. refuses to end the Occupation. [b]Iraq is an example of how the West uses the word genocide selectively[/b]. Genocide is used to describe the internal conflict in Sudan (Darfur region), but not the mass killing of innocent Iraqis where the U.S. and Britain are the main perpetrators of violence and destruction. What is happening in Iraq today is genocide, as clearly described by the Genocide Convention.



[b]Western violence against Iraqis started in 1990. The so-called “Gulf war” and economic sanctions were a deliberate and calculated destruction of an entire nation accompanied by massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians and retreating conscripts. The war was followed by more than a decade-long genocidal sanction that killed more than two million Iraqis, a third of them infant under the age of five.[/b]



In 1995, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimated that over a million Iraqis, including 567,000 children had died as a direct result of the sanctions, which targeted vital goods such as medical supplies and water-treatment technology, including chlorine, to purify clean water for drinking in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. According to UNICEF, 4,500 children were dying each month and 825,000 Iraqi children were at risk of acute malnutrition and possibly death.



Substantial evidence supports a deliberate policy by the U.S. and Britain to destroy Iraq and empty Iraq of its human resources. [b]Former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, Dennis Halliday, resigned in protest in 1998 as the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq[/b]. He described the sanctions as “genocidal”. “[b]I’ve been using the word ‘genocide’ because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I’m afraid I have no other view,” said Halliday[/b]. The “sanctions of mass destruction” [b]killed more innocent Iraqi civilians than were killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history. It was arguably the greatest genocide since World War II.[/b] [See article by this author here. – Ed]



After studying [b]several documents declassified by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), [/b] Thomas Nagy revealed that the documents [b]suggest “a plan for the deliberate massacre of the Iraqi population by judicious use of economic sanctions, and through the deliberate targeting of Iraq’s water supply”[/b] [1]. It is possible that the U.S. and British government were deliberately embarking on systematic depopulation of Iraq.



In a short essay in Harper’s magazine, Professor Joy Gordon of Fairfield University in Connecticut, described the sanctions as; a “[b]legitimized act of mass slaughter" of innocent Iraqi civilians[/b]. Gordon noted: . . . epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so[2].



[b]To avoid mass starvation of Iraqis and the collapse of the Iraqi state, the Saddam Hussein government was able to break the sanctions by bribing and corrupting many governments, including Australia, Greece, Italy and Arab governments. In 2002, Iraq showed signs of recovery before the leaders of the U.S. and Britain committed another ‘supreme international crime’ by attacking Iraq unprovoked and in violation of the UN Charter.[/b]



[b]The March 2003 illegal invasion and subsequent violent Occupation were planned in advance to destroy Iraq and control its wealth. The people of Iraq did not invite Bush and Blair to invade and occupy their country. They are rightly and legitimately resisting the invasion and occupation of their country. The invasion was justified by lies fabricated in London and Washington, and filtered through the Zionist mainstream media to demonise the Iraqi people in order to manipulate public opinion[/b].



A new study published in the most respected and peer-reviewed British journal The Lancet estimates that [b]655,000 – the midpoint between 426,369 and 793,663 people [/b] – Iraqis have been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq[3]. In other words, at least 2.5 per cent of Iraq’s total population have been killed as a result of U.S.-led murderous invasion and occupation. “Deaths are occurring in IraqTop of Form now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the lead author of the study. With 95 per cent of accuracy, the study is the most credible so far. The larger sample validates and confirms the Lancet earlier study released in October 2004 that found an estimate of more that 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces.



The “cluster sampling” method is the best method of measuring mortality in times of war and disaster and is used widely, even by the U.S. government. The methodology used by the authors has long been standard practice in estimating mortality in populations affected by war. It was developed by the U.S. centres for disease control and endorsed by the World Health Organisations. The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University found the study to be methodically sound and accurate. [b]“The scientific community is in agreement over the statistical methods used to collect the data and the validity of the conclusions drawn by the researchers conducting the study”[/b], writes Rebecca Goldin of STATS.



President George Bush and his lackeys (Tony Blair and John Howard) quickly rejected the study findings and disputed the number of Iraqis killed as a result of their unprovoked international crimes. Their comment is insulting not only to Iraqis, but also to scientists. [b]Can you imagine Bush’s response if anyone disputed the number of people who died in 9/11 attacks? Iraqis do not count as people[/b]. Bush alleged that Iraqis “tolerate violence”. To the contrary, Iraqis do not tolerate violence. The majority of Iraqis, including a large number of “parliamentarians” in the U.S.-imposed government, are in favour of an immediate end to the Occupation, and are overwhelmingly rejecting Bush’s agenda.



[b]From the outset of the Occupation, the Anglo-American strategy was the creation of chaos[/b], characterised by looting, corruption, violence and mayhem. The [b]disbanding of the Iraqi Army and Police, and the creation, financing and arming of militias and death squads [/b] to murder Iraqi prominent politicians, members of the Ba’ath Party and professionals (‘de-Ba’athification’), were the preludes to the current chaos. Iraqis continue to be killed in larger numbers than they ever did. [b]Most of the crimes are perpetuated either by the occupying forces or under the radar screen of the occupying forces. Furthermore, the intent to “kill all military-age males” is designed to completely pacify Iraq and make communities’ survival difficult in a society where men are considered the ‘breadwinners’. [/b]


[b]Prior to the U.S. invasion and occupation, Iraq was a country characterised by extensive social programs, including the protection of women’s right, education system and health care services that made Iraq the envy of the region.[/b] In today’s Iraq, most Iraqis are deprived of security, education and health services, adequate employment and sufficient food. Since the invasion, Iraqis lack adequate electricity and drinking water supplies. The Iraqi standard of living has deteriorated. “Nearly 5.6 millions Iraqis are living below the poverty line, according to our most recent studies. At least 40 per cent of this number is living in absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions,” said Sinan Youssef, an official in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. [b]The number of people living in “absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions” has increased by 35 per cent since the U.S.-led invasion. [/b] The unemployment rate is estimated to be over 60 per cent, while food prices have increased dramatically.



The U.S.-imposed undemocratic system and its puppet government of expatriates have failed to provide for Iraqis and create a safe living environment. [b]The purpose of the puppet government is to legitimise the Occupation and looting of Iraq’s wealth by U.S. corporations. The illegal building of U.S. military bases throughout Iraq and the construction of a monstrous U.S. embassy in the heart of Baghdad are flagrant violations of Iraqi sovereignty and independence.[/b]


Furthermore, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) is estimating 1.5 million people are now displaced, driven by ongoing military raids and militia violence. UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said: “Our staffs [are] seeing about 2,000 people a day coming across [to Syria], so it’s more than 40,000 people a month just into Syria”. Most of the refugees have not registered with the UNHCR, in what the UNHCR calls a “silent exodus”. Many more Iraqis have moved on to Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Europe. [b]It is not just a violent Occupation; it is a calculated ethnic cleansing. Those minorities who remained become increasingly vulnerable.[/b]



In addition, the Iraqi [b]brain drain [/b] is the worst in history, and is destroying Iraq’s capabilities. According to the UK-based charity group, Medact; “A quarter of Iraq’s 18,000 physicians have fled the country since 2003, and doctors and other health workers are being attacked, threatened or kidnapped daily”. An estimated 250 of those who remained in Iraq had been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed. [b]The deliberate destruction of Iraq’s health service is increasing the death rates and suffering of Iraqis, particularly children.[/b]



[b]The Western media, particularly in the U.S., are deliberately ignoring the genocide in Iraq.[/b] Instead the media continue with a [b]campaign of disinformation, portraying the violence as “sectarian violence”, “civil war” or “violent insurgency”, removing the Occupation as the generator of the violence[/b]. Indeed, the word Occupation, like the word Resistance, has been completely removed from the media’s vocabulary.



There is overwhelming [b]evidence that the U.S. and Britain are directly responsible for the current “sectarian violence” in Iraq[/b]. For example, the recent violence in Balad and Amara was deliberately provoked to counter the growing demand for an immediate end to the Occupation. [b]The violence is used as a propaganda tool to demonise Iraqis and to justify ongoing Occupation[/b]. The media portray the U.S. as mediator (not occupiers) trying to help the Iraqis. [b]It is important to remember that until the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, the Iraqi people had lived and intermarried peacefully for generation.[/b]



In addition to this media disinformation, [size=4][b]the so-called “progressive Left” and the “socialists” in the West are more concerned with Iraq becoming “a catastrophe for U.S. imperialism”, and that “Communities all over America are paying a bitter price for [the Bush Administration] program of militarism” (WSWS, 17/10/2006). The aim is to blame Iraqis for everything. [/b] [/size] The destruction of Iraq is irrelevant and Iraqis are ‘not’ paying a “bitter price”. [size=5][b]This deliberate and deep ignorance represents a conscious choice to obfuscate reality and cover up war crimes perpetuated by Western leaders against defenceless Iraqi population.[/b][/size]

A recent report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that [b]the “overwhelming majority of Iraqis believes that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. More broadly, most feel the U.S. is having a predominantly negative influence in Iraq and have little or no confidence in the U.S. military”. In fact, the head of the British army, Sir Richard Dannatt admitted recently that the presence of foreign troops (U.S. and British) in Iraq is “exacerbating” the violence.[/b]

[size=6][b]Meanwhile, while a genocide is being perpetuated in Iraq, President Saddam Hussein is on a U.S.-staged illegal trial accused of allegedly ordering the execution of 140 people found guilty of conspiring in July 1982 to assassinate Saddam as president of Iraq, and of allegedly ordering the removal of Kurdish families (to southern Iraq) associated with the Kurdish insurgency.[/b] [/size]



Under international law as stipulated in The Judgment of the Nuremberg Trials; “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the ‘supreme international crime’ differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole[size=6]”... [b]It follows that the war on Iraq is considered the ‘international supreme crime’, therefore, all those who are responsible must be held accountable. [/b] [/size]

A report prepared by Consumers for Peace.org with the advice of Karen Parker, a distinguished lawyer in human rights and humanitarian law, found that there is ample evidence for full investigations of war crimes committed by “individual military U.S. [and British] officers in Iraq and on up the whole chain of command”. In other words,[size=6] [b]U.S. leaders and their allies (Blair and Howard) bear full responsibility for the ongoing genocide and destruction in Iraq.[/b]
[/size]

The number of Iraqis killed since 1991 could easily reach 3 millions if this modern day genocide is not stopped. The Bush administration and their Western allies described the Darfur internal conflict as “ongoing genocide”, contradicting accurate reports and using the Darfur crisis to divert media and world attentions from an actual genocide in Iraq.[b] If the death of few thousands of people in Darfur is considered genocide – by Bush and allies – why the death of millions Iraqis is not? [/b]



[size=4][b]It is morally reprehensible playing a double standard, condemning the crimes in Darfur while ignoring the far greater crimes in Iraq. [/b] [/size] More than 150 countries, including the 15 members UN Security Council, are bound to stop the Iraqi genocide and demand an immediate and full withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq.





Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.



Footnotes:

[1] Nagy, Thomas (2001). The Secret behind the Sanctions, How the US Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply. The Progressive.

[2] Joy Gordon (2002). Cool War, Harper’s Magazine, November, 2002.

[3] Burnham, G., Lafta, R., Doocy, S. & Roberts, L. (2006). Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey. The Lancet, published online 12 October, 2006.









© Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com

[Guest ONYX]

A life sentence would have been better. I believe after he is executed, all hell
will break loose especially with the Sunni.

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='sneaky' post='380359' date='Nov 6 2006, 03:12 AM']A life sentence would have been better. I believe after he is executed, all hell
will break loose especially with the Sunni.[/quote]

you might be right, but imo the reason that the last few months have been so bad is b/c they were waiting for this day to come... imo, it will start to die down from here... i hope i'm right

[Guest ONYX]

[quote name='bengalrick' post='380552' date='Nov 6 2006, 10:58 AM']you might be right, but imo the reason that the last few months have been so bad is b/c they were waiting for this day to come... [b]imo, it will start to die down from here... i hope i'm right [/b][/quote]

Yeah, there is going to be some "dying down" alright.........in the form of innocent people.

The situation in Iraq will get much worse before it gets any better.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='ONYX' post='380588' date='Nov 6 2006, 12:06 PM']Yeah, there is going to be some "dying down" alright.........in the form of innocent people.

The situation in Iraq will get much worse before it gets any better.[/quote]



Agreed.

[Guest bengalrick]

i hope you guys are wrong...

[Guest oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]Iraq court to rule on Saddam verdict[/b][/size]
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes ago



BAGHDAD, Iraq - A round-the-clock curfew imposed in the capital ahead of Saddam Hussein's conviction eased Monday, with residents once more allowed to walk the streets and sidewalks. Around the country, jubilant Shiites celebrated the verdict, as Sunnis held defiant counter-demonstrations.

Iraq's appeals court was expected to rule on the verdict and sentence by mid-January, the chief prosecutor said Monday. Should the court uphold the death penalty, the Associated Press has learned that Iraq's three-man presidential council agreed previously not to block Saddam's hanging, which must be carried out within 30 days.

[size=3][b]The surge in violence expected immediately after the Sunday verdict on Saddam's trial for crimes against humanity did not materialize.[/b] [/size] An Interior Ministry spokesman credited the round-the-clock curfew in Baghdad, which has a mixed Shiite-Sunni population, and two restive Sunni provinces. Checkpoints were closed along Iraq's border with Jordan and Syria, a standard precaution taken during domestic emergencies.

Authorities were gradually lifting the restrictions, with pedestrians allowed back on the streets of Baghdad late Monday afternoon. Vehicle traffic in Baghdad would be permitted beginning at 6 a.m. Tuesday, according to police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun and an aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

In mainly Shiite Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, around 500 people marched carrying placards and shouting slogans denouncing the former dictator, who is accused of killing tens of thousands of Shiites following a 1991 uprising.

"Yes, yes for the verdict, which we have long been waiting for!" chanted the crowd, largely made up of students and government workers.

At least three people were wounded after gunfire broke out at a Shiite rally in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Amil, a mixed Shiite-Sunni area, police Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razaq said.

Ethnic Kurds, who like Iraq's majority Shiites suffered brutal persecution under Saddam, abandoned plans for a celebration rally in the northern city of Mosul over security concerns, said Ghayath al-Sorchi, an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Al-Sorchi said PUK activists instead distributed gifts to families who lost relatives in crackdowns under Saddam. Saddam is scheduled to appear in court again on Tuesday, when proceedings resume against him and six co-defendants in a separate trial over a crackdown against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s — the so-called Anfal case.

Underscoring the widening divide between Shiite and Sunni, about 250 pro-Saddam demonstrators took to the streets in the Sunni city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. They were dispersed by Iraqi soldiers for breaking the curfew. Another 400 pro-Saddam protesters marched through Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The curfew was temporarily lifted in Tikrit to give allow residents to shop and run errands. Angry crowds had gathered in the city on Sunday, holding aloft Saddam portraits, firing guns and chanting slogans vowing to avenge his execution.

Saddam was sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal for ordering the execution of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujail following a 1982 attempt on his life.

If the appeals court upholds the sentences, all three members of the Presidential Council — President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Tariq al-Hashimi and Adil Abdul-Mahdi — must sign death warrants before executions can be carried out.

But Talabani said Monday that while he had once signed an international petition against the death penalty, his signature was not needed to carry out the death sentence. Talabani, a Kurd, has permanently deputized Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, to sign on his behalf. Abdul-Mahdi has said he would sign Saddam's death warrant, meaning two of three signatures were assured.

Al-Hashimi, the other vice president and a Sunni Muslim, gave his word that he also would sign a Saddam death penalty sentence as part of the deal under which he got the job on April 22, according to witnesses at the meeting, which was attended by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.

Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, was sentenced to join him on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.

Former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison, while three other defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. A local Baath Party official was acquitted for lack of evidence.

President Bush called the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

But symbolic of the split between the United States and many of its traditional allies over the Iraq war, many European nations voiced opposition to the death sentences in the case, including Britain — America's closest ally.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday he opposed the death penalty "whether it's Saddam or anyone else." But he said the trial "gives us a chance to see again what the past in Iraq was, the brutality, the tyranny, the hundreds of thousands of people he killed, the wars."[/quote]


[url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061106/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_verdict"]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061106/ap_on_.../saddam_verdict[/url]

[Lawman]

New York Times
November 6, 2006

Hussein Trial Was Flawed But Reasonably Fair, And Verdict Was Justified, Legal Experts Say

By Julia Preston

The yearlong trial that ended yesterday with a sentence of death by hanging for Saddam Hussein had serious legal flaws that left doubts about whether he was allowed to present a full defense, international legal experts said.

Lawyers and human rights advocates broadly agreed that the Iraqi tribunal’s proceedings frequently fell short of international standards for war crimes cases. [b]But even critics of the trial said the five Iraqi judges who heard the case had made a reasonable effort to conduct a fair trial in the face of sustained pressure from Iraqi political leaders for a swift death sentence[/b]. American lawyers pointed to substantial evidence offered by the prosecution implicating Mr. Hussein in the crimes against humanity with which he had been charged.

“Did this meet the standards of international justice?” asked Jonathan Drimmer, who teaches war crimes law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. “The answer is no. But to look at the ultimate verdict, it certainly is consistent with the evidence presented.”

Miranda Sissons, a senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice, a group that has severely criticized some of the trial proceedings, said, “This was not a sham trial,” and added, “The judges are doing their best to try this case to an entirely new standard for Iraq.”

Mr. Hussein was accused along with seven co-defendants in [b]the executions of 148 men and [u]boys [/u] [/b] in Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad, in 1982. The mass killings came after what was said to be an assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader.

Whether the trial is seen to have been fair is a vital issue for the United States-backed Iraqi government. When the tribunal was created in December 2003, American and Iraqi officials hoped that it would advance the justice system in Iraq, left moribund under Mr. Hussein, and would help bring some reconciliation between the majority Shiites and minority Sunnis.

Since then the country has descended into factional strife. The trial was fair enough to justify the elation yesterday among Iraqis who suffered under Mr. Hussein’s rule but also had enough defects that Mr. Hussein’s Sunni supporters, who dominated his government, could still contend that it had been victor’s justice, as Mr. Hussein’s defense lawyers, led by Khalil al-Dulaimi, said yesterday.

The trial was troubled by extreme security issues. [b]Three defense lawyers were assassinated[/b].

Critics cited frequent efforts by Iraqi officials to speed up the trial and influence its outcome. The first chief judge, Rizgar Muhammad Amin, an Iraqi Kurd, resigned in January, saying he was tired of criticism from top Iraqi officials of his handling of the case. A second judge who was in line to succeed him was barred from becoming chief judge because he was said to have had ties to Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party, said human rights advocates who have been following the trial.

“The message by politicians and the executive has been quite unambiguously that if the judges do not do what public expectation demands, they will be in trouble,” Ms. Sissons said. “Iraqi officials have sent the message, ‘We can reach into this court.’ ”

Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, who took over as chief judge and presided to the end, was much less tolerant than his predecessor of outbursts by the defendants, who challenged the legitimacy of the court. The chief judge frequently allowed the prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, to summon evidence and witnesses without first showing them to defense lawyers, violating a basic tenet of trial fair play.

“There was a certain amount of trial by ambush,” said Richard Dicker, who has been monitoring the trial for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group.

On June 13, seemingly in a fit of impatience, Judge Abdel-Rahman abruptly cut off the defense case. “There was a lack of impartiality and judicial temperament” from Judge Abdel-Rahman, Mr. Dicker charged.

However, several American criminal lawyers said the prosecution marshaled surprisingly convincing documents, [b]including those showing Mr. Hussein’s signature on orders of execution. “Saddam was convicted on the strength of his own documents,” [/b] said Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law who advised the Iraqi tribunal during the trial.

But many trial observers were withholding final opinions yesterday because the Iraqi judges had not issued their written judgment, a voluminous document expected to come out this week.

American lawyers in Iraq dismissed suspicions that the verdict had been delayed to give the Bush administration a political victory in Iraq close to Tuesday’s elections.

[b]Accusations by Mr. Hussein’s supporters that the trial was manipulated by United States officials were not borne out,[/b] American lawyers who followed the case said. An office organized by the United States Embassy helped the tribunal with the investigation and provided legal and logistical assistance. [b]But the Iraqi judges frequently ignored their advice and generally insisted on sticking with familiar procedures from the Iraqi justice system.[/b]

[b]“The U.S. government was not the puppet master of this tribunal,[/b]” Mr. Scharf said.

Mr. Drimmer said that “the trial conduct was a step back from the kind of international justice we had hoped for,” and added, “But ultimately having Saddam Hussein prosecuted in a transparent proceeding is a major step for Iraq.”

[Guest Coy Bacon]

Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well
Published: 06 November 2006

So America's one-time ally has been [b]sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course[/b] - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so [b]by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him[/b], to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

[b]Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that[/b]. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For [b]if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us?[/b] We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him [b]after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. [/b] Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.

Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the dumbasss, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, blurted out yesterday, must be "smoking rope". Well, Tony, that rather depends on what kind of rope it might be. Snow, after all, claimed yesterday that the Saddam verdict - not the trial itself, please note - was "scrupulous and fair". The judges will publish "everything they used to come to their verdict."

No doubt. Because here are a few of the things that Saddam was not allowed to comment upon: sales of chemicals to his Nazi-style regime so blatant - so appalling - that he has been sentenced to hang on a localised massacre of Shias rather than the wholesale gassing of Kurds over which George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara were so exercised when they decided to depose Saddam in 2003 - or was it in 2002? Or 2001? Some of Saddam's pesticides came from Germany (of course). But on [b]25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of the Persian Gulf War".[/b]

This was the 1991 war which prompted our liberation of Kuwait, and [b]the report informed Congress about US government-approved shipments of biological agents sent by American companies to Iraq from 1985 or earlier. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax; Clostridium botulinum; Histoplasma capsulatum; Brucella melitensis; Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli. The same report stated that the US provided Saddam with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of chemical, biological and missile-system programmes, including chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans).[/b]

Yes, well [b]I can well see why Saddam wasn't permitted to talk about this[/b]. John Reid, the British Home Secretary, said that Saddam's hanging "was a sovereign decision by a sovereign nation". [b]Thank heavens he didn't mention the £200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of two components of mustard gas we exported to Baghdad in 1988, and another £50,000 worth of the same vile substances the following year.[/b]

[b]We also sent thionyl chloride to Iraq in 1988 at a price of only £26,000[/b]. Yes, I know these could be used to make ballpoint ink and fabric dyes. But this was the same country - Britain - that would, eight years later, prohibit the sale of diphtheria vaccine to Iraqi children on the grounds that it could be used for - you guessed it - "weapons of mass destruction".

Now in theory, I know, the Kurds have a chance for their own trial of Saddam, to hang him high for the thousands of Kurds gassed at Halabja. This would certainly keep him alive beyond the 30-day death sentence review period. But would the Americans and British dare touch a trial in which we would have not only to describe how Saddam got his filthy gas but why [b]the CIA - in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war crimes against Halabja - told US diplomats in the Middle East to claim that the gas used on the Kurds was dropped by the Iranians rather than the Iraqis (Saddam still being at the time our favourite ally rather than our favourite war criminal). Just as we in the West were silent when Saddam massacred 180,000 Kurds during the great ethnic cleansing of 1987 and 1988[/b].

And - dare we go so deep into this betrayal of the Iraqis we loved so much that we invaded their country? - then [b]we would have to convict Saddam of murdering countless thousands of Shia Muslims as well as Kurds after they staged an uprising against the Baathist regime at our specific request - thousands whom webetrayed by leaving them to fight off Saddam's brutal hordes on their own.[/b] "Rioting," is how Lord Blair's meretricious "dodgy dossier" described these atrocities in 2002 - because, of course, to call them an "uprising" (which they were) would invite us to ask ourselves who contrived to provoke this bloodbath. Answer: us.

I and my colleagues watched this tragedy. I travelled on the hospital trains that brought the Iranians back from the 1980-88 war front, their gas wounds bubbling in giant blisters on their arms and faces, giving birth to smaller blisters that wobbled on top of their wounds. The British and Americans didn't want to know. I talked to the victims of Halabja. [b]The Americans didn't want to know[/b]. My Associated Press colleague Mohamed Salaam saw the Iranian dead lying gassed in their thousands on the battlefields east of Basra. [b]The Americans and the British didn't care.[/b]

But now we are to give the Iraqi people bread and circuses, the final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. We have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.

The odd thing is that [b]Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since our "liberation" of Iraq. Many of them work for the Iraqi government we are currently supporting, democratically elected, of course. And these war criminals, in some cases, are paid by us, through the ministries we set up under this democratic government. And they will not be tried. Or hanged. That is the extent of our cynicism.[/b] And our shame. Have ever justice and hypocrisy been so obscenely joined?

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Coy Bacon' post='380938' date='Nov 6 2006, 08:52 PM']Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well
Published: 06 November 2006

So America's one-time ally has been [b]sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course[/b] - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so [b]by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him[/b], to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

[b]Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that[/b]. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For [b]if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us?[/b] We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him [b]after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. [/b] Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.

Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the dumbasss, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, blurted out yesterday, must be "smoking rope". Well, Tony, that rather depends on what kind of rope it might be. Snow, after all, claimed yesterday that the Saddam verdict - not the trial itself, please note - was "scrupulous and fair". The judges will publish "everything they used to come to their verdict."

No doubt. Because here are a few of the things that Saddam was not allowed to comment upon: sales of chemicals to his Nazi-style regime so blatant - so appalling - that he has been sentenced to hang on a localised massacre of Shias rather than the wholesale gassing of Kurds over which George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara were so exercised when they decided to depose Saddam in 2003 - or was it in 2002? Or 2001? Some of Saddam's pesticides came from Germany (of course). But on [b]25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of the Persian Gulf War".[/b]

This was the 1991 war which prompted our liberation of Kuwait, and [b]the report informed Congress about US government-approved shipments of biological agents sent by American companies to Iraq from 1985 or earlier. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax; Clostridium botulinum; Histoplasma capsulatum; Brucella melitensis; Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli. The same report stated that the US provided Saddam with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of chemical, biological and missile-system programmes, including chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans).[/b]

Yes, well [b]I can well see why Saddam wasn't permitted to talk about this[/b]. John Reid, the British Home Secretary, said that Saddam's hanging "was a sovereign decision by a sovereign nation". [b]Thank heavens he didn't mention the £200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of two components of mustard gas we exported to Baghdad in 1988, and another £50,000 worth of the same vile substances the following year.[/b]

[b]We also sent thionyl chloride to Iraq in 1988 at a price of only £26,000[/b]. Yes, I know these could be used to make ballpoint ink and fabric dyes. But this was the same country - Britain - that would, eight years later, prohibit the sale of diphtheria vaccine to Iraqi children on the grounds that it could be used for - you guessed it - "weapons of mass destruction".

Now in theory, I know, the Kurds have a chance for their own trial of Saddam, to hang him high for the thousands of Kurds gassed at Halabja. This would certainly keep him alive beyond the 30-day death sentence review period. But would the Americans and British dare touch a trial in which we would have not only to describe how Saddam got his filthy gas but why [b]the CIA - in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war crimes against Halabja - told US diplomats in the Middle East to claim that the gas used on the Kurds was dropped by the Iranians rather than the Iraqis (Saddam still being at the time our favourite ally rather than our favourite war criminal). Just as we in the West were silent when Saddam massacred 180,000 Kurds during the great ethnic cleansing of 1987 and 1988[/b].

And - dare we go so deep into this betrayal of the Iraqis we loved so much that we invaded their country? - then [b]we would have to convict Saddam of murdering countless thousands of Shia Muslims as well as Kurds after they staged an uprising against the Baathist regime at our specific request - thousands whom webetrayed by leaving them to fight off Saddam's brutal hordes on their own.[/b] "Rioting," is how Lord Blair's meretricious "dodgy dossier" described these atrocities in 2002 - because, of course, to call them an "uprising" (which they were) would invite us to ask ourselves who contrived to provoke this bloodbath. Answer: us.

I and my colleagues watched this tragedy. I travelled on the hospital trains that brought the Iranians back from the 1980-88 war front, their gas wounds bubbling in giant blisters on their arms and faces, giving birth to smaller blisters that wobbled on top of their wounds. The British and Americans didn't want to know. I talked to the victims of Halabja. [b]The Americans didn't want to know[/b]. My Associated Press colleague Mohamed Salaam saw the Iranian dead lying gassed in their thousands on the battlefields east of Basra. [b]The Americans and the British didn't care.[/b]

But now we are to give the Iraqi people bread and circuses, the final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. We have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.

The odd thing is that [b]Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since our "liberation" of Iraq. Many of them work for the Iraqi government we are currently supporting, democratically elected, of course. And these war criminals, in some cases, are paid by us, through the ministries we set up under this democratic government. And they will not be tried. Or hanged. That is the extent of our cynicism.[/b] And our shame. Have ever justice and hypocrisy been so obscenely joined?[/quote]
Saddam deserves his fate, so did his evil sons, and maybe, so do we.

[Guest Coy Bacon]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='380960' date='Nov 6 2006, 09:54 PM']Saddam deserves his fate, so did his evil sons, and maybe, so do we.[/quote]


Fair enough. Maybe you're not quite the rotten bastard I've held you to be......maybe.

[Guest bengalrick]

[url="http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/"]this[/url] slipped below the radar w/ the saddam trial coming to a close... i think this is more important for the long term effects of iraq than the saddam trial did... actually, i was afraid of the saddam trial for the sake of the iraqi judicial system (it could have made them look horribly ineffective or horribly unfair but i don't think it did either)... but this is something that people like coy and bj would actually applaud in our own country, and i'll admit that we could use a cleaning up like this:

[i][b][size=3]Interior ministry presses torture charges against senior officers[/size].[/b]


From the Washington Post:


[b]Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged 57 employees, including high-ranking officers[/b], with human rights crimes for their roles in the torture of hundreds of detainees once jailed in a notorious eastern Baghdad prison known as Site 4, officials announced Monday.

The charges marked the first time the present Iraqi government has taken criminal action against members of its own security forces for operating torture chambers inside Interior Ministry prisons, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman.

Site 4 is the same secret detention facility that was discovered in Jadiriya; the same district of Baghdad that hosts the HQ of the SCIRI and its Badr militia, so there's every reason to believe that many, if not most, of the officers in charge of that facility were members or affiliates of the SCIRI.

[b]Although this move came late and it addresses only one case of atrocity I must say that I'm impressed that the interior ministry, with all the influence SCIRI has on it, has made this action.[/b]

[b]Building rule of law is much more of a difficult task than breaking the law is and the transformation from jungle law to civil law requires patience and determination.[/b]

What makes me feel good about this is that we're now moving to prosecute the criminals of the present just like we prosecuted the criminals of the past.

[b]Gangs and militias are stronger today than they were three years ago and the same can be said about the legitimate foundations and institutions of the state, even more, the latter are growing stronger at a faster rate even though that might not be so visible.[/b]

[b]Anyways, I think if law-enforcement apparatus, judicial and military alike, are allowed to retain the momentum, then maybe in a year we will be discussing al-Sadr and al-Dhari verdicts.[/b] [/i]


as far as that last line, i can only hope...

[Lawman]

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for the [u]leftwing British paper, The Independent[/u], which with a claimed circulation below 250,000 [b]is the least read of Great Britain's national newspapers[/b]. Fisk's articles are disseminated on [u]radical Left web sites such as Znet [/u] as well as on his own site robert-fisk.com. He also writes for The Nation.

Fisk also has the rare distinction of being namesake of a new word in some dictionaries - "fisking" - which means to give a point-by-point refutation of a blog or news story, as his thousands of Internet critics regularly do to each of Fisk's controversial writings.

Actor John Malkovich, outraged by Fisk's biased reporting, told the Cambridge Union he wanted to shoot him. "Malkovich was not questioned by the police," wrote Fisk, whose writings regularly reflect sympathy for Palestinian rage, anti-Semitism, threats and radical violence. "He might, I suppose, be refused any further visas to Britain until he explains or apologizes for his vile remarks." (After being beaten by Afghani refugees in 2002, Fisk wrote sympathetically of his assailants. Had Malkovich been Muslim, would Fisk have suggested denying him entrance to England?)

As for the War on Terror, Fisk characterizes it this way: "But this is not really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about US missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia--paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally--hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."

Fisk has written or contributed to four books. One of the most recent is [i]The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid[/i] (Verso, 2001), in which [b]Fisk joins anti-American radical writers Noam Chomsky[/b], the late Edward Said, and other leftists.[i] Another is Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War[/i] (South End Press, 2002), in which [b]Fisk joins with Chomsky, Australian anti-American radical John Pilger, Marxist historian Howard Zinn and other leftists in blaming U.S. sanctions (instead of Saddam Hussein's greed for wealth and weapons, and the corrupt United Nations Oil-for-Food Program) for malnutrition, disease and increased infant mortality in Iraq. [/b]

[Khatmandude]

Are those your views or are you plagarising again?

[Lawman]

[quote name='IKOTA' post='381239' date='Nov 7 2006, 04:38 PM']Are those your views or are you plagarising again?[/quote]

[b]FACTS[/b]

[Khatmandude]

[quote name='Lawman' post='381254' date='Nov 7 2006, 07:19 PM'][b]FACTS[/b][/quote]

Oh OK, so you plagarised again.

Anyways, the hypocrisy in this whole trial is beyond belief. Saddam was one of the worst people (or so it seems, I do not have first hand knowledge so I cannot judge definitively) but he got to be that way with a little help from his friends.

As Coy said, there are many leaders who deserve this sort of verdict

[Guest Coy Bacon]

[quote name='Lawman' post='381228' date='Nov 7 2006, 04:29 PM']Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for the [u]leftwing British paper, The Independent[/u], which with a claimed circulation below 250,000 [b]is the least read of Great Britain's national newspapers[/b]. Fisk's articles are disseminated on [u]radical Left web sites such as Znet [/u] as well as on his own site robert-fisk.com. He also writes for The Nation. [color="#FF0000"][b]"Leftwing", "radical Left", are supposed to be pejoratives that denotes obvious and assumed illegitimacy? The circulation of the Independent is material to the correctness or incorectness of the arguments carried within? While I have issues with the so-called Left, I see nothing to indicate that they have it any more wrong than the Right or the so-called Center - which is really quite a breeding ground for the great splitting-the-difference fallacy. This is an obvious attempt to prejudice the debate with trifling buzzwords and misdirection. Shameful. Shameful indeed.[/b][/color]

Fisk also has the rare distinction of being namesake of a new word in some dictionaries - "fisking" - which means to give a point-by-point refutation of a blog or news story, as his thousands of Internet critics regularly do to each of Fisk's controversial writings. [color="#FF0000"][b]Who are these critics and what are their particular biases? This is yet more shameful well-poisoning. Disgraceful.[/b][/color]

Actor John Malkovich, outraged by Fisk's biased reporting, told the Cambridge Union he wanted to shoot him. "Malkovich was not questioned by the police," wrote Fisk, whose writings regularly reflect sympathy for Palestinian rage, anti-Semitism, threats and radical violence. "He might, I suppose, be refused any further visas to Britain until he explains or apologizes for his vile remarks." (After being beaten by Afghani refugees in 2002, Fisk wrote sympathetically of his assailants. Had Malkovich been Muslim, would Fisk have suggested denying him entrance to England?) [color="#FF0000"][b]Palestinian rage deserves sympathy. Palestinians are Semitic, while their Jewish tormentors are very often non-Semitic or marginally so. Palestinian threats are not nearly as onerous and Palestinian violence is not nearly as radical as that of the historic Irgun, Stern Gang, et al, the current IDF, Mossad, or Israel's American susserain. In your attempt to compound your conniving ad-hominem attack, you have merely painted Fisk as a fair and noble man rather than a petty, vengeful supremacist.[/b][/color]

As for the War on Terror, Fisk characterizes it this way: "But this is not really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about US missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia--paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally--hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."[color="#FF0000"][b]Contrary to how this plays among your fellow exceptionalist bigots, Fisk is absolutely right about this.[/b][/color]

Fisk has written or contributed to four books. One of the most recent is [i]The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid[/i] (Verso, 2001), in which [b]Fisk joins anti-American radical writers Noam Chomsky[/b], the late Edward Said, and other leftists.[i] Another is Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War[/i] (South End Press, 2002), in which [b]Fisk joins with Chomsky, Australian anti-American radical John Pilger, Marxist historian Howard Zinn and other leftists in blaming U.S. sanctions (instead of Saddam Hussein's greed for wealth and weapons, and the corrupt United Nations Oil-for-Food Program) for malnutrition, disease and increased infant mortality in Iraq. [/b][color="#FF0000"][b]Again, your crude finger-paint portrayals may play well with the mindlessly bigoted choir for whom you're performing, but this is nothing but a torrent of biased, buzz-word laden invective that has as its sole aim an extremely dishonest ad-hominem broad-side submitted as a substitute for anything approaching a reasoned refutation of Fisk's actual point.[/b][/color][/quote]


I hope that you at least have the integrity to be ashamed of yourself for this craven attempt at sniping from your blind in the gutter. (I'm sure that it is a vain hope.) You really have no decency at all. Do you?

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Coy Bacon' post='380969' date='Nov 6 2006, 10:39 PM']Fair enough. Maybe you're not quite the rotten bastard I've held you to be......maybe.[/quote]
We may never agree on a lot of things, but I am sick of death and destruction and I worry about what kind of world my innocent young sons will have to inherit.