Topic: Saddam being executed

[idolminds]

In like, 20 minutes. He is going to be hanged...which unlike the fun-loving cowboy lynchings, he will be dropped 15ft so he dies instantly.

I dont know about you guys, but I want to see video of that. We don't get a chance to see hangings very often now adays.

[Quemaqua]

It's pretty crazy.  And yes, I'm sure there will be video on YouTube before you can say, "Hey, you got the crink in my neck!"

[idolminds]

Iraqi TV reporting hes dead. So...incoming video in 3...2...

[iPPi]

Yea.

[scottws]

Jennie keeps flipping between all the news channels, which are all saying the exact same things over and over.  It's driving me nuts.

[Ghandi]

Yeah, I hate 24-hour news channels. They get so excited with their "breaking news" which entails them saying the same thing over and over.

[WindAndConfusion]

Fuck. I was really hoping he'd write memoirs, first.

[Xessive]

As a Muslim I was pretty offended that they picked a day to coincide with the first day of the Muslim Eid (Eid Al Adha a.k.a. Celebration of the Sacrifice). They couldn't have delayed it a couple of days? The man's a criminal, and it's good he's going down, but the way it was done was in direct provocation of Muslims. It just comes off as a really dirty move man.

Besides that he was only officially charged with one set of criminal acts in 1982.. I know he's getting executed, but it's worthwhile for all his crimes since then to be recognized and condemned. At least for the sake of those who suffered by his hand.

[Quemaqua]

I really don't follow this stuff much, but if what X says is true in regards to not being charged with all the crimes, I'd have to agree that does seem to be a shame for the people affected by the omitted acts.

[shock]

Hanging him is a bad idea.  Barbaric activities do not help our already horribly tarnished image.  I know it was not judged in our courts, but we should have stopped it.  So the Shi'ites and Kurds celebrate and I can't help but see the Sunnis being more alienated.  Just what we need.

[Quemaqua]

Is hanging really that much more barbaric than anything else?  If you do it properly it's real quick.

[shock]

I actually mean to single out hanging.  Capital punishment, to me, is barbaric regardless of method.

[Quemaqua]

The world is covered in filth.  You can only sweep it into the corner for so long.

[Cobra951]

Must have a way to take out the trash, I agree.  But I do wonder if execution was the best course of action here.  Why risk making a martyr out of the guy.  He looked like a pathetic nobody in prison, and could have continued to do so.

[Ghandi]

X, the U.S. government was pushing to have his execution delayed until after the holiday. The current leader of Iraq, though, decided to push it forward in an effort to show his legitimacy.

The world is covered in filth.  You can only sweep it into the corner for so long.

Right, until the filth dies in a jail cell. I'm completely against capital punishment. If it was truly a deterrent, my views would be different. But evidence shows that it does nothing to deter criminals.

[Quemaqua]

I have little to no faith in most rehabilitation programs that have been presented.  All they do is give murderers and rapists a nice place to hang out for a while.

[idolminds]

Right, until the filth dies in a jail cell. I'm completely against capital punishment. If it was truly a deterrent, my views would be different. But evidence shows that it does nothing to deter criminals.

That might be because we dont do it often enough and its never very public. A little blurb on the news "So and so was executed today" and thats it.

But you put them on TV, do it out in public like they did with hangings way back when...let the people see whats happening. Yeah, if you get caught stealing we're gonna cut off your thumbs...just like this guy! *SNIP*

I guarantee that shit would slow down in a hurry.

[Xessive]

X, the U.S. government was pushing to have his execution delayed until after the holiday. The current leader of Iraq, though, decided to push it forward in an effort to show his legitimacy.

Right, until the filth dies in a jail cell. I'm completely against capital punishment. If it was truly a deterrent, my views would be different. But evidence shows that it does nothing to deter criminals.

Whoever issued the execution date to coincide with the celebration is not only insensitive, but instigative. It's directly offensive.

Frankly I believe Saddam should have been tried without any US involvement in the procedure. It was the US gov't who trained and assigned him after all. the US gov't should consider itself lucky it's not on trial for creating and extending the majority of the problems and consequences we're seeing in the Middle-East today.

As Middle-Easterners (religion aside), we have love for a foreign government that's been imposing its will on our people for generations. Equally we have no faith in the "leaders" who have allowed it to happen to their own people. Whether it's the Gulf Wars or the establishment of Israel, it all comes down to an invader imposing itself in whatever way it can to dominate the region.

Before I get carried away, the "Saddam Saga" stretches back to the Cold War (and quite possibly well before it too). The relationship has been going on for a while, but the formula is essentially the same every time: US creates monster, US places monster in strategic location, monster gets power-hungry, monster bites the hand that fed it, US forced to take down its pet along with the entire region, rinse and repeat.

Either way it's done now, and at least there's one less bastard in the world.

[Cools]

[RIP or not]

[Ghandi]

The US gov't should consider itself lucky it's not on trial for creating and extending the majority of the problems and consequences we're seeing in the Middle-East today.

The Middle East has created it's own problems, Iraq aside. Even there, at least we are trying to fix the problem, whereas the Iraqis seem content to simply blow each other up.

[Xessive]

The Middle East has created it's own problems, Iraq aside. Even there, at least we are trying to fix the problem, whereas the Iraqis seem content to simply blow each other up.

Obviously, we've had our own troubles to deal with long before US involvement, but the US gov't not helping. In the case of Iraq, well the US invaded and started a war unnecessarily. The Iraqis wouldn't be killing each other if it wasn't for the chaos the US facilitated. As for Bush's famed "stay the course" quote, where the Hell was that attitude when you bombed the crap out of Afghanistan and left Canada to clean up??

Several analysts have already suggested that the Iraq social/political problems would have been inevitably resolved by the people regardless of US intervention. Saddam's reign was going down one way or the other. The region was in dire need of a revolution. On a side note, altruism is hardly one of the US government's motivations (or any gov't for that matter). If the US is so hard on hunting down war criminals for the good of others, why don't they do something about the league of war criminals posing as leaders in Israel? Obviously because there's an agenda, and something that's veiled by this whole farce of a quest to eradicate terrorism.

If that is what they're truly after then the US would have been investing in education and institutes to raise the standards in these foreign nations, not eliminating or oppressing them. You can't fight ideas with bullets.

[scottws]

We're still in Afghanistan as far as I know.  Just a year ago when I dealt with U.S. military personnel all day every day, people were still being deployed to Afghanistan.

[Ghandi]

Obviously, we've had our own troubles to deal with long before US involvement, but the US gov't not helping. In the case of Iraq, well the US invaded and started a war unnecessarily. The Iraqis wouldn't be killing each other if it wasn't for the chaos the US facilitated. As for Bush's famed "stay the course" quote, where the Hell was that attitude when you bombed the crap out of Afghanistan and left Canada to clean up??

Several analysts have already suggested that the Iraq social/political problems would have been inevitably resolved by the people regardless of US intervention. Saddam's reign was going down one way or the other. The region was in dire need of a revolution. On a side note, altruism is hardly one of the US government's motivations (or any gov't for that matter). If the US is so hard on hunting down war criminals for the good of others, why don't they do something about the league of war criminals posing as leaders in Israel? Obviously because there's an agenda, and something that's veiled by this whole farce of a quest to eradicate terrorism.

If that is what they're truly after then the US would have been investing in education and institutes to raise the standards in these foreign nations, not eliminating or oppressing them. You can't fight ideas with bullets.

I agree that you can't fight ideas with bullets, but the conflict of Sunni vs. Shi'ite was inevitable. It's obvious that Saddam's regime was going down one way or the other, but how long until it happened? Saddam's rule was the only thing that could have kept such a sectarian division in check, and the major thing that the U.S. did wrong in it's invasion was to underestimate the level of sectarian violence without the oppression that they were used to. "Freedom", as it is, continues to be the downfall of the Iraqi people.

As far as Afghanistan goes, the "stay the course" quote never applied to this country, and we never left. In fact, we have increased troops there. The one thing we underestimated here was the loyalty to Osama. This makes intelligence gathering quite difficult.

Also, please tell me- what would be the sense in investing in education in Iraq or Afghanistan when terrorists- Shi'ite radicals, for instance, would bomb the place simply because Sunni's were learning to read and write?

As far for Israel, although I strongly disagree with their use of force and agree with you on the issue of civilian casualties in such use of force, I cannot sympathize with Muslim countries in the Middle East when leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deny that the Holocaust exists, and openly advocate the destruction of Israel. There seems, here, a double standard among Muslims in condemning Israels actions while advocating it's destruction.

[Xessive]

Going back to the origins of Israel in the Middle-East, it was established on blood. When we fight off Israeli assaults we're called terrorists. The part that's always confused me about the Western perspective is that a man (an Arab specifically) defending his land and fending off an invader is branded a terrorist. Then Israel demands the removal of Hizbullah from Lebanon; bare in mind that Hizbullah are the people. Virtually the entire South of Lebanon are people who are members of Hizbullah or supporters. They're villagers, farmers, and labourers who have taken up arms to defend their homes. Basically Israel is asking Lebanon to vacate the premises so they can move in.

Frankly, I have my doubts about the "holocaust" as well. We generally view it as more of a "migration" than anything else. It officially started some time around 1895, when Theodore Herzl (founder of the World Zionist Organization) declared that the Arabs must be removed from the region “The removal of Arabs bodily from Palestine is part of the Zionist plan to ‘spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment...’ Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried away discreetly and circumspectly.”

The presence of a Zionist state is a threat not only to Muslims, but to all Middle-Easterners and Semites, and eventually the entire East. The Zionist regime needs to be dismantled and removed from the region. Destruction is not the objective, it's reclamation. What good would the area be to us if we destroy it?? It's our home! It's the home of the millions of Palestinians who have been living as refugees around the globe.

Coming back to the Iraqi conflict, the case with Sunni vs Shi-ite is deplorable by Muslim standards, and that means that it will be inevitably cleaned out by the people. It's the result of ignorance.

With regard to the educational centres idea, if the US had enough resources to launch a full scale (and illegal) assault on Iraq then they obviously have the relatively minuscule resources to set up defence forces around the proposed educational centres. And what the Hell are they doing in Iraq in the first place? Wasn't the reason to go in the imaginary WMD's? Even then it wasn't approved! There was no evidence of any WMD's.

The US forces in Afghanistan are minor, and practically unnoticeable next to the Canadians in Afghanistan and the US forces which were unnecessarily sent into Iraq.

My point is that the US gov is not quite the beacon of light and freedom it tries so hard to appear to be. Their behaviour in recent is hypocritical, disgraceful, and an insult to the ideals of democracy.

As far as the UN being a democratic order, that's BS. If it really is democratic then there wouldn't be BS like veto, which completely demeans democracy and defeats its purpose. Veto keeps the 'powers' powerful, and everyone else at their mercy.

[Cobra951]

Xessive, you need to understand that you saying there was no Holocaust to any Jew is like me telling you there is no Mohammed.  You may think the subject is open to debate, but really, it isn't.  If you back or bolster your arguments with talk like this, you will not get any positive attention from anyone outside of your ideological circle.  Bear that in mind when you try to communicate ideas and sentiments to a Western audience.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, that's more or less like asking me to punch you right in the face.

[Xessive]

I apologize if I offended anyone, that was not my intention. I was just saying that I have my doubts about the authenticity of the holocaust, and I was clarifying that the entire Middle East in general (not just Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) doesn't readily believe it either. Regardless, whether or not it happened doesn't give anyone the right to oppress other people. It would actually make them more aware of the horrors of oppression and occupation.

Comparing the holocaust to a holy prophet is irrelevant. I am questioning a specific event, not a belief system or a religion. Judaism is not based on the holocaust, saying the holocaust never happened does not affect the holy teachings of the Jewish faith. I questioned the origins of the holocaust and its purpose. If any of you question the tenets of my religion, its purpose, or any of its activities that's perfectly acceptable, and in fact encouraged. Saying Mohammed (PBUH) didn't exist is saying that Islam doesn't exist, because Islam is based on the Holy Qur'An and the teachings of the Holy Prophet. As a Muslim I already believe in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Judaism and Christianity verify Islam. Speaking of Jewish beliefs, any true and faithful Jew knows and understands that they have been forbidden from the Holy Land. It is not the "Promised Land" as the Zionists claim. So, that clears up the whole Zionist religious claim to the land.

What about the holocaust that happened to the Palestinian people? The Western world readily denies it, and we're actually living with the survivors and refugees! Thanks to technology we even have footage of some of the injustice and savagery that's still going on today! But it often goes by with gestures like "I don't believe it, the Israelis are a peace loving people who just needed a home." That doesn't justify the millions (MILLIONS) of people who lost their homes and lives. The Israelis have effectively violated and reversed "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

With regard to President Ahmadinejad, contrary to American belief, the man is not some random insane monkey with nuke-fever. He is in fact quite intelligent and eloquent. He has requested several times to meet with President Bush and other US officials and been denied several times. He's even written some letters to W, and hasn't received any response or acknowledgement. Then he finally had an interview with Mike Wallace for CBS 60 Minutes. Here's a link from the CBS News website.

It's pretty obvious that the US gov't is not willing to discuss any peace possibilities, or have any rational discussion. Their minds were made up decades ago, and they've closed up shop.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

• Saddam gone = good.
• Saddam executed on the morning of the first day of a major Islamic celebration = bad.

[scottws]

No offense, but it seems typical that the Arabic world would deny the Holocaust ever happened.  I'm completely not surprised.  That's another issue that I don't feel like debating at this moment.  What I really want to ask relates to this quote:

• Saddam executed on the morning of the first day of a major Islamic celebration = bad.

Why?  I don't understand this.  If I remember correctly, many Muslims didn't even like Saddam because he was very secular.  In fact, didn't he use a Western style of government versus the Islamic-law style of government?  Was he even a Muslim?  I don't understand why you consider this to be "instigative."  It's not like some Shah was executed.

Please note this is an honest question.  I simply do not understand your perspective or why you are having this reaction.

[Xessive]

No offence taken man, it's a legitimate question.

Saddam was a butcher. The only people that liked him were those in his good graces, or those who thought like him. As Muslims, we were offended because a major execution of a mass murderer was scheduled to coincide with one of our holiest celebrations. As you may or may not know, the "Celebration of Sacrifice" (a.k.a. Eid Al Adha) celebrates the sacrifice prophet Abraham was willing to give in the name of God: his first born son. Instead God mercifully gave him a ram and spared his son, Ismael. With that in mind, the way the execution was performed, it's like Saddam was the first sacrifice of the holy day. The Islamic world's reaction was basically "WTF?! What the Hell is that supposed to mean? " It was just an offensive and inappropriate gesture, and completely unnecessary. Kinda like a groom a flirting with bridesmaid on his wedding day.

They couldn't a few days till the holy celebration was officially over?

[Raisa]

what happened to my post?

[Pugnate]

It is still in the thread you posted it in.

[PyroMenace]

The thing that gets me is that you use "instigative", as if the execution was to purposefully insult the Muslim religion. I guess to me this is a political issue, not a religious one, but I guess Muslims are taking offense which lies the problem. Its like its just one giant cluster fuck of miscommunication or misinterpretation.

Forgive if I sound like an idiot, I never post on the serious boards.

[Xessive]

The thing that gets me is that you use "instigative", as if the execution was to purposefully insult the Muslim religion. I guess to me this is a political issue, not a religious one, but I guess Muslims are taking offense which lies the problem. Its like its just one giant cluster fuck of miscommunication or misinterpretation.

Forgive if I sound like an idiot, I never post on the serious boards.

It's all good man.

It's hard to take the situation as a random coincidence; what are the odds it hit on the morning of the same day?! It was deliberately set for the first day of Eid, and it just comes off as distasteful, like some sort of ill will.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy.. It's almost like, if you don't get an invitation to your best friend's wedding, it raises questions and all you can think about is "WTF? What are you trying to say man??"

In this case, someone is indirectly offending Muslims by killing a war criminal on the morning of the first day of a holy celebration. It raises questions as to the intentions and sensitivity of the responsible party.

[Quemaqua]

No offense to you personally, but I think you guys are all ridiculously oversensitive for no damned good reason whatsoever.  It's almost as though you work yourselves up over things just for the sake of doing it.  Would I give a shit if they executed a war criminal on Christmas?  Or on Easter?  Nope.  I'd be pleased as punch no matter when they did it, holy celebration or not.

[Xessive]

Could you imagine how many Americans would be tweaked and uppity if the tables were turned and an American prisoner was executed on the 4th of July? Americans have gone to war over lesser things.

[Cobra951]

what happened to my post?

It's in the "worst Congress" thread.

[Quemaqua]

No, actually, I can't see anyone other than a few tight-assed Liberal morons caring about someone being executed on the 4th.  I certainly wouldn't.  That's my point.  I see absolutely no reason why this should upset anyone.  You've given us analogies as to what it's like, but you haven't yet provided a concrete reason as to why this is upsetting.  Is it because this event celebrates life and you feel executing someone during the event is in bad taste?  That's the only thing I've been able to surmise, but nothing you've said really seems to bolster that, as the event celebrates God's love toward Abraham when Abraham decided to follow His word regardless of the cost to himself.  Why does anyone care if Saddam was the first sacrifice of a celebration of sacrifice?  He was a worthless individual who deserved nothing more than death.  In what way does that offend Eid and those who celebrate it?  I see absolutely no connection whatsoever, just as I would see no connection with someone being executed on the 4th of July.  The 4th of July celebrates our independence.  What does that have to do with an execution?  Absolutely nothing.

[Xessive]

No, actually, I can't see anyone other than a few tight-assed Liberal morons caring about someone being executed on the 4th.  I certainly wouldn't.  That's my point.  I see absolutely no reason why this should upset anyone.  You've given us analogies as to what it's like, but you haven't yet provided a concrete reason as to why this is upsetting.  Is it because this event celebrates life and you feel executing someone during the event is in bad taste?  That's the only thing I've been able to surmise, but nothing you've said really seems to bolster that, as the event celebrates God's love toward Abraham when Abraham decided to follow His word regardless of the cost to himself.  Why does anyone care if Saddam was the first sacrifice of a celebration of sacrifice?  He was a worthless individual who deserved nothing more than death.  In what way does that offend Eid and those who celebrate it?  I see absolutely no connection whatsoever, just as I would see no connection with someone being executed on the 4th of July.  The 4th of July celebrates our independence.  What does that have to do with an execution?  Absolutely nothing.

I get you, and bare in mind I may not be the most adept speaker on behalf of everyone out here. I'm just expressing that it feels wrong, and it generally rubs us all the wrong way. It could very well be, just as you said, that it's a blatant killing on a day that celebrates life. It's clearly not a coincidence. It just comes off as a dirty move, and it won't do anyone any service if there is to be kind of reconciliation.