Plenty of people including 'well-paid analysts' did warn that Iraq would fall into anarchy. They were ignored because other interests were being pursued by those who wanted to go to war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian McC
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Plenty of people including 'well-paid analysts' did warn that Iraq would fall into anarchy. They were ignored because other interests were being pursued by those who wanted to go to war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian McC
just been emailed its at kaotic.comQuote:
Originally Posted by Drew
Where the hell did that execution take place? How come someone sneaked in with a mobile phone and filmed the whole thing? Also, they supposedly screamed something like "go to hell, Saddam" or whatever.
Hellooo, aren't we in 21st century? :confused:
the date has no relevance. just as the idea of "democracy" as we know it will have no relevance in places that either are not ready, or do not want it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Erki
there is no democracy anywhere in the world,the citizens just have the right to choose what they think is the lesser of the two evils.....
I see people are sharing the video on the net, really isn't something I wish to see.
Of those 23 countries that still have troops in Iraq, I'd say only the UK, Australia, Denmark and South Korea have relatively high GDP per capita. The UK and Australia are there maybe because they share the language and history with the US, and because trade with the US is much of their foreign trade (Australia: 6.7% of export and 13% of import, the UK: 15.1% of export and 8.7% of import, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications...ook/index.html ). South Korea proably joined because much of their own defense depends on the US. I don't get Denmark though.Quote:
Originally Posted by studiose
As far as I remember, they did, but they were ignored. Even Bush's own father adviced him against invading Iraq, but George Jr thought that daddy doesn't know the best. I also remeber some CIA people complaining that the Bush administration pressured them to find only incriminating evidence (or "evidence") against Iraq and ignore anything that conflicted with the mission.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian McC
Be that as it may, let's not forget that the original "Coalition of the Willing" - which you dismissed as comprising largely from "rather small and impoverished countries who are dependent on the US aid and couldn't afford to say "no thanks"" - also included Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan and Italy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
And EU members Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania are certainly not "rather small and impoverished countries who are dependent on the US aid"!
Every country had some reason for joining the stabilization forces (not invasion forces, mind) in Iraq - it would be a bit thick to go there for no reason whatsoever, wouldn't it? :rolleyes: But financial aid from the US was not what formed the coalition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by studiose
Stabilization forces sounds little like "freedom fries", in what way was Iraq unstable before usa attacked?
In no way. But it was certainly unstable after the US and the UK had attacked, which is when other countries joined the coalition.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomi
I think it was around his neck...!Quote:
Originally Posted by Erki
they should give bush a m16 and drop him off in baghdad
Poiki there's a very good chance it's both.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=...&v=j7Ar6I8iqOw
View at own risk
These days, we have to watch TV at own risks as well, they even showed the cell phone video on TV here. :rolleyes: Without a parental warning or anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mysterious Rock
Colin... If you break it you own it.
Are you serious? That's really disturbing. It's curiosity gone one ghoulish step too far in my opinion (for what it is worth).Quote:
Originally Posted by Erki
Are the images and videos on the net fake or real?
I've not looked at any (can't be bothered, what's the point after all?) but can only guess several fake versions are doing the rounds. I also wonder how they get into the world (if they are real) when people there would surely have been searched - unless the intention was always to appear to have leaked images.
Spin, folks, is powerful stuff.
The "Coalition of the Donkeys" included the Spanish ex-Government, yes, but no more than 20% of the Spaniards. A bit thick indeed, but they paid for it at the polls :)Quote:
Originally Posted by studiose
studiose there are some amazing videos on youtube of Mr Aznar (now a lecturer at some US uni ;) :p : ) explaining how Spain's problem with al qaeda began centuries ago, and how the "moors" never apologised for invading Spain... a bit thick is a bit too polite :rolleyes:
:laugh: There's a sucker born every minute. If not in Spain, then some place else.Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
could you explain the honour he died with???Quote:
Originally Posted by pino
The butcher of Bagdad should have had his body sewn into a hog, incinerated, and the ashes dropped on the desert by an F-117. As one Iraqi witness said, he now joins the garbage of history.
Their is no honor in either the life of death of the butcher of Bagdad. Perhaps they should have executed him the way his son killed the innocent -- with a log chipper. Those he "liked" went headfirst, those he didn't went feet first.Quote:
Originally Posted by fousto
Ahhhh, the moderate voice of American reason :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by agwiii
I have no love or respect for the man and couldn't give a monkeys that he is dead. However, I find views like this on mutilation and torture frankly quite disturbing. It's quite shocking that the actions that lead the world to be outraged by Saddam and his Cronies are wanting to be replicated by people that were not affected by the mans regime. This is just bloodthirsty, sensationalism at it's worst.
He is dead. Leave it at that can't you :(
Quite right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knock-on
These bloodthirsty individuals have no place on what is essentially a family forum.
Only the other week some deranged sociopath was putting forward the premise that the innocent bloke who liked custard and who was pulled in by the law on suspicion of murdering East Anglian prositutes should be burned face down in his cell just on the off chance that he might have done it.
It is my considered opinion that all like minded swivel eyed scum who bandy about twisted opinions such as these should be burned face down in their cells before drowning them in a bucket in case they're still alive.
Yours faithfully
Jonny Wilkinson
Intensive Orthapaedic Ward
Hospital
Did you see the video ? if yes...I don't need to explain ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by fousto
I like how Howard said he got a fair trial and justice was served. I bet David Hicks is envious.
There was a sensational opinion article about Iraq and Saddam's hanging in the SMH a few days ago, by Bob Ellis. Have the patience to read this letter by a Former Prime Ministerial speechwriter. Take the time to read it.
The freedoms we're fighting for but not allowed to have
January 1, 2007
It's fair to say, I think, that the freedom we fought for was evident in our view of the last moments of Saddam Hussein.
He was free to wear a hood, and chose not to. He was free to speak to his captors, but we were not free to hear what he said. He was free, I suppose, to make a mighty speech, but we were not free to hear it. His black-hooded executioners were free to conceal their identities, but he, in the last five minutes of his life, was allowed no similar privacy.
We did not see him drop, his neck break, his neat suit fecally stained, nor the vengeful witnesses dance around his body, spitting on it if they did, kicking it if they did. Nor did we hear the irreligious hullabaloo that preceded the drop, the interruption of his final prayers by guards who mockingly duplicated his words and added to them his enemy's name, "Moqtada! Moqtada!" and pulled the lever before his final, accepting yielding up to death was finished.
So what Iraq's new "freedom" gave us this time round was the censored version of the killing of a man, a man still on trial for other crimes, a man who in almost any other jurisdiction would not have been killed at all; certainly not on the holiest day of the Sunni calendar, the equivalent of breaking George Bush's neck on Christmas morning.
Rarely do we witness, with warning, the last moments of a life. These were pretty surprising. No rage, no railing, no sermonising, no physical struggle. A courteous, mild exchange about the black scarf he must wear. An accompanied walk to the drop, with the posture of a professor approaching a lectern in another town. And then, of course, what we in our freedom were not allowed to see.
These images will either change world history or they will not. It depends a bit on how many Americans watch them over and over and how many watch, instead, the funeral of the former US president Gerald Ford. But those who do will imagine, surely, how Bush might have behaved on a similar gallows, and the physical struggle, hortatory tears and loud pleadings while his captors held him down.
They may ask, too, a simple, arithmetical question: if a head of state can hang by the neck until he is dead for having ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or not punished, or failed to countermand the torture and killing of 148 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime, what will happen to the generals, bureaucrats, prime ministers and heads of state who ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or did not punish, or did not countermand, the killing of 150,000 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime (this is now the Iraqi Government's estimate of the dead) and the torture of ten thousand more of them in Abu Ghraib? And how many Americans - Bremmer, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bush - should on this precedent be charged and hanged?
They may also ask, as many legal experts have, how much was fair about a trial in which three of the defence lawyers were shot dead and those who survived forbidden to see the prosecution's written testimony before it was unveiled in court, and only those parts of the proceedings the Government liked were telecast - lest Saddam "grandstand" his cause and gain followers. And how wrong it was this trial was not aborted, and another trial begun in The Hague.
They may ask as well why Saddam died so soon. Something to do, perhaps, with his coming genocide trials and the complicity of Germany, France, the US and Britain in the manufacture of his nerve gas, anthrax, cluster bombs and helicopter gunships, and his amiable business relationships with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush snr, once head of the CIA, in past decades, and how his genocidal methods back then did not greatly annoy them, not so long as he paid his bills.
And these are the freedoms we fought for. The freedom to ask, and not be told - lest we encourage terrorists - what really happened, and who was in the loop when it happened. Such were the freedoms Nixon encouraged in Chile when he helped Pinochet to censor, torture and kill those inconvenient to the many, many secrets America wanted to keep.
These are the freedoms we fought for, and will now defend in Iraq for decades if Bush and Howard, brothers-in-arms for "freedom", get their way.
In Saddam's hanging we saw them all at once.
Alive or still smoldering. They sound like a fire hazard.Quote:
Originally Posted by oily oaf
Christ not another Health and Safety in the Workplace zealot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
Blimey you cant even drown people in a bucket these days without some self important....................(mutter, whinge) :angryfire
While there's no doubt that Hussain was an evil dictator who is responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths, I took no pleasure in the news that he had been executed.
For one thing he's now a martyr, and killings will continue in his name by people who seek to avenge his death.
Mainly though, I'm uncomfortable because death is the easy way out. The man should have been imprisoned for life so that he could reflect on what he'd done and to be held as an example to others.
Suicide bombers don't fear death. Saddam's hanging isn't a deterrent to them.
With regard to the leaked mobile phone clip, a cynic might suggest that as the official news footage doesn't show the moment of death then there might be those conspiracy theorists who would have us believe that Saddam was spared. By, cough, accidentally releasing this new clip we can be sure that he's dead without any government agency having to take the difficult decision to officially release it. Of course, only a cynic would think such a thing...
While were're on the subject why was Saddam Hussein always referred to by his christian name.
I mean to say when the coalition were engaged in the fearsome "shock and awe" strikes over Bagdhad I bet the newscasters on Iraqui telly didn't say.
"Last night over 50 civilians were killed in the latest airstrikes by George and Tony's bombers."
Where's the fairness in that eh? (fume)
I know what you mean. Hitler, Bin Laden, Thatcher, Katona - a role call of evil known solely by their surnames. And then Saddam comes along sounding all cuddly and harmless...
:laugh: You missed off Vordemann ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Brockman
There's no hidden reason for the Saddam part only being used. It was simply to protect our England cricket captain of the time from Bush and his cronies. They make the occasional error if the print's not big enough, you know :p :
If the news started broadcasting
"Last night over 50 civilians were killed in the latest airstrikes by George and Tony's bombers."
I'm sure Tony the tiger and George Foreman would get quite mad.
This article is also quite a strange thing to think about. A killer who seemed to be so gentle :confused:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/6222159.stm
Jordanian king is also Hussein.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazell B
I think he is, Abdullah II nowdays, the earlier was Hussein, jos oikein pilkkuja nussitaan :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
He was cool, pino?Quote:
Originally Posted by pino
Anyway, it was a fair trial I suppose, and a fair verdict, and in most cases of mass murderers would be a fair-ish punishment.
But in this case they shouldnt have executed him, all it has done is make him immortal, and the uprisings and response to his execution were going to see over the coming weeks months are I suspect going to be more severe than anything weve seen in the country so far. With our troops stuck right in the middle.
He should have been left to rot in jail, but then again he'd probably end up in jail with a load of his supporters, so that would have been out of the question.
Now all is said and done Im pretty much stuck on the fence as to what should have been done with him.
Then again it was an illegal war anyway, so we shouldnt even be in this position.
Well someones been arrested for doing the video http://www.itv.com/news/index_617f3d...e6f3e0183.html
That's a really interesting article. I don't remember reading an article in a long time (if ever) which really questions the "freedom" we supposedly have in the West. And so far is the most thought provoking post in this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by theugsquirrel
Personally, I don't condone what Saddam's done. However, I don't believe in capital punishment at all - regardless of what they've done (or have been accused of doing). It's hypocrisy - it just shows how a select few can do something that's "immoral", yet somehow to them and everyone else it seems "moral". At least Saddam was quite "upfront" with his agenda, unlike the whole "we just need some lame excuse to invade a country, do what we want and stay put to ruin it even further". To be imprisoned for your natural life and to live with what you've done is the worst, yet "most humane" punishment you could have in such circumstances.
What was even more distasteful was the fact that the execution was done on the day of Eid, and there's footage of it. I may be wrong, but I don't remember seeing detailed footage of anyone being executed.
I'm with Harsha on this one. Democracy and freedom are just hyped up words, nothing more. That's the saddest thing of all. :(