Saddam Hussein to be Executed within 30 days

[Robman?]

Hey Fox, why are you even a member of this forum?  You haven't posted once in any GN'R related area of this board. 

 

its so true

[Bud Fox]

On topic, this drives the message home that no one is safe from being held accountable.

 

Who is the being held accountable? Iraq goat farmers? Baathist nationalists? Shiite Iraqis? None of these people were our enemies prior to 9-11, and those are the people we attacked.

The enemy is Al Queda. They have deep roots in four countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Those are the countries our chiefs of staff wanted to invade on 9-12.

In addition, there is also the monsterous threat that Iran and Al Queda can unite, if they have not already. They both want essentially the same thing: an Islamic Republic form of government, a quasi-dictatorship that sees us as subhumans. No big deal, until Iran began its quest to acquire nukes. Both Iran and Al Queda were opposed by Saddam, who for all his evil, was actually working in our favor. Bush, in all these years, has attacked the wrong country, creating a new haven that did not exist before, and doing nothing about their main bases in Somalia and Pakistan. Those are the nations we should be at all out war with.

You guys want so much to justify this, to make it right, to somehow convince the rest of us this was not the stupidest, most vile clusterfuck in US history. Keep it up so we can kick your ass again in 2008, because no one is buying your shit anymore except the Koolaid drinking News Max Dittohead freaks.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Some people just love to argue. Any thread related to Iraq has some dumbass spinning it to reflect how much they hate Bush and the Republicans & how they are worse than Saddam & Osama blah blah blah and how America sucks etc.

This thread should be locked it's going so far off topic now.

[Bud Fox]

Vengeance of the Victors


By Fareed Zakaria

Newsweek

Jan. 8, 2007 issue

- The saga of Saddam's end?his capture, trial and execution?is a sad metaphor for America's occupation of Iraq. What might have gone right went so wrong. It is worth remembering that Saddam Hussein was not your run-of-the-mill dictator. He created one of the most brutal, corrupt and violent regimes in modern history, something akin to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China or Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Whatever the strategic wisdom for the United States, deposing him began as something unquestionably good for Iraq.

But soon the Bush administration dismissed the idea of trying Saddam under international law, or in a court with any broader legitimacy. This is the administration, after all, that could see little advantage to a United Nations mandate for its own invasion and occupation. It put Saddam's fate in the hands of the new Iraqi government, dominated by Shiite and Kurdish politicians who had been victims of his reign. As a result, Saddam's trial, which should have been the judgment of civilized society against a tyrant, is now seen by Iraq's Sunnis and much of the Arab world as a farce, reflecting only the victors' vengeance.

This was not inevitable. Most Iraqis were happy to see Saddam out of power. In the months after the American invasion, support for the Coalition Provisional Authority topped 70 percent. This was so even among Iraq's Sunni Arabs. In the first months of the insurgency, only 14 percent of them approved of attacks on U.S. troops. (That number today is 70 percent.) The rebellious area in those early months was not (Sunni) Fallujah but (Shiite) Najaf.

But during those crucial first months, Washington disbanded the Iraqi Army, fired 50,000 bureaucrats and shut down the government-owned enterprises that employed most Iraqis. In effect, the United States dismantled the Iraqi state, leaving a deep security vacuum, administrative chaos and soaring unemployment. That state was dominated by Iraq's Sunni elites, who read this not as just a regime change but a revolution in which they had become the new underclass. For them, the new Iraq looked like a new dictatorship.

Why Washington made such profound moves with such little forethought remains one of the many puzzles of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Some of the decision making was motivated by ideology: Baathism equaled fascism, so every school teacher who joined the Baath Party to get a job was seen as a closet Nazi; state-owned enterprises were bad, the new Iraq needed a flat tax, etc. Some of it was influenced by Shiite exiles who wanted to take total control of the new Iraq. Some of it simply reflected the bizarre combination of ignorance and naivete that has marked the policies of Bush's "tough guys."

The administration has never fully understood the sectarian nature of its policies, which were less "nation building" than they were "nation busting" in their effects. It kept insisting that it was building a national army and police force when it was blatantly obvious (even to columnists) that the forces were overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish, mostly drawn from militias with stronger loyalties to political parties than to the state. The answer to these fundamentally political objections was technocratic: more training. But a stronger Shiite Army made?makes?the Sunni populace more insecure and willing to support the insurgency.

Iraq's Sunnis are not the good guys in this story. They have mostly behaved like self-defeating thugs. The minority of Sunnis who support Al Qaeda have been truly barbarous. The point, however, is not their vices but our stupidity. We summarily deposed not just Saddam Hussein but a centuries-old ruling elite and then were stunned that they reacted poorly. In contrast, on coming into power in South Africa, Nelson Mandela did not fire a single white bureaucrat or soldier?and not because he thought that they had been kind to his people. He correctly saw the strategy as the way to prevent an Afrikaner rebellion.

It has now become fashionable among Washington neoconservatives to blame the Iraqis for everything that has happened to their country. "We have given the Iraqis a republic and they do not appear able to keep it," laments Charles Krauthammer. Others invoke anthropologists to explain the terrible dysfunctions of Iraqi culture. There may be some truth to all these claims?Iraq is a tough place?but the Bush administration is not quite so blameless. It thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the French or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could not digest it happily, peaceably and quickly. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I agree with some of the points of the newsweek article. but........................

If you get your info on Iraq only from mainstream media you wont get an accurate picture. Bad news sells.

Mistakes were made, we know that. Bush made some HUGE mistakes. Disbanding and putting the former army & baathists out of work was a big blunder, this is why we have the problems we have today.

But a lot of good things are happening in Iraq also.

Bud Fox, are you slcpunk's brother or something? you both sound very much alike 

[Guns N RockMusic]

Bud Fox, are you slcpunk's brother or something? you both sound very much alike 

I've been saying that for a while.  They both have very similar writing styles.

[Bud Fox]

But a lot of good things are happening in Iraq also.

Bud Fox is waiting to hear them.

I've been saying that for a while.  They both have very similar writing styles.

Are you ever going to say anything that is not about Bud Fox? It's as if you are dumb as Iraq.

[Axl4Prez2004]

Bud Fox, you know from my posts my thoughts on this war.  When you say you're "waiting to hear" the good things, I'm sure you are being sarcastic.  While Iraq on the whole has been a debacle, some good is coming of this ridiculous occupation.  A brutal dictator (for the time being) is not in power and the infrastructure of Iraq is slowly being rebuilt.

   

[Bud Fox]

The basic policy premise, that democracy will somehow solve the problems in these countries, is just plain wrong. Democracy simply gives rise to Hezbollah-style militias, mullahs and genocide, and eventual Islamic Republic rule. Bush probably never heard of the "Weimer Republic",  you want change? Either invade these places WWII style, with a million troops and smash and kill everyone who looks at you wrong, followed by an occupation of three million troops, or stay the fuck out and let them naturally progress to democracy, which might take them another 1,000 years.

Our biggest contribution can be made at the diplomatic level - trying to get these people to talk, trying to straighten out the incrediblly stupid borders of these countries, and pulling support from the fascist regimes we support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates. Of course, we can only do that if we quit buying their cursed oil, which will never happen as long as we have president and vice president who are in the business of selling it.

The core problem in Iraq has always been that Iraq is a fiction. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Western Iraq ought to be the same country. Northern Iraq should be a separate country called Kurdistan. Eastern Iraq should be an Iranian client state or a part of Iran. Then peace could come to this place. But the Americans and the British oil companies are not anamoured of this idea, and have kept the place in turmoil since the 1920's, so they can steal there oil.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I dont agree that its all one big US conspiracy. Bush had an itchy trigger finger to invade Iraq based on bad intelligence we thought then to be accurate. . Think about it. How much oil are we really getting from Iraq??

[SLCPUNK]

I dont agree that its all one big US conspiracy. Bush had an itchy trigger finger to invade Iraq based on bad intelligence we thought then to be accurate. . Think about it. How much oil are we really getting from Iraq??

Bush was told by the CIA that the "intel" about WMD was poor and to take it out of a speech. He did at first, however the next week (when he addressed the nation and the world) he put it back in the speech and continued to lie from that point onward. Top CIA officials have come forward to give interviews on this story, it has been all over the news, and the net. In other words: Bush knew the "intel" (to go to war) was bogus, but chose to lie about it anyway.

So please, no more "Bush acted on bad intel we thought to be accurate at the time." It's not accurate, nor honest. Bush was told by the CIA that it was faulty, but he used it anyway. Which is lying.

[The Dog]

But a lot of good things are happening in Iraq also.

That may be true, but for every one "good thing" happening in Iraq there are dozens of bad things.  The bad outweighs the good the way an elephant outweighs a mouse.

And the good things are good for the Iraqi people, but they are certainly not "good things" for American troops and American interests.  This war has created more terrorists, cost billions of dollars and is only getting worse.

yes, its good Saddam is dead, but like i said earlier, who cares - this news means nothing to me from a war on terror POV.  Its been a few years now, are there really any of you who are reading this who truly believe we, the American people, weren't misled/lied to about the true intentions of this war?  The rationale keeps changing as the situation does.  This war is to find WMDs....no, WMDs?? ok, its about democracy then!  Wait, democracy is not going to happen in Iraq (and please, a purple finger to me is not a functioning democracy, its a photo op).

I'm still waiting for the next excuse.  This war is a total failure, Sadamms death is just a reminder of that.  The world, and arguably Iraq, were better places before the war.

[AxlsMainMan]

I dont agree that its all one big US conspiracy. Bush had an itchy trigger finger to invade Iraq based on bad intelligence we thought then to be accurate. . Think about it. How much oil are we really getting from Iraq??

Bush was told by the CIA that the "intel" about WMD was poor and to take it out of a speech. He did at first, however the next week (when he addressed the nation and the world) he put it back in the speech and continued to lie from that point onward. Top CIA officials have come forward to give interviews on this story, it has been all over the news, and the net. In other words: Bush knew the "intel" (to go to war) was bogus, but chose to lie about it anyway.

So please, no more "Bush acted on bad intel we thought to be accurate at the time." It's not accurate, nor honest. Bush was told by the CIA that it was faulty, but he used it anyway. Which is lying.

Couldn't agree more myself.

[Brody]

bud fox why don't you go mourn his death somewhere else..

Good Riddance Saddam, Did any of you see how broken of a man he was at the gallows? Before I was all for him sitting in a prison and getting shit on but when I seen the fear in his eyes before they put the Noose around his neck I knew it was the right thing.

[Brody]

Bud Fox, are you slcpunk's brother or something? you both sound very much alike?

I've been saying that for a while.? They both have very similar writing styles.

Its called proxy.

[Jim Bob]

bud fox why don't you go mourn his death somewhere else..

Good Riddance Saddam, Did any of you see how broken of a man he was at the gallows? Before I was all for him sitting in a prison and getting shit on but when I seen the fear in his eyes before they put the Noose around his neck I knew it was the right thing.

ya.. whether or not someone is pro-death penalty or not, its not like this asshole is going to be missed one bit.

[Bud Fox]

bud fox why don't you go mourn his death somewhere else..

If you want to die for Iraqis, take a fucking plane, today, to Baghdad, Bud Fox has this quaint idea that his taxes and the lives of our kids are to DEFEND AMERICA instead of some Republican wet dream utopian fantasy. Why aren't you over there again?

Its called proxy.

Another wet dream of yours Bud Fox is sure.

[Brody]

bud fox why don't you go mourn his death somewhere else..

Good Riddance Saddam, Did any of you see how broken of a man he was at the gallows? Before I was all for him sitting in a prison and getting shit on but when I seen the fear in his eyes before they put the Noose around his neck I knew it was the right thing.

ya.. whether or not someone is pro-death penalty or not, its not like this asshole is going to be missed one bit.

Oh I think a few are missing him..

bud fox why don't you go mourn his death somewhere else..

If you want to die for Iraqis, take a fucking plane, today, to Baghdad, Bud Fox has this quaint idea that his taxes and the lives of our kids are to DEFEND AMERICA instead of some Republican wet dream utopian fantasy. Why aren't you over there again?

Its called proxy.

Another wet dream of yours Bud Fox is sure.

I don't have to explain my military service to you.. I have military service under my belt.. what do you have? A keyboard, box of twinkies and a whole lotta hatred for your own country?

go play in the street little one.

[Bud Fox]

I don't have to explain my military service to you.. I have military service under my belt..

What? The German "Rainbow Coalition" ?

[Brody]

I don't have to explain my military service to you.. I have military service under my belt..

What? The German "Rainbow Coalition" ?

wooaaahh good one..