Saddam Hussein execution botched?

[Laugh O. Grams]

Don't mind me, just laughing given the number of times people could reply the same way to your posts.

Right!?!

 

[JennyMominRI]

With all due respect, transparent, I often see you take this line of debate. I'd appreciate a few examples of how they feel they've helped, other than the obligatory "building schools and hugging babies" that we hear so much about in the media. I also walk through VA Medical Centers, nationwide, at least once a week, as my company does a ton of work with the Veterans' Administration and I am saddened to see so many young people being treated for blindness, lost limbs, and other debilitating injuries stemming from the Iraqi conflict. I get a mixed bag of opinions, both good and bad. Some say we've helped, some say we haven't.

This would be exactly what I hear from my military friends..And a poll that just came out in the Military Times was not very hopeful..

 

[JennyMominRI]

I never said that any vet that I have spoken with ever said they "support, feel sorry for, or even consider the feelings of Sadaam and his bunch"...but they do question the way this war is going and the leadership that came up with the original plan.

Exactly and the military times poll supports those claims.

 

[TheDoctor]

Yes the execution was botched. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/02/brokaw-hussein/

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who delivered a eulogy at President Gerald Ford’s funeral today, appeared this morning on the Don Imus radio show. Brokaw agreed with Imus that it is “difficult to imagine” how the execution of Saddam Hussein “could have turned out worse.”

“[W]e portray ourselves around the world as the champions of democracy and the rule of law,” Brokaw said, yet Hussein’s execution “resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West.” As a result, Hussein, who “had disappeared, in effect, as some kind of a symbol over there, suddenly becomes a martyr.”

To the rest of the world, we have taken the sides of the Shia and Al Sadr (the leader whose named was chanted while Saddam was being hanged). As far as the world is concerned, we have taken sides in the Iraq civil war.

 

[Fitswimmer]

My best friend's daughter has done two tours in Iraq, her Dad was career Army and her Aunt was career army, both high ranked. From talking to them over the holidays, I gathered that they still support the idea of the war, but not how it has been run. The general consensus was that you can't run a war from DC and you can't run a war based on opinion polling. Tell the military what the goal is, give them the tools and then let them do what they are trained to do.

 

[TheDoctor]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16447798/

Asked at a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday about criticism of the hanging, U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said: “It was not our decision as to what occurred but we would have done it differently.”

“We had absolutely nothing to do with the facility where the execution took place,” Caldwell said, adding that U.S. forces flew Saddam to the prison where the execution took place at dawn and then withdrew from the building.

 

[TheDoctor]

This would be exactly what I hear from my military friends..And a poll that just came out in the Military Times was not very hopeful..

Here is the poll that you mentioned. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003526245

NEW YORK It's often written or said in the media that, despite public opposition to the Iraq war here at home, military personnel strongly back President Bush's handling of the conflict. But a poll for the Military Times newspapers, released Friday, shows that more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it.

It came on the day that at least four more Americans died in the war, pushing the monthly total to 107, the high point for the year -- and the total figure to 2,997, near the milestone of 3,000.

Barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the new poll for the four papers (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times). In another startling finding, only 41% now feel it was the right idea to go to war in Iraq in the first place.

And the number who feel success there is likely has shrunk from 83% in 2004 to about 50% today. A surprising 13% say there should be no U.S. troops in Iraq at all.

 

[Eega Beeva]

What did Bush say? Something like "We'll stay in Iraq even if Laurea nad Barney are the only ones supporting me"

 

[dreamcometrue]

Let's be fair, it is my understanding the hoods are to protect the executioners from being publicly ridiculed and/or singled out as targets.

It is nothing like an Al Queda execution.

I think ALL executioners wear hoods, hanging or not. Don't they wear hoods in the execution chambers here in the US? It is to protect their privacy!

 

[Charade]

Alright, enough already...back to the OP.

Charade, you're one of the conservative's who I was talking about that would be disappointed if Iraq turned into a Islamic State run by Shia cleric/Ayatollah. How do you feel about the crowd, many of them directly linked to the new Iraqi government, chanting the name of Muqtada al-Sadr? You can't possibly feel encouraged by the display, can you?

No, I'm not encouraged by it and it doesn't help (possibly worsens) the situation. However, if I understand correctly, the person that took that video has been arrested. I'm willing to wait to see if the process of "rule of law" works in this case.

 

[sotoalf]

Christopher Hitchens, a defender of the war, on the botched execution:

How could it have come to this? Did U.S. officials know that the designated "executioners" would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army"—the same sort of thugs who killed Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf just after the liberation and who indulge in extra-judicial murder of Iraqis every night and day? Did our envoys and representatives ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions? According to the New York Times, there do seem to have been a few insipid misgivings about the timing and the haste, but these appear to have been dissolved soon enough and replaced by a fatalistic passivity that amounts, in theory and practice, to acquiescence in a crude Shiite coup d'état. Thus, far from bringing anything like "closure," the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida's dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame.
-----------------------
Reporting from defeated Germany in 1945, and noticing some brutal treatment of captured SS men, George Orwell wrote a brilliant essay called "Revenge Is Sour." I hadn't thought of it for a while but pulled it down from the shelf when I returned from Iraq. Here is the key passage:

"Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.

Who would not have jumped for joy, in 1940, at the thought of seeing S.S. officers kicked and humiliated? But when the thing becomes possible, it is merely pathetic and disgusting. It is said that when Mussolini's corpse was exhibited in public, an old woman drew a revolver and fired five shots into it, exclaiming, "Those are for my five sons!" It is the kind of story that the newspapers make up, but it might be true. I wonder how much satisfaction she got out of those five shots, which, doubtless, she had dreamed years earlier of firing. The condition of her being able to get near enough to Mussolini to shoot at him was that he should be a corpse."

You can read the rest in Slate.

 

[Laugh O. Grams]

No, I'm not encouraged by it and it doesn't help (possibly worsens) the situation. However, if I understand correctly, the person that took that video has been arrested. I'm willing to wait to see if the process of "rule of law" works in this case.

Although the video was gruesome and possibly illegal, my concern is not so much that the footage was shot during the circus-like execution and more that the participants were chanting "Muqtada, Muqtada...". It doesn't speak well for what our soldiers has sacrificed their lives for...

 

[billythefish]

There seems to be a misunderstanding here that I started this thread to attack the US administration for it's part in this. Although I have never agreed with this war, even when I thought that Iraq was awash with WMD and I have nothing but contempt for Bush, Blair etc, this thread was aimed at the Iraqi government.

I'm against capital punishment, whatever the crime, but if they had to execute Saddam, for God's sake, they must have known that it had to handled sensitively. What the hell were they thinking when they let a lynch mob loose on him? Didn't they realise how bad it would look?

Or maybe they just didn't care and wanted to stir up even more sectarian violence. Maybe that's it. If so, Iraq is sliding towards an Iranian model Shi'ite state and if you thought saddam was scarey, you aint seen nothing yet.

 

[LakeAriel]

No, I'm not encouraged by it and it doesn't help (possibly worsens) the situation. However, if I understand correctly, the person that took that video has been arrested. I'm willing to wait to see if the process of "rule of law" works in this case.

Why has the person who took the video been arrested? Why not the goons who taunted and behaved like thugs? Again the messenger is being blamed.

 

[Duckfan-in-Chicago]

Why has the person who took the video been arrested? Why not the goons who taunted and behaved like thugs? Again the messenger is being blamed.

I'm sure a guy recorded an execution that he wasn't supposed to KNOWING that the guards were going to taunt Saddam, and he just wanted to turn them in. Is that what you're saying?? If not, he isn't 'just the messenger' and he shouldn't have released what he did all over the net.

There were official media people there to record the event. The fact that the guards taunted Saddam was going to be known with or without this video.

 

[LakeAriel]

I'm sure a guy recorded an execution that he wasn't supposed to KNOWING that the guards were going to taunt Saddam, and he just wanted to turn them in. Is that what you're saying?? If not, he isn't 'just the messenger' and he shouldn't have released what he did all over the net.

There were official media people there to record the event. The fact that the guards taunted Saddam was going to be known with or without this video.

How do you think the the camera phone got in that room? Do you think it wasn't known it would be videotaped by anyone who could..(maybe sell it)
These people weren't frisked? Give me a break. They don't care about it being taped, they are mortified that the behavior of the executioners was caught on camera. How does it look that the "Butcher of Baghdad" acted more dignified then those meting out the justice? You answered your own question. It would be known there was taunting but no one wanted it all over the net. That's why they were arrested, for showing the world what thugs did the bidding.

PS The cameramen/those taunting may be one and the same, that is possible also.

 

[DawnCt1]

Why has the person who took the video been arrested? Why not the goons who taunted and behaved like thugs? Again the messenger is being blamed.

If a tree fell in the woods and no one heard it, would it make a sound?? The video made a HUGE sound, started riots and additional car bombings and probably caused numerous deaths. It was tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded building. Perhaps the goons that taunted and behaved like thugs will be arrested but there is enough guilt to go around.

 

[cardaway]

If a tree fell in the woods and no one heard it, would it make a sound?? The video made a HUGE sound, started riots and additional car bombings and probably caused numerous deaths. It was tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded building. Perhaps the goons that taunted and behaved like thugs will be arrested but there is enough guilt to go around.

Like yelling fire in a crowded place?

Just when I think I have seen it all.

Should American news reporters that start riots there be jailed as well or is this another case of you and your feelings for people in that area?

 

[DawnCt1]

Like yelling fire in a crowded place?

Just when I think I have seen it all.

Should news reporters that start riots there be jailed as well?

A guard that is violating even Iraq's rules cannot be called a reporter. Are reporters in the USA allowed to video executions with their cell phones? Not at all. The cell phone videographer wasn't allowed to there either.

 

[bettyann29]

I'm talking about the guards shouting insults at him before he was hanged. Haven't you seen the video?

No I havent seen the video and dont want to.. but shouting insults at him isnt what I would call botched..