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ROPE SMOKED
Saddam’s death sentence has poor old Robert Fisk all in a muddle:
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.
Give it to us straight, Bob! We can take it!
We can’t mention Abu Ghraib these days ...
You just did. In fact, “Abu Ghraib” has been mentioned in various press outlets 3,570 times since October 27.
...because we have followed Saddam’s trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don’t we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam. Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that.
More mentioning of the unmentionable. Fisk is on fire.
If Saddam’s immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? 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 ...
Fisk finally gets around to citing Lancet’s wild estimate. Which should prompt his editors to ask: “Robert, dear chap, how is it that you, the greatest Middle East correspondent of all time, somehow missed the deaths of some half-a-million people? Hmmm?”
"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 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. Remember that handshake?
How could we forget? That handshake proves everything!
Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.
Actually, according to political genius Chris Matthews, Saddam’s sentencing will help the Democrats. Nice try, Rethuglicans!
Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the Republicans, 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.
Excuse me, but what does that grievous attempt at a Steyn-like retort even mean? Back among the sane, Florida Cracker rounds up Iraqi blogger reaction and says of Saddam:
He’s sad, he’s mad, and he’ll probably want some Cheetos. His angry crunches will echo throughout the cellblock.
And thus is provided the only memorable line from this entire Fisk-poisoned post. Thank you, FC.
Using Lancet’s math that probably equates to around 100 former dictators sentenced to hang.
Posted by surfmaster on 2006 11 06 at 05:20 AM • permalinkTexas Bob, the Iraqis living in Australia were celebrating in the streets last night. Local media seemed somewhat perplexed and had send someone to Tirkrit to find someone who was unhappy with the verdict.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 06 at 06:15 AM • permalinkAn online poll at The Age has 65% of respondents saying that Saddam should not be hung.
I wonder what the vote would be if the subject were Booooooo$$$$h?
ALl in a muddle also is Guy Rundall on Crikey who is labor-ing under the delusion that the one lonely token “right wing Philip Adams” programme Counterpoint, needs examination for bias…
Sadly,this is a moderate,jazz infested cakewalk of a programme which has NEVER managed to innoculate me against the dreaded Phat -who does the other 3 nights.
Notice Crikey barrister Fariss was slapped down hard by SBS resident dragon Alison someone for daring to complain of his last minute cancelled invitation to INSITE with La Brockey.After honestly declaring his right wingedness and submitting his blog and his views for examination with an SBS staffer-who said he would be a great participant -the day before,he was cancelled.Could it have been all those references to the communistas at sbs AND ABC. O SBS ya SOOOOOOOOOO fickle.It never ceases to amaze me how Robert Fisk - this hapless schlemiel, this myopic geopolitical tourist, this occasional impersonator of satin handbags - could stumble around the Middle East for years, not only getting everything so thoroughly wrong, but avoiding getting his head shot off (or cut off). He is a specimen of sheer boobery let loose in a hostile environment, who not only manages to survive, but to maintain gainful employment churning out astoundingly ill-informed reportage. It’s all rather as if Ernie Pyle had gone to Europe and sent back dispatches chatting up the virtues of the Nazi high command, and comparing Roosevelt, to his disadvantage, with Hitler. Fisk, no doubt, thinks he is following in the footsteps of Burton and Lawrence; but with his unerring instinct for “getting it wrong”, he has, instead, blundered off along Duranty’s trail. He is an Evely Waugh character come to life, and will make great fodder for the imaginative genius of some future comic novelist.
Did anyone else here in Oz watch Lateline - Mr Jones was trying very hard to get Christopher Hitchens to say that somehow the US manipulated the Saddam verdict to come out just before the mid-term elctions
Hitchens was emphatic - no in his opinion, for the Republicans it would have been better coming out on Wednesday - in light of the violence expected after the verdict
There was also mention of Fisk but I think I lost concentration there
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 06 at 10:38 AM • permalinkAnd speaking of Mark Steyn:
SADDAM TO SWING
By rights, the death sentence passed on this evil man ought to be bigger news this weekend than whether an obscure evangelical pastor had sex with a gay prostitute. But, in these fevered days before this week’s US elections, the media are too busy insisting the Republicans are doomed to notice stories that underline how important the Iraq invasion was. The local judges, by the way, have done a better job than Slobo’s international eminences in the Hague - a point I anticipated in this column from The Irish Times three years ago. As Mrs Thatcher remarked after British troops re-took the island of South Georgia from the Argies, “Rejoice, rejoice!”[From his page 2, where past columns are featured.]
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 11 06 at 10:43 AM • permalinkI guess this makes Robert Fisk a rope a dope!
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 11 06 at 03:44 PM • permalink"So America’s one-time ally...”
The Fisktard strikes again, opening up with the usual pack o’ lies, of which the above is a prime example. Iraq was NEVER an American ally, and has been, except for a very brief period in the 1980s, a bitter enemy of the United States. This has been the usual state of affairs ever since the 1960s, when Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with the United States. As a matter of fact, Fisktard, we’ve actually been fighting the nasty old Baathists for the last 16 years. Perhaps, you’ve been out of town (or more likely off planet) and didn’t get the word?
If you want to castigate nations for being pals with the Baathists, then take it up with your socialist swine friends in France, Russia or China. They’ve always been good buds with the Baathists, and fell all over themselves trying to stop us from kicking the crap out of Hussein & Co. (luckily, without success).
You’re an idiot Fisk, also a liar.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 11 06 at 07:42 PM • permalink"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
Hang on, Fisky. Isn’t the Correct Line that Saddam bravely ran a secular state that executed any Islamists, and so protected the whole world before 2003??
Oh, I forget that Fisky has NO ‘correct line’, ever.
He was sooo wrong on them Dead I-raqis too.
He claimed ‘only’ 150,000 eighteen months ago. Back to the Baghdad Morgues!
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Maybe Fisk can loan Sadam his satin bag to use as a blindfold.