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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 02:01 pm
At least Saddam went out with dignity, reports respectful Robert Fisk:
All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance – that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer’s face – showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.
In fact, Saddam went out babbling like an idiot:
I destroyed the enemies of Iraq, and I turned Iraq from poverty into wealth.
Say it swingin’, pal. Terror groupie Fisk also reveals:
Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator’s soft, damp hand.
You sure it was his hand, Bob?
I destroyed the enemies of Iraq …
The funny thing about it is, Iran and Kuwait weren’t the enemies of Iraq until Saddam decided to invade them in an idiotic move to conquer. Neither invasion was successful and cost the country over one million deaths, substantial treasure, and a ruined economy.
Now that I think about it, that’s pretty much par for the course with all Arab countries. (see Six Days War, 1973 War)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 12 31 at 04:47 AM • permalink
‘Hours before Saddam’s death sentence, his family – his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam’s daughter and their other relatives – had given up hope.’
I thought Saddamist eschewed contact with this bit of the family? Would the truth have spoiled a good line?
.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2006 12 31 at 04:53 AM • permalink
- Well, I appreciated it.
Pity it was hanging, Grimmy’s idea about the woodchipper, pigs, and sundry other items had a real appeal to it in my book.
Of course, I’m only an NCO, why listen to me?
This hanging just shows a real lack of imagination on the Iraqi Government’s part.
Still, worth tipping a glass of bubbly to, despite what Fisky and the rest of the Kos kids, et all think. 🙂
#9 For this Bastard, no its not. For f*** sake people there is a point beyond which criminals and despots lose the right to sympathy. The good God knows I represent some of them but this F***er is well and gone beyond that point.
Can we stop pretending there is/was any doubt to the extent and nature of this man’s depravity? The world is a better place with him gone. I am starting to believe that Western civilisation will fall because we are just to polite to defend it.
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2006 12 31 at 08:33 AM • permalink
#15 I hear you. It’s okay to take the piss out of everyone but Saddam just because he’s dead?
I know there’s the old line about never speaking ill of the dead, but I’ve never bothered with it.
For example, my dad’s mum was a mongrel when she was alive, and near 20 years after she carked it, she’s still a mongrel as far as I’m concerned. If my nana is fair game, then you can bet Saddam is.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 12 31 at 08:39 AM • permalink
And now that I reread it, I think that should be “too polite” ahh Becks and JD eases the pain.
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2006 12 31 at 08:42 AM • permalink
I hope that Jim Cairns is shaking Saddam’s “soft and damp bits” as a cordial welcome to the innermost circle of Hell as the sun rolls around the world to welcome 2007.
In a small way, the world is a better place without that mongrel stealing our air.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 12 31 at 08:48 AM • permalink
For all you anti-death-penalty concernoids, it is possible to be against the death penalty on general principles without being a total pussy about the death of someone who clearly deserved it. Tim has nothing to apologize about, and you can get off your high horses before you fall off.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 12 31 at 09:05 AM • permalink
Hanging tends to cause an ejaculation, he probably shat himself before the drop.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 12 31 at 10:50 AM • permalink
I think I’m becoming sports mad :
When I watched all I could think of was –
“In off the crossbar”.Great Quotes Saddam never made as he was
led off :“Is it raining outside?”
“Is it Sunni outside?”
“Could someone just nip back to the
cell I think I’ve left the lights on”.“Call that a last meal?!”
“Is this suit, me?”
“Does my bum look fat in this?”
The BBC World Service has described Saddam Hussain again, finally one hopes, as ‘defiant’. Not ‘deluded’, not ‘callous’, not ‘hardened’, not ‘pompous’, not ‘unrepentent’. How ‘defiant’ were the innocent of Dujail, after prolonged torture, before their executions?
According to the Beeb, Saddam’s three month trial at which indisputable evidence of his responsibility for the murder of 150 men, some boys of only 13, at Dujail, was nothing more than a Shia kangaroo court – despite attempts to subvert the court, the murder of some its brave officials and open intimidation of judges and witnesses. Saddam’s other monstrous crimes rated not a mention.
That one of the world’s most ruthless butchers will no longer be able to threaten and destroy lives must be an immense relief to Iraqis, Iranians, Kuwaitis and Israelis. 2007 will be a better year if only for this reason.
Saddam is dead but, alas, the BBC continues to be deluded, callous, unrepentent and most of all, pompous.
History revisionism starts already, eh?
Give it a few months, and we’ll probably start seeing Saddam’s picture on t-shirts, just like Che Guerrva.
That’s OK……someone can start selling shirts like these.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 12 31 at 11:47 AM • permalink
Hey, what’s wrong with bad taste postings? They usually provoke the best (and most true) comments. Of course, they usually trample the delicate sensitivities of lefties, so maybe that’s the problem.
I saw the video, and Saddam just looked confused to me, like he couldn’t believe they were actually going to kill him. Reportedly he said, “Without me, Iraq is nothing.” That comment, more than any other, reveals the man, and justifies the hanging. If they had let him live, he would have continued to cause chaos and misery. Good riddance.
I got this one.
Once he’s been lionised by Left, Saddam with Mickey Mouse ears would be a good poke in the eye…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 12 31 at 02:42 PM • permalink
Was justice too swift?
~ Headline – Teh Chicago Tribune ~
At least 15 years late. But it’s still be too swift for the bedwetters at the Tribune.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 12 31 at 02:44 PM • permalink
About that Chicago Tribune headline, “Was Justice Too Swift?”, what was “too swift”? He was:
Tried.
Convicted.
Sentenced to hang.
Hung.His trial went on for how many years?
Does the Tribune thnk that there might be a reason to overturn Hussein’s conviction? Was the wrong man convicted, a case of mistaken identity? Did he have an airtight alibi proving that he wasn’t the dictator of Iraq when the crimes were committed? Surprise witnesses? (Each one more surprising that the last.) The US soldiers failed to read him his Miranda rights as they pulled him out of his spiderhole? The warrant for his arrest wasn’t in order?
I guess I don’t undeerstand what would be accomplished by letting Hussein sit on his butt in some jail cell for years and years. Well, other than allowing certain countries (I’m looking at you Europe) to try and pressure the Iraqis into letting this murdering bastard to live.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 12 31 at 03:15 PM • permalink
“I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years.”-Fisktard
Good for you. Now, shut up and enjoy the punishment phase.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 12 31 at 03:20 PM • permalink
#39—Problem is, Dave, Fisk and others *approve* of Saddam’s crimes.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 12 31 at 03:37 PM • permalink
The man is such an idiot it’s hard to tell what he’s for or against.
He also has a real hard time telling the truth (like most leftys).
For example:
“Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls?…We did.”-Fisktard
No, “we” didn’t. The United States and Iraq were arch-enemies in 1980, and didn’t even have normal diplomatic relations. We didn’t have ANYTHING to do with them deciding to invade Iran.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 12 31 at 03:54 PM • permalink
- #27 In war, language is a weapon. The BBC et al has already handed a big one to our enemies by labelling the Ba’athists, murderous thugs & enemies of the people of Iraq (but I repeat myself) “insurgents” instead of what they are: “loyalists”.
The lingering effect of WWII Free French propaganda (hey, our side used it too), Chuckie De Gaulle’s post war pompous self-promotion, and decades of plucky underdog film frenchies has lent a perfume to the word “insurgent” that for may covers up the stench of reality.“Loyalist”, in contrast, brings up images of those rat bags who thought King George III was just fine, the impoverished people should indeed eat cake, and the serfs of Russia should remain chained while Rasputin nibbled the Tsarina’s cookie in comfort. It’s a code word guaranteed to tell any leftie who the villians are.
Critics say Hussein’s speedy execution casts doubt on Iraq’s judicial system and leaves unresolved more grievous alleged crimes
The lede.
Saddam Hussein’s trials and his march to the gallows were intended to be turning points in Iraq’s history in which justice was delivered on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people killed by the dictator’s brutal regime.
But for many human-rights advocates and legal experts who followed the trials, Hussein’s rapid conviction and execution instead left them with doubts about the emerging Iraqi government and the fairness of its judicial process.
Advocates and experts… it’s all about them.
To be actually confronted by the instrument of one’s imminent demise must be a daunting experience. Saddam’s first glimpse of the noose and trapdoor for instance.
How terrible must it be to walk into a small room and see the electric chair. Or during the French Revolution, to have to look up at the dripping blade, to wade through puddles of blood on the scaffold, all trussed up like a Christmas turkey and forced onto a plank still warm from the blood of the previous victim before being shoved under the blade.
A more terrifying way to go I could not imagine. Saddam got it easy. Certainly beats going through a shredder.
The lunatic Bob Ellis in today’s SMH in his typical deluded and incredible muses on Daddam’s demise with this:
“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”.
Only an insane lefty would put such an inhuman and despicable spin on Saddams’s death. Let’s turn it all around and focus on Bush. Sickening!
So, Bob Ellis is saying my Pres should be hanged?
And people call me cranky when I break out the “friend of my enemy should be just as frikin dead as them other enemy over there”.
We aint gonna “nice” ourselves into a nother defeat but we dang well might let ourselves be “niced” long enough to make “kill them all” turn out the be the more moderate of the varied respones once we’re fed up enough to stop being nice.
#48: “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.”
I know this is in abominable taste, but did Ellis have to change his shorts after he wrote that? I mean, really. Why would anybody who watched the video of Saddam doing the non-elastic bungee cord jump – even “over and over” – “surely” imagine George Bush undergoing the same fate? Ellis certainly did, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it gave him a psychosexual thrill, but Ellis is hardly “Everyman”, now, is he? So much of what passes for political observation today is mere projection, the parade of the writer’s neuroses on the public stage, the diary of a quarter-educated moron.
- “Ya know, we don’t really have to do this hanging thing, do we? I mean, there’s lots of other trials yet to do, and lots of other victims to hear from. Or you could just sentence me to Abu Ghraib – that’s plenty severe according to the U.S. press. And I’d never complain about having to make a naked human pyramid. Sounds kind of fun, actually.
Or you could send me to that swank U.S. prison in Colorado with all the other crazed islamics and various homegrown assholes. I hear they have a marvelous halal menu. Or if that doesn’t work for you, you could always send me to Gitmo. Wouldn’t that teach me a lesson? Wouldn’t that be punishment enough?
Wouldn’t that … (spring) Gaa a-a-aack!”
- I read as much of Kos’s oily sentimentality as I could bear. It’s a classic piece of ‘He was just a frightened child with problems – no-one’s responsible for who they become’ theme..
[If only people were kinder to Hitler when he showed them his paintings… ]Kos is SO wrong, as usual.Apparently Saddam was lucid enough to summarise his childhood on- ‘I have lived life as a radical revolutionary so I always expected death..’In Saddam’s case it was planning murders from the age of accountablility [12] forward.
The very definition of a sane psychopath.
“And how many Americans – Bremmer, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bush – should on this precedent be charged and hanged?”—Bob Ellis
Grab a rope and give it a try, hoss. What’s the hold up, afraid you might get killed trying?
Leftist = mucho mouth, no balls.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 12 31 at 07:17 PM • permalink
I’m glad the Iraqis didn’t use slow beheading with a blunt knife, boring holes in him with an electric drill, feeding him into a shredder, flaying him with chemicals etc.
All of which he really deserved.
Nope, it was quick, and it was as clean as such a filthy business can be.
I dislike executions, and I’m agin the Death Penalty except in unusual circumstances, like this one.
And Andrea – someone can be against the Death Penalty as a general rule and still be for it in some circumstances. I’m also anti-war as a general rule, but there are times when military action isn’t just desirable, it’s essential. War is never good – but there are things far, far worse that only War can prevent.
Things like the ex-Saddam, now pining for the Fjords.
- Robert Baer in Time gets it all wrong yet again:
Sunnis aren’t alone in their view of the trial. Europe refused to participate in it because it believed the trial could not be fair and his execution would be a foregone conclusion. The UN’s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers of the UN Human Rights Council issued a press statement that the tribunal is illegitimate.It doesn’t matter to the Sunnis that Saddam was guilty of the crime he was charged with: the massacre of 140 Shia villagers….At the risk of oversimplification, the Sunnis think the Shia villagers deserved it. It was that kind of rough justice that Saddam used to keep Iraq together.So executing a guilty vengeful mass murderer after lengthy trial is wrong according to Baer, but ‘rough justice’ a la Saddam is OK in Iraq because his tribe and power base want it that way?Exactly WHERE is Baer coming from?
Of oocurse, he’s taking the old leftist line that many countries are ‘better off’ with brutal controllers – ‘you can’t make an omellettes without breaking eggs’, ‘revolution is no tea party’.Now we hear it applied to Arabs – they NEED their tyrants and we in the West have no right to ‘speak on their behalf’.
Morally gutless, ideological, purblind, and stupid: Europe and the UN can now be added to the list….
Another grim milestone is reached. The count has begun for those on hajj.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 12 31 at 09:03 PM • permalink
You sure it was his hand, Bob?
Well, he DID only need to use two fingers…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 12 31 at 09:15 PM • permalink
Far be it from me to ridicule someone who faces death in this way. But you have to admit it was a hoot when the filthy mass murderer had his famous last train-of-thought derailed by the Shiite who said “moqtada moqtada moqtada”—speaking of Iraqi murderers due for a comeuppance—also the bit on the vidphone where its now you see him, now you don’t.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 12 31 at 11:05 PM • permalink
also the bit on the vidphone where its now you see him, now you don’t.
Thwack!: the sound of the trapdoor springing open.
Thud!: the sound of a monster finally reaching the end of his rope.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 01 at 12:18 AM • permalink
If we could find out a way to slow down gravity, maybe when the trap’s sprung, Saddam could’ve like, just dangled awhile before descending slowly to the end of the drop where he could strangle to death (ever so elegantly). I’ll get the team in the lab to work on ‘slow gravity’…
- #27:
What I found interesting in the BBCWS’s coverage was how they waxed orgasmic over how the cellphone camera clip apparently contradicts the “official” report of Saddam’s execution.
The Beeb couldn’t give a crap about blogs during Rathergate or when the blogs are fact-checking the Beeb’s ass, but now, they suddenly like user-generated content because it agrees with their world view.(Apologies if this gets posted twice; the first post isn’t showing up here.)Posted by Ted Schuerzinger on 2007 01 01 at 01:14 AM • permalink
#62—I am not sure where Baer iscoming from. I have read both his books, and despite the argument of those that loved Syriana (that he was opposed to a cynical realistic foreign policy) his books show that the guy was a hyper realist and supported an extremely cynical foreign policy. He essentially took the position that the US should support Assad and other strong men as the Moslem Bortherhood would otherwise take over. He does not seem to believe that Arabs and Moslems are capable of democracy.
One solution he posited to the current crisis was to invade Saudi Arabia and seize the oil fields.
While he keeps showing up as late in many left wing publications, his books called for a strong line against Iran, the Palestinians and Saudi Arabia.
See, saddam didn’t have enough time between sentencing and execution to become an essayist for NPR (like mumia) or write and have published a children’s book (like tookie williams).
And to top it off they didn’t get to complain about how it’s inhumane to keep someone on death row for 10 years before executing, so therefore, he shouldn’t be executed afterall since he suffered enough by being on death row for 10 years!!! That’s how their game works.
Read about the guy who attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin Roosevelt:
Zangara was quickly tried and convicted on charges of assault with the intent to kill; he was sentenced to 80 years in prison. However, on March 6, Mayor Cermak died after lingering for three weeks. Zangara was hastily retried and convicted on murder charges; he insisted on pleading guilty despite the belief of some that doctors had misdiagnosed Cermak’s condition and contributed to his death. On March 5, only five weeks after the attempted assassination, Zangara died in the electric chair in the state prison at Railford. link
#70 Don’t worry, zefal, they’ll still probably name a street after Saddam in Paris.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 01 01 at 03:25 PM • permalink
LOL Damn, Tim! I’m trying to eat here! I’m going to have nightmares tonight.