Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death in an act of purely coincidental timing. Yawn.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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No word on whether the body will be drawn and quartered afterward, but I assume that at the very least we will all get to see live hangings 2 days before the 2008 election. One more step backwards into the dark ages, this time with satellite television!
This is so blatantly manipulative, putting US troops in increased danger for the chance at a few extra points in an election, that I can only hope it turns even more voters away from Republicans permanently. Cheney and the rest are morally repulsive, evil creatures.
Saddam is sentenced for bloody decrees of 1980s.., before his defense attorneys, Ramsey Clark et al, had submitted closing arguments… “Victor’s justice” just so we could have a verdict 2 days prior to mid-term elections.
True form, torture is still the rule. In the name of security we did away with habeas corpus and other freedoms.
There are no differences in the crimes committed by the US people represented by their unelected presidency.
Justice must be meted out evenly and fairly. Arrest the real criminals!
Is anyone else disturbed by this?
I have a set of complicated views about not only this sentence and it’s timing, but the whole process that Hussein and his country have been put through. First of all, I’m not anti-death penalty for certain types of crimes. Even though I’m troubled more and more by recent exonerations of death row inmates through DNA testing. And Hussein’s crimes fit into my safe zone for giving out this penalty. This is where it gets complicated. This whole process is tainted. I don’t feel any sense of justice being done. In fact, I see it the opposite way. And it has nothing to do with Husseins guilt. If anything, he should have been turned over to an international court. The court he was tried under is a sham. It’s a U.S. puppet. This verdict and sentence is the result of George Bush’s 15 year long wet dream. That it was handed down three days before an election is so transparently criminal and shows us for all the world to see as no better than any third world dictatorship. There is no way that the international community will see this as anything other than propaganda by murder. Hussein will be murdered for political gain. If there is a God…he has the list of victims. And George Bush’s list of victims is much longer than Husseins.
Once again, I’m ashamed of my country.
I feel exactly the same way. Some kangaroo court run by banana republicans will ensure no fair verdict or sentence will ever pass. There will always be some cloud of suspicion over the whole cheesy affair. The only way it would have been beyond reproach would be an international court, presided over by impartial jurists, with the accused able to mount a fair defense. None of those things happened.
I believe Saddam is guilty, however, he did not, in my eyes get a fair trial.
If the concerned focus too intensly, the the gotv action will suffer! Don’t lose focus.
gotv, gotv, gotv!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It won’t help the repugs.
Bush should stand trial for Fallujah.
for 600,000 lives lost.
So should America. For millions of lives lost. For an incalculable number of lives ruined. Not just in Iraq or the Middle East, but around the world.
The entire world.
INCLUDING America.
And not just for the last 6 years, either. At LEAST since Vietnam. More accurately, since the enslavement of millions of Africans and the genocide of the Native American population.
All Americans who did not throughout their adult entire lives stand up and say “NO!!!” to the ongoing atrocity that has been the American Empire should be tried and found guilty as well.
And you know what?
They…we…will be found guilty, and we will be sentenced as well.
And…the eventual punishments will fit the crimes.
They always do.
Hitler in his bunker, Germany in ruins…they always do.
Eventually.
Do you want to know how I know that all of this will eventually come to pass?
The prophet Martin Luther King Jr. told me so. (All-That-Exists have mercy upon his soul.)
He said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Yup.
The prophet Martin Luther King Jr. told me so.
The ever-rolling wheel of karma grinds exceedingly slowly in comparison with the relative brevity of human life.
But grind it does, and very finely.
So it goes.
Just as it’s ever been.
Do you want to avoid this sentencing? On whatever cosmic level it occurs? High OR low? (As above, so below…)
Continue to stand in opposition to what is happening.
In opposition to ALL who exploit others for their own short-term gain.
In opposition to all who do not realize that the bell tolls for every living being even as it only tolls for one.
Ratpugs, DemRats…the works.
Continue to hold their feet to the fire of justice.
To the fire of truth.
For the salvation of your eternal soul if for no other reason.
Peace.
It is NOT what’s for dinner.
Over and out…
AG
I was about to say something like this until I saw that you beat me to it.
No, Bush should be put on trial in the Hague, along with his enabler, Henry Kissinger (whom Hitchens in his better days, said was a mass murderer) and his doppelganger, Cheney.
I notice Ms. Rice has been strangely silent for several months now…
I think you have that backwards. Cheney should be put on trial in the Hague, with his sock puppet Bush. Trying Bush for war crimes, even though the buck legally stops with him, is like trying Charlie McCarthy for something Edgar Bergen did.
I agree completely with you. This country is waiting for the next Brittany Spears to come along, they are tired of Iraq and Saddam, and all that stuff happening somewhere else they’ll never visit.
I can’t see how this event means anthing to anyone in terms of some momentum to sway voters. Maybe a percentage of the Rethug base might get a charge over the hangings and reinforce the push-button vote for Thug candidates, but CheneyCo. is only preaching to the choir now, and this event doesn’t mean anything, IMO.
I’ll bet that they’re working overtime to figure a way to execute him before tuesday.
On television no less.
Keep the Iraqi civilians and our troops in your thoughts and prayers. This is going to spawn another wave of violence.
Good Morning everyone, should I have oatmeal or toast today?
What? Sunni’s angry? Shias shooting guns upward in glee? Huh?
What’s the difference? I should ask my congressperson if they can tell me what a Shia or Sunni is . . . Help!
you ‘spose Karl Rove will pull Osama out of his ass tomorrow?
It is hard to imagine a more repulsive visual image. EEEEEUW.
Make no mistake, I think Saddam is repugnant, evil and guilty of many, many things, and if anyone deserves state-sanctioned death for something they’ve done in this life, it would be him.
But I look at this verdict and I just feel . . . nothing. It’s like it’s just another episode in a long sordid sorry soap opera. It certainly doesn’t make me feel any kind of warm fuzzies toward the administration, which is no doubt what it’s meant to do.
How typical of this administration to turn to death and vengeance in order to rouse voters. Count on Bush and his Buddies to take the low road. Rove’s Law: Feed ’em on hate, fear, bigotry, death, and greed and they’ll follow you anywhere.
I’m not sure it will work all that well, at least in part because a death sentence in America just means the start of a lengthy process of appeals. Nobody is going to believe he’s dead until they trot out the pictures (which I wouldn’t be surprised would be yet another violation of the Geneva Conventions).
We and our puppets have no right to charge Hussein with anything. What he did, he did on our buck. Only a legitimate Iraqi regime can have the right to try him in Iraq. As for us: not only should the neocon junta be carged with crimes against humanity and crimes against the US but the media heads who knowingly perpetrated the lies that led us there and repeating the lies about Iran must be charged as well.
Meanwhile, the prospects for our next administration don’t look all that great.
is remind the American people that:
I doubt we’ll ever see Bush/Cheney brought up on war crimes — Cheney will have a convenient “heart incident”, and be spirited out of the country, while Bush will probably have some sort of mental collapse brought about by renewed drug/alcohol use and spend the rest of his days in some cushy hospital, while America pays the debt load of their heartless insanity.
I only hope that Wednesday morning I’ll have a reason to find that the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed not an onrushing train…
Before any sentence is carried out concerning Saddam, I only hope his relationship with the US, which I understand was at some point ,quite cozy, is well documented enough to show the world, the hypocrisey of this administration`s involvement in his “victor`s trial”. I think the “appeal” will be just as high jumpimg as his kangaroo trial was, & Saddam`s execution will be proclaimed as “The world is safer now!! But not completely safe.” Those who say it will be another stain on the US if Saddam`s exection is carried out are vocalizing a gross understatement.
It will be the stench of the overflowing diaper that congress was not willing to change, when it was obvious to many, the baby chimp had been fed way too much crap, which he constantly regurgitated onto his pedestal [read base] to help get him re-elected in 2004 along with help from the NYT`s which is now jumping on the wagon of “I told you so`s”.
No it will not be a stain. It will be a stench. The stench of death, the Whiskey Pete in Faluja, the rape & torching of little 14 yr old girls, the depleted uranium munitions the cluster bombs sold to Israel, the rotting bodies floating in the Tigris. The smell will always be there Always. There will be many pages in the history books describing the stench & it`s provenance. It will be much, much more than a comma.