Give me a break Richard. Sure, this is well timed. However, how about the Foley and Haggard scandals that have mysteriously erupted in the past month.

I wondered the same thing (re. Foley and Haggard) but not in connection to this. There's all sorts of shit that shakes loose in the weeks running up to a U.S. election, and now that they're on an election cycle of one sort or anyother 365 days of the year, this sort of sleeze has become the topic of backroom bartering just like the small- print caveats embedded in legislation or whether a nominee is given a rough ride by the selection committee. I doubt one drugged-out hustler's story would have gotten very far unless certain people wanted it to. The Harrard story got help from on high.

It's still appalling how hypocritical the Right is being about this though. Check out this number served up by Klinghofer of NRO:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGZkYTBiZTI3MDkyMGE2ZjNjNTY4NjgyZmVkNDdmYjM=

That kind of casuistry takes real talent. I don't really care about gay marriage, but the nub of this argument is that gay people need to be stigmatized and kept down because heteros are too flighty and weak-willed otherwise to resist temptation. Good grief.

What about Frum?

Yeah, I voiced my opinion about him (Frum) on these threads a while ago (I do occasionally go after conservatives, you know). Frum is so derivative it's painful. He's not a thinker, he's an operative, and one with a talent for guttersniping, which is why he will never attain the stature of a conservative like, say, William Buckley (who was always courteous, consistent and - even in anger - witty with his opponents). The irony is that the only prominent conservative man of affairs who seems to be emerging as someone who may one day inherit Buckley's mantle is Andrew Sullivan. There are similarities. Notice how riled the theocons and neocons are getting over Sullivan's new book. Sullivans a real target for them now.

Frum totally turned me off with his downright nasty and uncouth public commentary during the Clinton-Lewinsky tempest, and I've never had any time for him since.

I wouldn't mind if they hang Saddam - as long as they hang his old buddy Rumsfeld along side him... Add the war criminals B-liar and Bush and you could make it a swinging' quartet!

Frum has an 'interesting' piece on the Haggart thing in NRO - I think he's gone completely loony…lost it entirely as an honest man and sane critic.

Sullivan's book is good and he's doing a great job of selling it too. I think he kind of likes his new role as a reluctant democrat.

From the thinking press down south you get the feeling a lot of nominal Bush supporters have finally seen the light.

This could be a real rout.

Anarcho, you may get your wish.

I just hope they don't stop the trials in Iraq now; if there's any future for that country (as a unit) it has to come from their learning about a necessary commitment to justice - and its forms and not just bullets and nooses. Not that they’d learn anything from the White House on that file.

Peter Galbraith says Iraq will have to be split into 3 anyway so maybe it won't matter much in the end.

Without the oil, this would be the best thing to do. However, all of the oil is in Kurd country. Black oil is the root to all the conflict, so this is not an option. The Kurds are the smallest ethnic group and will be ransacked by their islamic neighbors.

I hope the GOP falls in their face this election. The problem is that they are strong in the south, but weak everywhere else. The South is over-represented by the evangelical right and will control that party even more than they do. This is not the best thing for the country.

Americans need the McCain, Bloomberg, King, Specter side of the party to gain control. Right now, it is being held hostage by the influential and more importantly, well organized evangelical machine.

While I am all for spirtuality - these people are single issue politicians.

This is an interesting precedent. Sadam is to be put to death for killing people while the recognized leader of a sovereign nation. How many other national leaders might that apply to? Anyone in North America, for example?

I thought that avoiding this sort of precedent was the big reason the US eschews the world court. It seems supporting this execution could come back to bite someone.

"It seems supporting this execution could come back to bite someone."

I live in hope...

Hanging Saddam will only push the flames higher.

Something more like the South African courts of reconciliation is needed.

With Saddam dead, niether he nor his supporters will ever come to see the faces of his victims nor their families.

The sectarian violence will resume a new cycle all over.

Good point murdock!

Capitalism:
Check David Frum's Diary at National Review Online (NRO) if you reaally want to know about who and what he is.

Of course it is well times and seems to be working according to the news I have seen on CNN and BBC World. The Republicans are closing the gap and I would not be surprised if they retained control of both the Senate and Congress.

Bush and the rest of his crime family are no better.

Saddam should of been tried at the Hague along with Bush et al etc.

I do not approve of the death penalty period and this circle jerk of a trial proves it. Yes Saddam was "evil" (as is Bush) but his fate was sealed as soon as he was caught and any sane person could see there was no way he was going to get a fair trial in Iraq.

Isn't Fair Trials supposedly one of the backbones of a democracy?

no1important wrote:

Yes, and a vital part of 'trials' is habeaus corpus.

Sadly the US has dispensed with this also...

Since it was a primarily US led courtroom, it should come as no surprise that the 'Iraqi system' used was approved of by the new praetorian guard, ahem, I mean the Homeland Security, Justice Division.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15220450/

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-habeas28sep28,0,3456512.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

So counting on a 'fair trial' from this crew is akin to asking for fair tax treatment from the Canadian Government.

Cheers

This should be required reading for all Canadians:
walrusmagazine.com/print/politics-stephen-harper-and-the-theocons

should read and-the-theocons/ (but it works as is)

Ah the wonderful Sleight of Hand! Does the dog wag the tail or the tail the dog? It makes you feel real wonderful in side when your leaders time world changing political events for their own purposes.

Speaking of Sleight of Hand, anyone notice that Harper is timing the debate on Gay marriage a week after the Liberal Leadership campaign. And three weeks before Christmas. You got to love predictable timing!

No, it is not. Much of it is in Tikrit, Saadam's hometown and Sunni country.

Saadam was an uber scumbag. He deserves what he gets and I am one who is opposed to the death penalty.

working man
he needs to stand trial on all the other charges before anything happens to him...this trial was just the beginning.

When a real trial is complete and judgement is made, for example; the convicted person or persons of murder one in my viewpoint should be put on death row. I believe in capital punishment if no errors have been made in the judgement evaluation. I would think that in the past, various so called convictions have put some inoccent people on death row. The question is,is Saadam guilty of murder? or multple murders? or has some other person killed for him and he did not pull the trigger?

Terri Schiavo 25 Mar,05 was denied food and water by US District Judge James whittemore in Tampa. After this poor Lady was in a home for 15 years some Judge made Judgement based on a sick Lady that she should be put on death row by granting her NO food or water until dead. No one can convince me that President Bush did not have the power to let this poor Lady have water and food. I am sure the First Lady would agree with me.

pure
Are you aware of the results of the post mortem medical examination that was done on Terry Schiavo's body?

President Bush did his best to sustain the existence of her vegetative form of life; thank God the courts had enough chutzpah to stop his folly and the American system of government is moderated by an 'independent' judiciary and a series of checks an balances.

One can only be thankful that the US Supreme Court, in that case at least, proved the system still works…sometimes.

Private family decisions of a difficult and heart-rending nature should be left as private matters. Circuses are mainly for children and entertainment, the Schiavo farce was a circus macabre. To bring it up in this connection is equally bizarre.

Alc, what Saadam did paled in comparison. How about mass murder by poison gas? How about taking dissidents into the town square, cutting their tongues out, chopping a hand off and the slitting their troats.

Have a look at what Saadam did during the 1979 Ba'ath Congress, where he took exactly half the delegates, chosen at random, out of the hall and had them shot. He smoked a cigar the whole time.

working man,
What....are you talking about?

If you'd read the comments, I was responding to pure's evocation of the Schiavo case for God's knows what reason.

I happen not to agree with the death penalty, that's my personal ethical response. Countries, like Iraq and the United States, China and a few others still do practice what I see as a form of barbarity that has much to do with revenge and little to do with justice.

That being said, my point was simply that the victims of the rest of Saddam's crimes (the ones you’re talking about in fact) deserve their day in court too. If you take the time to actually do a little research you'd understand that this is just the first (and one of the least horrific) of the crimes of which he has been accused. All of that material needs to be brought forward and validated in open court.

In the end, only rigorous adherence to legal principles and rules of evidence can make any criminal case. If Iraq pretends to the status of a nation ruled by law, in my opinion it would be a terrible mistake not to follow the process through to its dismal end. It is the judicial equivalent of landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declaring mission accomplished to hang him now.

If Saddam is going to be executed, he ought to be convicted of all his crimes first, don't you think?

Saddam should be tortured before hanged. . . okay, deliberate attempt to be inflammatory - sorry.

He is an evil man who knows too much. It's also obvious that he doesn't believe that he will actually be executed, otherwise, he'd be singing like a bird on the stand ratting-out the people who propped him up after Desert Storm. Saddam is a canny survivor - I don't think that he's sung his last song yet - he's gotta have some sort of ace up his sleeve.

Like where the WMD's are hidden. . .

Saddam should hang publicly and soon. It will remove a boogyman from the Iraqi mind. It will be a way to say, you can’t go back, now you must go forward. Yes it would be nice for him to face more trials, but I don’t think it will be worth it in the long run. As much as I dislike the man, I would not want him tortured, a quick a inglorious end to someone that ended to many lives. Place his body in an unmarked grave somewhere unknown to the people.

Working man:
And Bush was smiling and still is over Carlyle's fortunes of war. With Saddam gone, the public won't know what the CIA knows and isn't saying concerning Saddam and the U.S. empire's relationship going on 30 years.

And for the most part, its a matter of record for those who wish to look. Saddam was backed by the U.S. with Iraq's war against Iran for years. He was U.S.A. hand picked as leader of Iraq for precisely this task.

When seen as losing the international hearts and minds with Saddam's treatment of the Kurds (which some confuse as his own people... and some do not) along with his invasion of Kuwait... the U.S. was there to fully capitalize with the promotion of the interests of a new regime in Iraq that would embrace the interests of "globalization" and "free market economies" which is the prelude, of course, to owning Iraq's resources on paper in the markets as they do here in Canada.

How convenient it is for Saddam to be tried by an american appointed court of which the death sentence is highly encouraged. As mentioned, Saddam is still worth more dead than alive in determining the motives he had with crimes committed against his people and people of other nations. What harm can this old man do in prison? What power does this man still have in his country or anywhere else? Does this man pose a danger to anyone other than the U.S. concerning his relationship with the U.S. over the last 30 years? Think about it.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/helms.html

From http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

US Army War College: NO PROOF SADDAM GASSED THE KURDS!

Memo to Jess Helms from InfoTimes. Note excerpt from US Army War College report that no evidence exists to support US claims that Iraq used gas on the Kurds.

I continue to make inquiry into the situation in Iraq, as it is likely to brew up into another crisis one of these days when the US Army War College has no choice but to conclude that Iraq is not hiding any weapons of mass destruction -- or if they are, they are so well hidden that nobody is going to find them. As you know, I'm sure, the warhawks in the United States will continue to insist that the embargo remain in place no matter what, and there will be assertions from around the world that we have not been acting in good faith. As you also know, I believe there are serious questions regarding our behavior toward Iraq that go back further. You would agree, I think, that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. The more I read of the events of the period, the more I believe history will record that the Gulf War was unnecessary, perhaps even that Saddam Hussein was willing to retreat back to his borders, but our government decided we preferred the war to the status quo ante.

Colin
Why would you support an immediate execution? Haven't you learned anything about the process that Nuremburg initiated?

If he isn't tried on these charges, if people aren't given a chance to testify in open court the whole sordid mess will go down in history as simply another example of US sponsored exceptionalism. Rules are rules; justice doesn’t have a short course. The Americans should have shot him in his hidey-hole if they weren’t serious about their obligations in this matter.

If Iraq is to have future as a democracy where the 'rule of law' means ANYTHING then now is not the time start erecting the gallows before the work of the courts are done.

Revenge is better eaten cold anyway.

You misunderstand me, after the review of his sentance which is required and that all things are found to be in order, then the sentance should be carried out swiftly and delayed so he can be charged and tried on other counts. A "truth commission" simalar to South Africa might be a better way to deal with those issues.

Colin
I understand you quite clearly and I totally disagree.

Saddam Hussein, in this trial, has been convicted of one particular act of murder toward, I believe, 140-odd victims.

Are you seriously suggesting that the rest of his crimes, and the people with whom he worked in order to commit them are not sufficiently important to follow to their just conclusion?

The suggestion that the nascent Iraqi justice system should knuckle under to the arm-twisting of an American godfather whose own arms are incarnadine to the elbows is a much more likely motive for an early ‘execution’. Those persons (among whom apparently you too Colin) who do not wish for ‘all the facts’ of those other multitudinous murders to come out share in a central desire to have Saddam Hussein hung high and silent and as quickly as possible before he implicates any one else. As they said in the old west, dead men don’t talk.

Would it have been enough, had Hitler survived the bunker, to execute him and let the rest of the Nuremberg defendants to a truth and reconciliation commission?

I think you need to check your temperature. This is nothing like the South African example and if Saddam's crimes and complicity do not come out in open court there may never be a true nation built on the principles of law and equity in Iraq. This, far more than the American occupation that is a complete disaster, is the key to the country's future. If it doesn't come out in court, it will be subsumed into another generation of internecine hatred and killing, in my opinion.

I am surprised at your lack of imagination. The easy thing is to hang him now. It is also the WRONG thing.

alcibiades,
In view of your comments I take it you do have the medical results on this Lady and you would deny her food and water after she has been in a home for 15 years. In one of your notes you indicated you are not in favour of the death penalty. So why would you have this Lady on death row by not feeding her after 15 years of feeding her. Are you a Criminal Lawyer or a Judge?

I didn't put her on death row. She was a human body in a vegetative state - unable to live without outside intervention. Her legal guardian made a perfectly legal personal decision to disconnect the tube that kept her alive. The kind of thing that happens thousands of times every month in hospitals and nursing homes all across North America. It is sad, but it is a unavoidable part of the human condition - we all will die. I hope if I am ever in such a situation my loved ones will do the same and let me go.

The best medical advice available was brought to bear on his decision because of political interference and the decision was supported through every level of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

What do you not understand about leaving these decisions in the hands of the people who have the 'right' and the responsibility to make them.

No one put Terry Schiavo on death row. She died because she no longer was a sentient human being with the will and ability to live. Letting her die was the most humane aspect of that whole pathetic and compromised situation.

Thank God the judiciary did not buckle to the selfishness and idiocy of a bunch of bible-thumping hypocrites like the President of the United States.

Private personal decisions should be made without the interference of well-meaning busy bodies who see such things as a means to make a far more selfish and self-centered point. They go home to their own beds at night - secure in the rationale of their own 'goodness' and entirely free of the really difficult decisions.

What this possibly has to do with Saddam Hussein would be my question to you?

I don't actually believe in the death penalty by the way. The state should never take the role of meting out revenge - which is all the death penalty is. It should only be concerned with justice and the safety of the public.

The question of what Hussein might have up his sleeve is certainly interesting. If I were to guess, I'd say he could have tapes of his conversations with Bush the Father dating from the 80s and 90s.

Or of other American functionaries doing the actual deals for the weapons of mass destruction they were so sure he had because they had supplied them themselves.

He seems canny enough to have made such tapes. But maybe he no longer has them. There was a box in posession of his sons at their killing with $700Billion in it. That might explain that. If they sold the old man's evidence, then were killed to get the payoff back. It does seem to be the way they operate.

Sorry, that should read $700Million. Three quarters of a Billion.

Alcibiades, thank you for your humane efforts here. It seems so easy to find people who are eager to applaud the Saddam trial ending - supposedly giving us all a piece of mind that Saddam won't do anymore harm - even those who are very liberal-minded. It takes more balls to voice out against Hussein's execution than it is to voice out against Bush & Co's blunders.

I am glad to say I am a Christian by faith and not religion. There is too endless a list of vengeful Christian "crusades" trying to stand up for what is seen as a Good-VS-Evil situation. Someone does something horribly wrong, use "an eye for an eye" method to justify punishment, be hailed for bringing about justice. Very Old Testament with none of the "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" teachings. This method of justice has been used for thousands of years, and the Bush administration are using the same tactics.

I feel extremely disheartened that such educated societies and people are still naive enough to think in such black and white, or at least be fooled into such absolutes. We all know the American government is a flawed superpower bureaucracy that has led disastrous wars in the past. They have indirectly killed innumerous amounts of lives during the Vietnam war, putting innocent lives at risk even in times of forewarning. Can they be trusted to lead us into another just war? How could we believe Iraq, a defeated nation still trying to rebuild its disrepaired state, could pose more of a threat than North Korea? Did we not see a vengeful son of the Gulf War president? Or the oil-hungry committee backing the war? Surely such suspicious minds shouldn't be able to avoid war crime charges just because they are after an "evil" man. Surely we can't prove Bush is a good man because he goes to church every Sunday.

The sad thing is the Bush administration can paint Saddam how they want as fact because of this trial. This "victory" will only make Saddam to be an absolute evil in a lot of people's eyes, despite a lack of testimonies on all the things he has (or has not) done in the other charges. And it is all thanks to a timely verdict (they actually made the verdict back in, I think, August) from a courtroom too quick to judge and too impatient to listen.

Corporal punishment is outdated, overtly harsh, very flawed and highly unnecessary. The second you wrongfully execute someone is the day the system fails, and corporal punishment failed a long time ago. We cannot play god with people's lives, nor do I believe murderers should suffer the same malice their victims did.

Er, just war should be in quotations.

alcibiades,
If Terri schiavo was that bad health wise, meaning she would never get well again, then DON NOT DEPRIVE HER OF WATER AND FOOD but do what is normally done such as a shot of some form of drugs so she does not suffer from the lack of water and food.
* Saddam Hussein is on the same page as George Bush, why? just take one look at all of the families that Bush has messed up as a result of a senseless war.
* Now, if Bush had stayed on track with killing bin Laden and company then he would have finished his promise to the people.

Is the Iraq War based on 9 Eleven? or does President Bush (just for the fun of it) like to hang posters on poles that read WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE it doesn't matter as long as someone dies. Bush was asked if he himself would kill Bin Ladin and he stated if he had a 22 calibre rifle and saw bin ladin that he would kill him.
* As the writer of this message to this day I do not believe that Bush acted in good faith for his people as the President of the USA and also convinced other countries to attack IRAQ instead of Bin Ladin and company.

Alcibiades

Part of me would like to see him stand on trial for everything he has done and then thrown into a box with the door welded shut and cut off from all human contact (with food and water) for the rest of his life. However alive he poses a threat and a rallying cry for his supporters. He has a history of surviving the odds and coming back, so Iraqis will never be able to move out from under his shadow until they know he is dead. He has had a long time to cultivate a fear and dread of him into the Iraq conscience.

He has been sentenced and when the review is done and if it concurs with the verdict, then he should be executed asap. A commission should be established on the SA model to investigate and make broadly known what atrocities he committed. Most of the high ranking staff should be charged for crimes they committed, but at a certain point they will have to fully adopt the SA model and move forward even if it mean not everyone is charged with crimes they committed (no I don’t like it either, but it may mean a quicker peace). I am not quite sure how any “US pressure” to have him executed would benefit the Bush administration, while Saddam no doubt has lots of dirt on a lot of people, I suspect his quick demise will be celebrated quietly in Paris, Beijing, Moscow and the UN headquarters more so than in Washington.

While I understand and approve of your desire to build the new Iraq on a strong Justice system, I don’t think keeping him around for a long time will serve that purpose and will have a negative effect instead. The SA model and Chilean approach were not perfect, but worked to get the countries functioning and they were in much better shape than Iraq.

Nevertheless, Colin, you've also completely skated over the other half of this problem. Many of the crimes Saddam would be tried for now took place in the 1980s and earlier.

I can't help but think that the people who assisted him then - including, I think, both the new and the recently fired Secretaries of Defence of the United States of America, among others are just not that interested in Justice for Saddam. I suspect they'll be equally chary about ‘truth’ commissions too.

Surely, you didn't need to have me spell it out for you. Keep him alive. I think he has tales to tell and the experience of actually having an operating justice system is a great resource for a country trying to remake itself.

The Chilean example came so long after the fact that it was almost useless and the South African situation is distinguishable for other, quite obvious, reasons.

You hope to keep him alive in the hopes that he embarasses the US government and that is likely the only real reason I can see from your posts, you seem to ignore the effect that a living Saddam will have on the population in Iraq. Anyways have a good Rememberance day.

He should not hang because he is himself the best evidence of many of the crimes committed during his regime. hanging him will be destroying that evidence.

Since it would stretch credulity beyond it's breaking point to maintain that he had no accomplices in any of the crimes he has yet to answer for, all the evidence must be preserved in order to have any hope of justice for those crimes. Hanging him would be only a tiny part of the justice these crimes cry out for.

Certainly his accomplices will be comforted by his death. Who, for example, provided the illegal poison gas he used to murder thousands of Kurds? Who provided the means of delivering it? Would justice demand that those people also answer?

How will you discover them when Hussein is dead?

Why would you say that Colin? I thought you cared about the rule of law and weren't into vindictiveness. The only hope for peace and justice in Iraq will come from a thorough airing of the regime's dirty linen.

Dead men don't talk and hanging all Iraq's problems on a hanged man won't work either.

I have no illusions, the Americans with skeletons in their closet are going to find lots of ways to protect themselves.

Both stories need to come out and Saddam shouldn't be executed until they do.

Arguing the contrary is just a waste of time. You can't serve both justice and revenge at the same time - justice has always to be served first.