Saddam Hussein executed

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad at sunrise this morning. Television footage showing the moments before his execution has been released. The pictures show masked men placing a noose around his neck. According to unconfirmed reports, just before his execution the 69-year-old former dictator was given a red card signed by the justice minister. This is symbolic because opponents of Saddam Hussein received red cards before they were executed. The Iraqi government wanted the execution to take place before the start of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, which begins today.

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death on 5 November by a special Iraqi tribunal for the massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982. The massacre was carried out to avenge an attempt to assassinate the dictator. An appeals court upheld the sentence on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the former leader would be buried in Iraq, but he declined to say where. One of Saddam Hussein's lawyers had earlier said he would be buried abroad.

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1979 until 2003. He was driven from power in April 2003 after the US invasion of Iraq and was discovered by US troops in an underground hideout the following December.

The former dictator was brought before a special Iraqi tribunal on 1 July 2004. The first trial against him and other representatives of his regime began in October 2005. The proceedings were chaotic: three lawyers were killed and the presiding judge had to be replaced.

The organisation Human Rights Watch said the trial was flawed and a poor example of justice. It said Iraq had missed an important opportunity to demonstrate the fairness and credibility of its legal system.

Washington praised the trial, saying that Saddam Hussein received legal rights his people had been denied.

(Rnw.nl)

The option I would prefer isn't there. But reading through his charges, they should maybe hang him once for each of the people that were slain at his insistence? That being said, let the punishment suit the crime. An eye for an eye is how I believe the passage goes, and as far as I can tell, justice was served.

I choose "He may have deserved to die, but no one has the right to sentence another human being to death." BUT I think he needed more trails. :S
This was just one trail for one crime and he did a lot more than just one.

I believe that being sentence to death is a low penalty for any crime.
Even his crimes...
What I mean is: I rather being sentence to death than sitting behind bars for several years.

But that is just my opinion.

I am of the same opinion. They shoulda just holed him up for years. The display covered by the media was another horrible thing, it was like a circus show with countdowns etc. All this around the christmas season of goodwill. I don't pretend to know what people went through under his regime and I don't deny he did terrible things. But some part of me doesn't like seeing anyone killed one way or the other.

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#009999">I kind of felt exactly like this, with all the chritsmas cheer, the hanging felt hollow, and empty, like it should not have taken place. All I saw was an old beaten man having his life taken away. Basically Iraq is and always will be a third world barbaric country because of things like this. Not sure if it was the best solution or not, weather it will decrease or increase killings. Don't know and don't care, just know it felt wrong.</font>

I, too, picked the second option. You can't go around killing people just because they deserve death. Not that I didn't expect him to be killed. Ex-dictators tend to die, be it by assassination or execution.

Rest in Peace, Saddam. Those who live by politics die by politics.

<font color=8fbc8f>I fully support the death penalty.

Some people are correct. Others do not have the right to sentence other human beings to death. With that said. I fully support the death penalty. Any smuck that kills another human by means of assault without cause has 'in my eyes' signed his own death warrant, and should face death!

Westerners do not grasp the ways of the Middle Easterners, and therefore, by having his execution served at this time of year, is the most 'Holiest Cleansing' for all of the people.

We have evolved into a materialistic people, and have lost sight of the ways of others. If not for the media, we would have forgotten about everything outside of our own "little paradise"!

Death may be too easy, but it is cheaper than long term incarceration, and there are no worries about an escape, or follow-on atrocities from within!

Just my [img]graemlins/2cents.gif[/img] </font>

Felix, I realise what I say will probably have no effect on your views concerning this issue but I feel I should stand up against Capital punishment just as you have defended it.

In my opinion execution is, in simplest terms, state-sanctioned killing, and it devalues the respect we place on human life; how can we say that killing is wrong if we sanction killing criminals? Furthermore - and I know this does not apply to Saddam Hussein - the whole principle is outweighed by the proven risk of executing innocent people. 23 innocent people were executed in the USA in the 20th century. The avoidable killing of an innocent person can never be justified, in any circumstances.

Once more, I am just giving my opinion rather than attempting to deny or invalidate yours.

[ 12-31-2006, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: Szass-Tam ]

<font color=8fbc8f>That my friend, makes us equals as humans.</font>

A blood debt must be paid in blood, he has killed people, he can expect the same to happen to him.

Though I fully supported death penalty, I felt strange as to why he was executed on the eve of a muslim celebration.

Yeah well...everything that ever happens, seems somehow inconvenient for muslims, isn't it ? We can't go here, because it's a holy city, we can't go there because it's sacred grounds, and so forth and forth and forth...

The death sentence is barbaric.

The sad news is not Saddams murder but that 3000 of the USA best have now died. :(

But then they can come here, rape and bomb!

[ 01-02-2007, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: Bithron ]

Unfair trial and his death lets too many American, British and other Western politicians/military officers off the hook for their participation in his atrocities.

It's essentially nothing to do with justice, it's about as bad as the decapitation videos, it's just a propaganda murder. A killing for publicity and to kill your opponent's will to fight.

The death sentence is acceptable in some cases, but that's an entirely different subject.

And please, can we cut out the anti-Islam comments, here? I should like to think this place was free from bigotry. Comparing the Muslim fanatics that attack the West to Islam in general is like saying that the Unabomber is the way everyone from the West is, or Fred Phelps. Utterly ridiculous.

<font color=8fbc8f>So true! However, Western society, and the media in particular is what allows these semantics to be garnered. I'm sure there are very few people here who has a person in another country from a different background, race, and ethnicity that they communicate with. Ahmed, Ramul, and Ariel are the exception for a few of us, but they and I share some life events that can only be seen through the eyes of the beholder, and told from the heart, and not the ego! ~Thou I'm a military transplant here, I'm considered just 'a-good-ole-boy' by association of where I have chosen to plant my trees, and not for who I am in reality!</font>

I may as well admit I don't know many people from the Middle East who are in the Middle East, or even many people from other countries(Excepting North American and Australia.).

But in my experience with immigrants, just here in Denmark, I find that people from other ethnicities are exactly the same as the rest of us. There are good people, there are bad people, smart people and dumb people, all the facets of life that you're likely to find in someone with blonde hair and blue eyes, you're likely to find in someone with the name Ahmed, Raoul, Ivan or [Insert generic Indian, African and Asian names here.].

The media may mislead us, but we have some influence over how much we allow ourselves to be misled.

I guess the problem is that, across the board, the minority of individuals are speaking for the majority. You see this philosophy taking hold in the men's movement. I'm sure there are Muslims who are doing the same thing... reclaiming their religion and identities... but they need to kick up the volume a bit.

That's hardly an excuse only to recognize the minority, though. It's like demanding evidence of non-existence, people don't have to prove that they're good people, until someone fucks up, you have to assume that they're a decent person.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Sure, it would make things easier, but people still have to open up their damn brains for once and think. In today's Western society there's no damn excuse for not doing some research or being at least mildly educated.

Oh, I absolutely agree. I just think it's important to realize why the "They demand respect for their religion, but they're the ones bombing and executing people" folks feel the way they do.

Alas, that is how wars work. The winner writes in the history books that the loser was an evil murdering bastard who deserved to die for his terrible acts, and the loser is in no position to object because the loser is dead. The winner then claims that the war was the loser's fault in the first place, and the loser is directly to blame for the half a million civilian casualties of the operation.

Dammit, I opened this thinking someone had finally killed Bush.

Timber, the power to kill Bush has always been yours. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

Good riddance. He should have died by torture and buried in pig's skin, but you can't have it all.

If we were torture him then we would have been no better than he was, and if we lose the moral high ground, then we lose any right we may have to intervene or interfere anywhere in the world, not to mention the horrific PR issue it would be.

Both from a pragmatic and an ethical viewpoint, it wouldn't be good. It would probably have been intensely satisfying to the ones afflicted by his horrible actions during his life, but in the end, it would've caused more trouble than it would have ended.

Looking back at that (illegal) footage filmed by one of his guards, i'd say he came out as the moral victor. He may be dead, but he died as a martyr to his people, holding a koran in his hand, and taunting his executioners. This is much more than he deserved really. Maybe it would have been best to have imprisoned him until the day he would have died of natural causes. His memory would have faded away eventually, now his followers will always remember the image of a proud man who was not afraid of death.

There's ONE thing that could maybe have made his followers knock it off. If they made him accept a bribe to go live out the rest of his life in the Bahamas or something. That would completely discredit him in the eyes of his cause. Unfortunately it would also mean he'd never pay for his crimes.

Compromises everywhere, too bad we can't have it all.

IIRC they did offer him exile as an option a few years back didn't they? He refused of course, and went into hiding. There's no way I could have watched that leaked video of his death...things like that disturb me when they are real.

The footage was rather bad, someone filmed it with his cellphone. When Saddam actually fell, you couldn't see a thing, it all happened too fast.

There's a version WITH all of the "good stuff" in it. But seriously, I find it disgusting that anyone would watch either. As I put it earlier: No better than the decapitation video. Men unfairly put to death as a propaganda statement.

And that, my friend, is why conflicts never end...

Sigh.

The footage was rather bad, someone filmed it with his cellphone. When Saddam actually fell, you couldn't see a thing, it all happened too fast. </font>[/QUOTE]Was there audio? The sound would make me cringe...*shiver*

yes, there was audio, you could hear the guards cheer for Sadr, the Shia leader, which was clearly to humiliate Saddam before he died, but he just stood there and replied something like "do you feel tough now ?" and "you'll burn in hell for this", then he started quoting some passages from the koran, and that's when he fell. The noise was chaotic when it happened, if i wouldn't know what was going on, the noise wouldn't make me any wiser either. :D

Anyway, the guard who filmed the whole thing, got arrested yesterday.

Yeah, 'twas like a *thump* sound...

Good thing they got whatever sadistic bastard filmed it. Anyone involved in taunting him should be locked up for life or handed over to the crowd.

Whatever Saddam might've done in life, he at least deserved a modicum of dignity when he died.

But it wasn't the filmer that taunted him, it was the "leader" of the execution team...

They all taunted him by cheering "Muqtada Muqtada Muqtada", it wasn't just one guy, it was the whole crew, with the exception of one guy who was heard saying "please show some respect, the man is about to die".

Btw....Muqtada is Muqtada Al Sadr, the Shia cleric.

See for yourself...

http://pandachute.com/videos/leaked_...ing_hung_video

What did they arrest him for?

What did they arrest him for? </font>[/QUOTE]I'm not sure what the charges are, but i'm sure they'll figure something out. Iraq is not exactly a nation with strict laws. :D