Saddam Hussein arrested part II

[GePap]

Literacy rates are probalby as High in Latin Americ as in Iraq, and many of those states are coming of much lighter dictatorships that Iraq, yet their new democracies are many times shaky. iraq has immense porblems both ethnic, religious, and nationalistic, and honestly it will take decades to make Iraq a working democracy that some people sell us. I don't know if we could have picked a worst place to experiement for democracy than it. Syria and Egypt would have been far better places to try first.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Bush Says Saddam Deserves to Be Executed
1 hour, 28 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) deserves the "ultimate penalty" but it will be up to the people of Iraq (news - web sites) to decide whether he should be executed, President Bush (news - web sites) said Tuesday.

The president also said that Iraqis are "capable of conducting the trial themselves."

Bush made his comments in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer.

The president, at a news conference on Monday, had said he had his own opinions about Saddam's fate but he declined to spell them out. He elaborated in the interview Tuesday, and the network released a partial transcript of his remarks.

"I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people," the president said. "I mean, he is a torturer, a murderer, they had rape rooms. This is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another."

Great, Bush continues to prove that he and Saddaam are cut from the same cloth.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by GePap
I don't see how it does anything to further either issue. Certainly it was important to put the past behind, but the rule of Sunni over Shia has been true since 1920-way before Saddam, . . .

Actually, it's been true since the mid-16th Century, when the Ottomans conquered the region from the Persians.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by monkspider
Great, Bush continues to prove that he and Saddaam are cut from the same cloth.

[Chemical Ollie]

According to Swedish news, the soldier who found Saddam was just about to throw a grenade down the spider hole to clear it once and for all. The same news said that was the common procedure for such situations. Is that really a wise tactic?

I can understand that it could be dangerous and time consuming to send a guy down the hole to have a look what's in there, and special surveillance equipment (like a camera on a pole) is not widely available. Still, it seems like another one of those "shoot first and ask the questions later" tactics that could eventually cost US the political defeat.

- Hey, we're 'Murcans. We examine things by blowing 'em up...

There's a long list of reasons why a HE grenade down a hole like that could be a big mistake:

1) A bunch of kids could be hiding there. If I was a kid, and enemy soldiers came to my house, kicked in the door, shouted angry commands in an unknown language and harrassed my parents, it would make perfect sense to run away and hide in a secret little cave.

2) The bad guys could have hidden a ton of high explosives down there. BOOOOMMMM!

3) Saddam could be hiding there. If the soldiers even bother to go down the hole and look after the explosion (which I doubt) all they have is a dead unknown person, quite likely messed up beyond recognition. Then he could be dead and no one would know. The search would go on forever.

4) Destroying private property for no obvious reason will not increase the support from the people in Iraq.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap
I don't see how it does anything to further either issue. Certainly it was important to put the past behind, but the rule of Sunni over Shia has been true since 1920-way before Saddam, and the issue of islams relation to temporal power is one that is present in the whole islamic world.

Under the Ottomans the Sunnis ran everything as well, so it's a lot longer than 80 years.

[Bosh]

No they didn't. They couldn't because there was no Iraq, just three separate provinces.

[Chilean Presidentâ„¢]

This appeared this morning in El Mercurio newspaper... sorry for the threadjack but I think is funny

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
Literacy rates are probalby as High in Latin Americ as in Iraq,

From the US Army Country Study of Iraq published in Jan. 2002 I found that the over all literacy rate in Iraq is 58% with 52% of the population having attended grade school, 12% having attended high school, and 2% having attended college.

There is no question that Iraq has educational, demographic, ethnic, and religious problems which will complicate things. Like Gepap I don't think things will change dramatically with in the next decade but I do think we will see a slow steady decrease in the number of attacks as the economy improves and as the influence of Saddam's loyalists slowly fades.

The big wild card is possible ethnic/religious violence. The Kurds would like their own country but most of them seem resigned to remaining part of Iraq just as the Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Syria are resigned to remaining part of those countries. The single biggest question is will the educated & relatively well off Sunni Arab minority accept their lesser role behind the poorly educated & economically impoverished Shi'a Arab majority?

[oedo]

Originally posted by Chilean President
This appeared this morning in El Mercurio newspaper... sorry for the threadjack but I think is funny

not remotely as funny as your avatar.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Actually, it's been true since the mid-16th Century, when the Ottomans conquered the region from the Persians.

The Ottomans were Sunni and there are numerous Shi'a shrines located in southern Iraq (mostly in Najif, Karbala, and Samarra) but until the 19th century most of the population was Sunni Arab. Prior to that time majority of the population was nomadic yet starting in 1813 the Ottoman government began a process to settle the nomads into towns and cities. The result was that the nomads settled and around the small market towns/shrine cities in southern Iraq and converted to the Shi'ism practiced there. The other great event motivating this was the Ottoman campaign to complete infastructure improvements throughout the empire. The Ottomans built roads for their army (but which helped commerce) and constructed canals which provided the water the shrine towns needed to grow to shrine cities as well as to irrigate the crops needed to power an agricultural economy.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by skywalker

Why roll your eyes? Murderers are murderers are murderers, no?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by monkspider
Why roll your eyes? Murderers are murderers are murderers, no?

Monkspider:
Even if you consider all victims of his two wars being directly Bush's fault, he still has massacred much less than Saddam.
And Bush isn't precisely using torture systematically (I don't call the torture of a fey people in Gitmo "systematical"), nor does he or his heirs rape on a whim.

[Boris Godunov]

So here's the real test of the WMD accusations. If Saddam had them, he would now have the best bargaining chip with the Bushistas:

"Ensure I'm not executed, whisk me away to a U.S. prison a la Noriega, and I'll tell you all about where they are/where we sent them/where we dumped them/etc."

This info is all Bush would need to seal his reelection so tightly that even Jesus, were he to show up and run as a Democrat, could not unseat him. Saddam has no reason to keep denying the accusations, if true--he's already in line for a old-fashioned head-loppin'.

Or, it could be Saddam has no such information, because the WMDs weren't there.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Boshko
No they didn't. They couldn't because there was no Iraq, just three separate provinces.

Don't be a smartass Boshko. In those three provinces the administration was largely left up to the Sunnis: specifically the Sunni Arabs, since as Oerdin mentioned, the Ottomans were Sunni as well, but not Arab.