Saddam is a POW

[Lancer]

My prediction...

Johnny Cochran will get him off, say several hundred thousand murder raps. He will then go up the river for tax evasion when they get the goods on him after putting the squeeze on his shifty weasle accountant...

[Patroklos]

The civil suit will catch him

He will probobly get a better trial than the Nazis. Won't have any uniformed Soviet generals sitting on this one. Of course in that case it might have helped, having committed so many was crimes themselves the defendants couldn't BS them. I can just see one jumping up from the bench pointing while shouting "B****** Goering, I knew every detail of what went on at my gulags.... wait that came out wrong, errrrr strike that from the record."

[yaroslav]

I hope he will get a fair trial, and then get a life imprisionemnt in any european or american prision.

Although you can have a problem with that trials... IIRC, the trial of Milosevic haven't damaged his popularity, but raised it

BTW, Patroklos, were the gulags knew by the time Numbereg's trials took place?

[mrmitchell]

Why he should be trialed:

It's what civilized nations do. Besides, are you afraid you can't give enough evidence to convict him or something?

Why he shouldn't get death:

What does killing him solve? We lose a key intelligence source, and in addition he doesn't have to have any long woeful prison sentence in which to regret his crimes. He just gets off easy with a quick death.

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Why he should be trialed:

It's what civilized nations do. Besides, are you afraid you can't give enough evidence to convict him or something?

I don't know it that is about me, but if so, that's my answer

I firmly believe he should get a fair trial, and I hope so. However, with the Milosevic trial at the Haya and they way Milosevic is defeding himself, he appears to have recovered some of his supporters in Yugoslavia. I'm afraid that a public trial could increment the way some people see that evildoer, bloodthirsty Saddam as a "martyr" or something the like.

just my humble opinion.

[mrmitchell]

I'm afraid that a public trial could increment the way some people see that evildoer, bloodthirsty Saddam as a "martyr" or something the like.

Unfortunately, in a Democracy, even an evil man can rise to power if he's supported.

Then again, the masses are supposed to be smart enough to prevent that.

Considering how many Iraqis Saddam has killed, I don't think it will be likely to vote for the same man that killed your brother and jailed your mom.

[Chemical Ollie]

Send him on the space shuttle... or the Moon base, or the March base or whatever. Or let him take a space walk naked. Just don't send him to a Swedish prison.


But showing him off to the other prisoners at Gitmo would probably loose some thounges. This is one of the few cases where I expect that exceptions from the Geneva convention apply. Just treat the bastard bad, in any way possible.

[Patroklos]

Not sure if you meant where the Gulags were new, or if we knew about them.

1.) Gulags or some varient were well established by WWII.

2.) We knew they had an unwholsome place to retire poeple. I am not sure if we knew exacly what they were, we really still don't.

[Chemical Ollie]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Patroklos

1.) Gulags or some varient were well established by WWII.

No, they were established already in the late 30'ies. I don't have a link, but there should be plenty of evidence if you take a look around on the topic of "Stalin's political cleansings".

[Patroklos]

ummmmm... is not the late 30s before WWII???

The gulag system in Siberia were established in the late thirties. However, there was a massive system of places to hold political prisoners well before that ("varient"), in fact from the moment the Soviet Union started.

They just made it more "efficient" witht he gulags proper.

[Uncle Sparky]

ooooooo... I hope they broadcast the trail ! Live on Court TV :


prosecuting attorney : Does Iraq now have or has it ever had weapons of mass destruction ?

Saddam : We did. but we used them all on the Iranians at the request of Reagan.

attorney : Where did you get the weapons from ?

Saddam : The US. Donald Rumsfeld delivered them personally.

***********************

attorney : Was the us aware of what you were doing to your own people - the Kurds in the north and the "marsh Arabs" in the south ?

Saddam : Yes. The CIA specifically asked us to let them know how effective the various poison gasses we has acquired from them were.


************************

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

Unfortunately, in a Democracy, even an evil man can rise to power if he's supported.

Then again, the masses are supposed to be smart enough to prevent that.

Considering how many Iraqis Saddam has killed, I don't think it will be likely to vote for the same man that killed your brother and jailed your mom.

I hope so, but you can't be sure...

Charles Taylor was elected democratically, even when he was the man who killed many of the Liberian citiziens

I don't think Saddam could be elected after the trials (or I hope so), but I fear the image could be more the image of a martyr than anything else, at least for some people, specially in other arab countries.

That doesn't mean that I don't want a trial, I want a trial, but we must know what could be the outcome of such a trial.

--------------

BTW, I'm pretty sure that the gulas are pre-Nurember: the nobel prize Solzhenitsyn was imprisioned in one before the end of the WWII, and in his book, IIRC, he says something about gulags in the of the 20's.

But I wonder if that was public knolewged in the West by 1945.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by yaroslav
I hope he will get a fair trial, and then get a life imprisionemnt in any european or american prision.

The Iraqis get him.

[yaroslav]

Good point. But I wonder if he will be safe in a Iraqui prision.

[DinoDoc]

I find myself trying to care about that but I'm just not able to do so.