It was fitting that Saddam head snapped off during the hanging.

Ed Laskie on July 3, 2009 at 5:17 AM

Saddam Hussein’s head remained fully attached to his body.

You might be thinking of his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, who was executed in January 2007, and who was decapitated by the hanging.

There are more than a billion Muslims, the idea that we will eliminate Islam is absolutely insane.

Terrye on July 3, 2009 at 7:31 AM

No, that idea is not insane at all, but certainly it is unrealistic, which is why nobody is proposing it. I mentioned it only to highlight that it is rather silly to fret about brutality while simultaneously encouraging Islam to thrive. Perhaps I should have been clearer and referred to the elimination of Islam from specific communities, eliminating it here and there and thus diminishing its scope and overall influence.

YI:

There are more than a billion Muslims, the idea that we will eliminate Islam is absolutely insane.

Terrye on July 3, 2009 at 7:31 AM

Eliminating Islam doesn’t mean mass genocide. Islam is so heavily based on certain locations and structures that should they be destroyed the whole religion would come to a halt.

There are more than a billion Muslims, the idea that we will eliminate Islam is absolutely insane.

Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. That gun was not a toy, it was the real thing.

You do not know what you are talking about. As far as a threat to the US, there are plenty of people out there right now that would tell you Iran is not a threat to the US, even with nukes. Saddam’s bluster and his threats to get even etc were every much as belligerent as anything the Iranians have done. Saddam actually killed Americans and tried to kill more.

As for Mekong…what has that got to do with this? I am sure there are thousands of people who supported the invasion of Iraq who have served as much or more as you. So don’t pull that chickenhawk crap with me.

You would have abandoned Bush in a heartbeat if he had gone into Iran. And for the same damn reasons you are yammering about here. You are just a Pat Buchanan clone that is all.

Shoulda’ invaded Iran in any case. Bad call choosing Iraq, regardless of WMD.
Aristotle on July 2, 2009 at 7:51 PM

There was no way we could have fought a war on terror without taking Saddam out. If we was distracted by a war in Afghanistan it would be perfect for Saddam to cause trouble and build his weapons. Also he would have supplied WMD to terrorist. Although he didn’t like the Taliban, an enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iraq was a perfect fly paper trap for terrorist rather than chasing them all over or maybe here. Bush said that Iran was ripe for revolution and would take care of it self which we are starting to see. N Korea is hardest situation due to close proximity of massive artillery to S Korea’s City of Seoul. Bush did the correct thing. It was fitting that Saddam head snapped off during the hanging. Coldwarrior should weigh in on this one.

Seeing that this is the future Israel has to look forward to, there is no point in Israel trying to do anything lightly in order to stay on the West’s good side. That will be an impossibility, no matter what Israel does, so Israel needs to go full force. It needs to capture the Iranian oil fields, to totally defang Iran and to give itself leverage against the coming onslaught from the West. Nothing else will save the state, since after whatever action Israel takes the West will set about to kill them in every way and every forum available.

Israel is alone and needs to act accordingly. Hit Iran hard. Take the oil fields. Leave the UN. And, after the West lays into Israel, start shipping the Palestinians out of the West Bank.

It’s ugly, but this is a forced play.

I never have understood the left’s assertion that because Saddam didnt have a huge arsenal of WMDs that mean he was OK to keep where he was.
William Amos

The answer is they didn’t.

The Iraq Liberation act made that absolutely clear.
left’s assertion that it was okay to leave Saddam alone did not exist till Bush became President.

The Lefts stand was PURELY Domestic politics.

Question? When was the last time you heard of an IVAW protest? Or any protest against ANY of our wars?

Someone had to call that bluff sometime. So I say: Good for US, good for the ME, and good for the Iraqis!
ConScribe

Kinda like when the cops shoot someone and it turns out to be a toy gun.

Leave George jr. Alone, if you want to put someone on trial, do it to the BIG liar George Sr. That son of a b1tch got me to vote for CLINTON ffs. Now THAT is a crime.
Spiritk9 on July 2,

WOW!
Really?

You actually voted for Clinton who told us

“Saddam link to Bin Laden”

The Guardian
February 6, 1999

By Julian Borger
The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad’s ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam’s most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.

News of the negotiations emerged in a week when the US attorney general, Janet Reno, warned the Senate that a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction was a growing concern. “There’s a threat, and it’s real,” Ms Reno said, adding that such weapons “are being considered for use.”

Lets see, humm 1999, that would be president Clinton yes? His AG Ms. Reno TELL’s our SENATE that Bin Laden is meeting with Saddam AND this makes the threat of WMD’s by AQ being REAL and “are being considered for use.”.

Tell me Spiritk9, if you had read that in 1999 and actually understood what it says would you conclude that the Clinton admin was STRONGLY suggesting that Saddam AND AQ were linked?

Would you conclude that the Clinton admin was STRONGLY suggesting that Saddam HAD WMD’s? (fact is, there were no WMD’s after 1994)

Not good enough? Okay how bout this.

Newsweek
January 11, 1999

Saddam + Bin Laden? America’s two enemies are courting.

By Christopher Dickey, Gregory Vistica, and Russell Watson

In the no-fly zones of northern and southern Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s gunners blindly fired surface-to-air missiles at patrolling American and British warplanes. In Yemen, terrorists seized a group of British Commonwealth and American tourists, and four of the hostages died in a shootout.
But in a region where no one puts much faith in blind coincidence, last week’s conjunction of Iraqi antiaircraft fire and terrorism aimed at the countries that had just bombed Iraq convinced some that a new conspiracy was afoot.

Here’s what is known so far: Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas — assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. US sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two US embassies in Africa last summer. US intelligence has had reports of contacts between low-level agents. Saddam and bin Laden have interests — and enemies — in common. Both men want US military forces out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been calling for all-out war on Americans, using as his main pretext Washington’s role in bombing and boycotting Iraq. Now bin Laden is engaged in something of a public-relations offensive, having granted recent interviews, one for NEWSWEEK. He says “any American who pays taxes to his government” is a legitimate target.

Spiritk9, this is “NEWSWEEK”, notice the word alleged is not used, meaning this is reported as FACT.

NEWSWEEK source on this was Richard Clark.
http://www.lexisnexis.com

I gots hundreds more if you’re not convinced. You would be hard pressed not to conclude that an AQ attack on America was not sponsored by or supported by Saddam based on what the Clinton admin was telling ALL America.

Even Dan Rather on Letterman was telling us the Saddam was somehow connected to 911!

Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor
Interview on “The David Letterman Show”
September 17, 2001

RATHER: And with what we’re dealing with here, which is not one man [Bin Laden], it’s a hydra-headed operation that’s in 55 countries around the world. Now granted, the focus is on, and we should understand, not just Afghanistan — Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

LETTERMAN: Why?

RATHER: Who can explain madmen, and who can explain evil.
RATHER: Saddam Hussein, if he isn’t connect to this, he’s connected to any other things. He’s part of this ‘Hate America’ thing. You have to understand, Saddam Hussein is somebody I have sat this close, eye to eye.

Spiritk9
Was Bush right? Yeah, in a way, but he handled this all wrong. Not the Bush jr., I’m talking Bush Sr. He FUBAR’ed this thing and ended up feeding Al Quaida.

Spiritk9, AQ didn’t exist when Bush 1 was President, nor did the Taliban. If your referring to 1979 when The Soviet union invaded and the CIA backed the “freedom Fighters” that was President Carter and Bush 1 had been out of the CIA for nearly 2 years at the time.

Seriously dude, lean about timelines and history.

That will help so you don’t vote stupid like ya did when ya voted twice for Clinton.

Uhm, I guess my only response is, “You’re wrong.”

apollyonbob on July 2, 2009 at 10:56 PM

You appear to be making up the argument that you have just ascribed to me and declared to be wrong. The debate would probably be more fruitful if you didn’t try invent my viewpoints as you go along.

However, to the extent that I can work out what you were trying to say, here are my answers.

a man who built the world’s largest mosque, put the Islamic credo on the Iraqi flag, and had a copy of the the Koran written in his own blood, was just using Islam as a tool, and that, aside from the ruling party being comprised entirely of Islamists, Iraq was secular.

Those are the actions of a megalomaniac, not necessarily the actions of a pious or sincere Muslim. Also I didn’t say Iraq was secular; I wrote that Saddam Hussein wanted to use the religion for his own ends. Obviously Iraq is not secular and Saddam Hussein knew that too. He knew that Iraqi people respect Islam and that they expected their leader to do so too. He also knew that a religious cleric would be able to stir the people’s emotions. So he did what he needed to do to satisfy his own ego and to dominate the religion so that clerics would not be able to undermine his authority. If any cleric challenged his authority to rule by questioning his faith, he would be able to refute them with those displays of piety.

that Iraq sponsorship of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe coming to a sudden end doesn’t address the root problem of Islamic terrorism.

Islamic inspired violence continues, even in the absence of Saddam Hussein. Islamic inspired violence began when Islam began and will continue until its demise. Saddam Hussein et al were just one rather small and temporary manifestation of it.

Your argument is that a tyrannical dictatorship … [snip] … is as equally oppressive as a nation of democractically elected leaders that have to follow the rule of law written in a constitution.

No, my argument is that the oppression is inherent to Islam, not merely to tyrants who might or might not be Muslims. Saddam Hussein and his sons are dead, the ‘virtues’ and attributes that they manifested are not. Those three men no longer rape or torture, but I am sadly confident that brutality and barbarity will continue in homes and police stations and the total number of people affected will be little changed. If I am wrong then I will be glad.

Your argument is that the people who immediately after 9/11 were asking what America did to deserve this because Islam is a “religion of peace” would be suddenly against Islam if only we hadn’t invaded Iraq.

No, not my argument at all … you just made this up along with the other points you ascribed to me, remember?

My argument is that if you want to reduce brutality you need to eliminate Islam. Attacking Iraq and then creating a government with Islam at its core does not help the world rid itself of Islam.

This debate begain by considering whether the situation would be better if Saddam Hussein were still president of Iraq. In otherwords, we were discussing a whole region, not just the lives of some people in one particular country.

In considering Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the choice has never been between good and evil, or between strife and peace. The choice has always been between this evil or that evil, between this conflict or that conflict. One can make those choices idealistically or pragmatically. I have argued that a pragmatic, if distasteful, choice made back in the early 1990s might have led to an overall better situation regionally and globally. Of course we will never really know because we cannot go back and try again, but AllahPundit set the challenge and I have tried to answer it.

If you’re as smart as GTL claims, why don’t you tell us what the solution is?

I don’t claim to be especially smart, nor to have all the answers but actually in my very first post I already did suggest what the solution might be … namely doing deals.

“Keeping friends close and enemies closer.” that sort of thing. Unpleasant, morally dubious, but pragmatic and morally no worse than what has been done.

I mean, we can’t fight militarily them because hey, it’s not realistic to fight every homocidal dictator with ambitions of nuclear power.

We can’t fight them culturally, because they’re not the slightest bit interested in rhetorical battle.

The UN’s resolutions get totally ignored, so diplomacy has been a gigantic waste of time.

It sounds like our options are “Lay down and die” and … ?

Mind filling in that blank?

apollyonbob on July 2, 2009 at 9:40 PM

We can and should fight but we have been, and still are, fighting the wrong things. Nothing has been done to stop Saudi Arabia spreading its vile ideology by sponsoring mosques. Nothing has been done to stop Iran sponsoring violence in Palestine. Nothing has been done to curtail Islam in the ‘western’ countries.

One major error in dealing with Iraq was that western nations and the UN were (and are) stuck in an unrealistic, naive, ideological framework. They failed completely to grasp that Saddam Hussein was keeping the lid on an Islamic pressure cooker. Today they fail to grasp that the Iranian government is performing a similar role, as do the greater and lesser tyrants that preside over every other Islamic nation.

Trying to build a wholesome nation that has Islam at its core is just silly and a complete waste of resources. Trying to integrate Islam into the west is suicidally silly.

We are not fighting the right battles because our so called leaders haven’t identified the enemy correctly. Saddam Hussein, various ‘terrorists’ and the Iranian rulers have all been treated as anomolies rather than as the legitimate offspring of Islamic ideas.

If the goal was to render Saddam Hussein mostly harmless to neighbouring states then possibly that could have been accomplished by doing deals.

If the goal was to prevent young women being violated then Islam itself should be contained and that is a whole different game.

YiZhangZhe on July 2, 2009 at 10:01 PM

Hrm.

So I’m going to assume that you have a full knowledge of the recent history of Iraq.

Your argument is that a man who built the world’s largest mosque, put the Islamic credo on the Iraqi flag, and had a copy of the the Koran written in his own blood, was just using Islam as a tool, and that, aside from the ruling party being comprised entirely of Islamists, Iraq was secular.

Your argument is also that Iraq sponsorship of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe coming to a sudden end doesn’t address the root problem of Islamic terrorism.

Your argument is that a tyrannical dictatorship in which rape was institutionalized and was so common that there were rooms all over the country dedicated to that purpose, where torture was institutionalized and was so common that there were rooms all over the country dedicated to that purpose, is as equally oppressive as a nation of democractically elected leaders that have to follow the rule of law written in a constitution.

Your argument is that the people who immediately after 9/11 were asking what America did to deserve this because Islam is a “religion of peace” would be suddenly against Islam if only we hadn’t invaded Iraq.

Uhm, I guess my only response is, “You’re wrong.”

You are obviously unfamiliar with all the other reasons we invaded Iraq. You should look those up.

Not at all; probably more familiar than most people since I followed the situation closely from 1991 to 2003. In 2003 I supported the war and felt it had become inevitable; there were many good reasons to make war with Iraq. However there were also many good reasons not to make war.

If you average the number of people killed by Saddam Hussein over the number of years he ruled Iraq, less Iraqi civilians died, per year, during the war than before it.

As for the troops, we’re talking an extremely large population of people. It should shock nobody that as many died during the Clinton years to accidents as during the Bush years to wars. While every soldier’s life is important, 4000 is a very small number statistically, and it is worth noting that as many Allied soldiers died on D-Day as Coalition soldiers died in the entire war of Iraq.

You are correct, but also missing the point. The rape and oppression hasn’t stopped and the resources assigned to the problem could have been used to greater effect somewhere else. We are not gods, we cannot make everything nice; we have to choose which evil to fight and which to tolerate. If a different, less idealistic, course had been charted from 1991 onwards it is conceivable that we would have a better situation today than the one we actually have. Not perhaps better for Iraqis, and certainly not better for those particular women called to entertain Saddam Hussein and his vile Sons, but perhaps better overall for the world.

That’s insanely amazing, not to mention unprecedented in history. Never have so few had to make the ultimate sacrifice for such a fantastic outcome.
apollyonbob on July 2, 2009 at 9:16 PM

Well, the outcome is not that fantastic. Perhaps fewer people are presently dying but the root problem of Islam is just as firmly established in Iraq than it was six years ago, probably more firmly established. That problem is spreading and growing. The war in Iraq has antagonised Muslims around the world causing them to become more defensive, to retreat further into their Islam ‘world’ and be even less open to questioning it. Also the war has caused fluffy thinkers around the world to feel sympathy for Islam making it harder to push back gainst it in Europe and the USA.

YiZhangZhe on July 2, 2009 at 9:33 PM

If you’re as smart as GTL claims, why don’t you tell us what the solution is?

I mean, we can’t fight militarily them because hey, it’s not realistic to fight every homocidal dictator with ambitions of nuclear power.

We can’t fight them culturally, because they’re not the slightest bit interested in rhetorical battle.

The UN’s resolutions get totally ignored, so diplomacy has been a gigantic waste of time.

It sounds like our options are “Lay down and die” and … ?

Mind filling in that blank?

Times Online Brit. “There are too many muslims so there is no hope of ever winning in a fight with them.

William Amos on July 2, 2009 at 7:37 PM

It is good to see a mainstream paper articulate the demographic equation. I doubt they would have dared actually extend the argument to the UK itself, or to Europe in general, but I guess many of their readers are smart enough to work it out for themselves. Unfortunately their readers are probably not the holding the UK’s or EU’s controls.

Many people in the western world, including many supposedly enlightened liberals, are still afflicted by the 19th and early 20th century arrogance. They are so convinced of the superiority of their arguments, and of the world-stopping power of their moral clarity (so they mistakenly believe), that they cannot imagine that their culture could ever be vulnerable to being overrun and destroyed by opponents who are not the slightest interested in a merely rhetorical battle.

There’s no longer a relationship between the people and their rulers; such is the hatred, in fact, that I wonder how many of them would secretly thrill to seeing the Revolutionary Guard’s nose bloodied.

Not many if the Israeli’s were to strike. Nothing will bring disaffected Iranians back into the mullahs arms like Jewish aggression.

Mark it down as yet another dirty job for the US military, however it’ll have to wait until The One leaves office, hopefully at the end of his first term.

Care to volunteer yourself and your kids to march on in to free those miserable souls?

guntotinglibertarian on July 2, 2009 at 8:19 PM

And Rattle wasn’t calling you a chickenhawk, he was saying you were making the chickenhawk argument, which that was. Don’t blame him just cuz you can’t remember what you said an hour ago.

You didn’t mention the first Gulf War. It’s arguable..and I would make the case…that Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait and its threat to Saudi represented a clear strategic threat to the West’s oil supplies and therefor was a legitimate causus belli.

Wait a second!

But it wasn’t an existential threat. So you’re violating your own logic! We can exist without oil from Iraq or Kuwait. We could drill off our own shores, as conservatives have been saying for awhile now.

Seriously, you haven’t given this line of thought much exploration as to its end, have you?