RSS Feed
Loading ...
Saddam Hussein, the iron-fisted dictator who ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter of a century, was found guilty of crimes against humanity Sunday and sentenced to death by hanging.
The so-called Butcher of Baghdad, who was president of Iraq from 1979 until he was deposed by Coalition forces in April 2003, was convicted of the 1982 killings of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail.
The visibly shaken former leader shouted “God is great!” as Iraq’s High Tribunal announced his sentence.
Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the former Revolutionary Court, were sentenced to join Saddam on the gallows for the Dujail killings after an unsuccessful assassination attempt during a Saddam visit to the city 35 miles north of Baghdad.
Reactions from around the blogosphere:
The Moderate Voice, Stop The ACLU, Alabama Liberation Front, Free Frank Warner , Ankle Biting Pundits, Hot Air, Washington Post, Times of London, JunkYardBlog, BBC, Mensa Barbie Welcomes You, Outside The Beltway, WuzzaDem, Tammy Bruce, The Xsociate Files, Gateway Pundit, Blue Crab Boulevard , James D. Hudnall , SteveAudio, Informed Comment, CorrenteWire, Making Light, Redstate, Patterico’s Pontifications
November 5, 2006 - 07:51 AM on November 5th, 2006
What you are going to see is a bunch of Liberals, with knees quaking, demand that Saddam be spared if not returned to power.
November 5, 2006 - 08:17 AM on November 5th, 2006
Funny you should say that: In Search Of Closure
Saddam sentenced to death by hanging
Saddam sentenced to death by hanging
November 5, 2006 - 11:17 AM on November 5th, 2006
Libbies will say “O dear that poor anglefaced darling sweetheart honeybunch, anti-American hero of ours. O weepy weepy, that want to put our centuries greatest hero, one who if given the chance would be as great of a hero to us as Stalin, Hitler and Mao were the last century.”
As long as Saddam is anti-American, Anti-Israel, anti-Jew, and anti-Democracy, They’ll fight to keep him alive and hope he’ll return to power.
November 5, 2006 - 12:04 PM on November 5th, 2006
Here’s some more news on the early response to the verdict:
Saddam’s fellow Sunnis in his home town, Tikrit, paraded through the streets chanting: “We will avenge you, Saddam.”
No surprise here. An overwhelming majority of Iraqis (including those who support Saddam’s eventual execution) believe that the US had the fix in from the start.
In Sadr City, the Shiite stronghold of north-east Baghdad, youths took to the streets dancing and singing, despite the curfew. ‘Execute Saddam,” they chanted. Many carried posters of the radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia in effect runs the district.
Unfortunately, it seems that even those celebrating the verdict are looking to prop-up another wack-job—-in this case, someone more along the lines of Khomeini or Bin-Laden than Saddam. I thought that the Shiites were at least supposed to greet us as liberators…
But justice is served, I guess.
PS, Why does DWL assume that the left loves Hitler? I understand the Stalin and Mao gesture, but Nazism was an extreme right-wing ideology. Anyone who’s cracked a history book knows this.
November 5, 2006 - 12:12 PM on November 5th, 2006
The visibly shaken former leader shouted “God is great!” as Iraq’s High Tribunal announced his sentence.
Two things right off the top: Saddam was amibvalent and aloof earlier, saying that he didn’t care what the verdict would be. Then when it comes in, he isn’t so stoic. “God is great”? He didn’t have much use for God when he was Dictator.
Another icon and hero to the Left is about to do down hard. I think Ramsey Clark should be hanged right alongside Saddam.
November 5, 2006 - 12:44 PM on November 5th, 2006
Who on the left actually likes Saddam? Do you mean the fact that a lot of dems didn’t support the war in Iraq after the WMDs and the link to Bin Laden turned out to be a bunch of lies? This isn’t the same as Saddam being the left’s hero.
Still, the relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and US politics is tricky. I suspect that you need to get your history straight. Here’s some info:
NONE OF the current Bush administration’s justifications for its invasion of Iraq would be complete without referring to how Saddam “gassed his own people.” But Saddam’s use of chemical weapons took place during the 1980s, when he was a U.S. ally. In fact, Iraq was already using chemical weapons–on an “almost daily basis,” according to the Washington Post–when the Reagan administration sent a special envoy to Baghdad in 1983 to show its support.
The envoy was none other than Donald Rumsfeld–now the head of the Pentagon under Bush Jr. After discussing the war on Iran and reportedly pitching a proposal for an oil pipeline deal at the behest of the California-based Bechtel, Rumsfeld was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the man he now calls a brutal dictator.
According to the Associated Press, Saddam used chemical weapons to kill an estimated 190,000 Kurds between 1983 and 1988–along with 50,000 Iranian soldiers, about one in 10 casualties on the Iranian side during the war. All the while, the Reagan administration downplayed Saddam’s poison gas massacres–even claiming at one point that its preferred enemy, Iran, was responsible.
In 1988, when a Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report exposed the killings of Kurds in northern Iraq, Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) proposed the Prevention of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi government. But the Reagan administration orchestrated the measure’s defeat in Congress.
In an echo of Winston Churchill’s comment a half century before, one defense official told the New York Times, “The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern.”
Part of the reason for Washington’s silence about Saddam’s use of weapons of mass destruction was that U.S. corporations helped to supply them. Throughout the 1980s, the Iraqi government bought the ingredients for its biological weapons program legally–from suppliers in the U.S. and Europe.
Strains of anthrax, botulinum and other toxins came from a company in Rockville, Md.–or from the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Iraq provided a report on its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs to United Nations inspectors at the end of 2002, the U.S. tried to censor information about American corporate suppliers.
But a German newspaper revealed that Iraq’s report implicated 24 major U.S. corporations–including Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Sperry, Rockwell, Dupont and Bechtel–for selling chemicals and weapons to Iraq while Saddam was Washington’s allies. And this was only the tip of the iceberg. From the early 1980s, some of the biggest names in Corporate America–Amoco, Mobil, Westinghouse and Caterpillar, to name a few–joined a U.S.-Iraq Business Forum to lobby Washington to strengthen its ties to the Iraqi government.
Because of Washington’s intervention, the Iran-Iraq War went in Iraq’s favor, and Iran was forced to concede defeat in 1988. For the next two years, the U.S. openly built up Saddam Hussein as its new strongman in the region. Weapons, high-tech equipment, technical assistance and economic aid flowed into the country.
U.S. leaders went to bat for the Iraqi regime against critics of its human rights abuses. In April 1990, four months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, a delegation of U.S. senators visited Baghdad and assured Saddam that Washington supported him. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) promised that George Bush Sr. would veto threatened sanctions, and Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) attacked the “haughty and pampered” media that criticized Saddam’s regime.
When Saddam summoned U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie to threaten military action against Kuwait for poaching Iraqi oil, Glasbie told Saddam, “we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” In the end, it wasn’t Saddam’s brutal repression or his war crimes in the Iran-Iraq War that turned the U.S. government against him.
Only after Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which threatened the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, did Washington discover that its ally was “the butcher of Baghdad.” Over the next six months, Bush Sr. organized a massive buildup of U.S. troops and weapons for one of the most destructive wars in modern history.
The first Gulf War was justified with rhetoric about defending democracy in the feudal monarchy of Kuwait. But even Bush Sr. himself had to admit, “We need the oil. It’s nice to talk about standing up for freedom. But Kuwait and Saudi Arabia aren’t exactly democracies.”
Yet even after U.S. forces had devastated Iraq, the Bush administration showed that it preferred the iron fist of a Baath Party dictatorship to any uprising that might topple it. In both the Kurdish north and southern areas dominated by the oppressed Shiites, masses of Iraqis responded to the U.S. victory by rising up against Saddam.
The U.S. didn’t just stand by as the uprisings were crushed. It intervened against the rebels. The Iraqi military was given clearance to fly its helicopter gunships against rebel positions. In one case, Iraqi Republican Guard troops were allowed through U.S. lines to reach one stronghold of the uprising–while the rebels were prevented from reaching weapons dumps to arm themselves.
As the New York Times reported, the Bush administration and its allies held the “strikingly unanimous view [that] whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country’s stability than did those who have suffered his repression.”
Through the 1990s, Washington continued its war on Iraq–but through economic means, imposing the strictest sanctions in history, at the cost of more than 1 million Iraqi lives.
Efforts to topple Saddam were limited to forces that the U.S. could count on the maintain “stability”–in other words, sections of Saddam’s own Baathist regime, or the corrupt gangsters of the Iraqi exile groups headquartered in Washington and London. Both elements have shown up in the puppet government that the U.S. has imposed in occupied Iraq today–a gang of “little Saddams,” as one Iraqi put it to a British reporter.
But the U.S. has never minded repression in Iraq. America’s rulers saw Saddam Hussein as a valued ally for decades on end, as he came to rule his country with an iron fist. It was only when he stepped out of line that Saddam Hussein became the “enemy.”
November 5, 2006 - 02:14 PM on November 5th, 2006
Kelf, you are an idiot. Why would the Democrats be crying about documentation of Iraq WMD and nuke programs being posted on the web? Because for idiots like you to whom facts don’t matter, you have to have your lies to be right.
November 5, 2006 - 02:48 PM on November 5th, 2006
Oh, do you have the proof then PCD? Was the war justified after all? And for all the reasons that the Bush administration said? Why don’t you get your pinhead out of your fat fucking ass and read something that wasn’t spoon-fed to you by the same douchebags that already support your sad little worldview.
If you weren’t a total moron, you’d see that what I posted above describes a wider problem than just the partisan bickering that keeps you going. Of course you have no response to the substance of what I’ve posted, that might take some critical thought.
How about you just call me a Gorebot or a moonbat or whatever and slink off to your ill-informed fantasy land.
November 5, 2006 - 03:33 PM on November 5th, 2006
The right loves politics as usual. They start shuffling around in circles as soon as something can’t be reduced to Gore bad; Bush good.
I read your post, kelp and I’d love to see a real response.
November 5, 2006 - 05:19 PM on November 5th, 2006
Kelf;
The WMD’s were all shipped to Syria in secret truck convoy’s right before the American Liberation of Iraq. If you’re not with President Bush and the war on terrorism then you’re a traitor and a fag.
Homo! You’ll never get married to your gay love puppet in this God fearing land of ours.
November 5, 2006 - 06:21 PM on November 5th, 2006
Kelf- The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions — its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq’s eleven-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.
Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Since we all agree on this goal, the issues is : how can we best achieve it?
Many Americans have raised legitimate questions: about the nature of the threat; about the urgency of action — why be concerned now; about the link between Iraq developing weapons of terror, and the wider war on terror. These are all issues we’ve discussed broadly and fully within my administration. And tonight, I want to share those discussions with you.
First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone — because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.
By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, “The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”
Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?
In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq’s military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.
We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th.
And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Yet, Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world.
Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren’t required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.
And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein’s links to international terrorist groups. Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace.
We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network.
Terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction are different faces of the same evil. Our security requires that we confront both. And the United States military is capable of confronting both.
Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don’t know exactly, and that’s the problem. Before the Gulf War, the best intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon. After the war, international inspectors learned that the regime has been much closer — the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993. The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a workable nuclear weapon, and was pursuing several different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.
Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities, including three uranium enrichment sites. That same year, information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue.
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” — his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.
Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there’s a reason. We’ve experienced the horror of September the 11th. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing, in fact, they would be eager, to use biological or chemical, or a nuclear weapon.
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, “Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,” he said, “where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.”
Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.
Some believe we can address this danger by simply resuming the old approach to inspections, and applying diplomatic and economic pressure. Yet this is precisely what the world has tried to do since 1991. The U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception. The Iraqi regime bugged hotel rooms and offices of inspectors to find where they were going next; they forged documents, destroyed evidence, and developed mobile weapons facilities to keep a step ahead of inspectors. Eight so-called presidential palaces were declared off-limits to unfettered inspections. These sites actually encompass twelve square miles, with hundreds of structures, both above and below the ground, where sensitive materials could be hidden.
The world has also tried economic sanctions — and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people.
The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities — only to see them openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist.
The world has tried no-fly zones to keep Saddam from terrorizing his own people — and in the last year alone, the Iraqi military has fired upon American and British pilots more than 750 times.
After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an effective organization that helps keep the peace. And that is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough, immediate requirements. Among those requirements: the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under U.N. supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside the country — and these witnesses must be free to bring their families with them so they all beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein’s terror and murder. And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions.
The time for denying, deceiving, and delaying has come to an end. Saddam Hussein must disarm himself — or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.
Many nations are joining us in insisting that Saddam Hussein’s regime be held accountable. They are committed to defending the international security that protects the lives of both our citizens and theirs. And that’s why America is challenging all nations to take the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council seriously.
And these resolutions are clear. In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the Oil For Food program. It must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot, whose fate is still unknown.
By taking these steps, and by only taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict. Taking these steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice. Unfortunately, at least so far, we have little reason to expect it. And that’s why two administrations — mine and President Clinton’s — have stated that regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger to our nation.
I hope this will not require military action, but it may. And military conflict could be difficult. An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures. If Saddam Hussein orders such measures, his generals would be well advised to refuse those orders. If they do not refuse, they must understand that all war criminals will be pursued and punished. If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully; we will act with the full power of the United States military; we will act with allies at our side, and we will prevail. (Applause.)
There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait — and that’s an option. In my view, it’s the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I’m convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace — we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I’m not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.
Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding, and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear.
That is not the America I know. That is not the America I serve. We refuse to live in fear. (Applause.) This nation, in world war and in Cold War, has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history’s course. Now, as before, we will secure our nation, protect our freedom, and help others to find freedom of their own.
Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security and for the people of Iraq. The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of Afghanistan’s citizens improved after the Taliban. The dictator of Iraq is a student of Stalin, using murder as a tool of terror and control, within his own cabinet, within his own army, and even within his own family.
On Saddam Hussein’s orders, opponents have been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured.
America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights, to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. People everywhere prefer freedom to slavery; prosperity to squalor; self-government to the rule of terror and torture. America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children. The oppression of Kurds, Assyrians, Turkomans, Shi’a, Sunnis and others will be lifted. The long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of new hope will begin.
Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources, and talent. Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq’s people will be able to share in the progress and prosperity of our time. If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy, and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors.
Later this week, the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America’s military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands. Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable. The resolution will tell the United Nations, and all nations, that America speaks with one voice and is determined to make the demands of the civilized world mean something. Congress will also be sending a message to the dictator in Iraq: that his only chance — his only choice is full compliance, and the time remaining for that choice is limited.
Members of Congress are nearing an historic vote. I’m confident they will fully consider the facts, and their duties.
The attacks of September the 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda’s plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined, and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein’s actions have put us on notice, and there is no refuge from our responsibilities.
We did not ask for this present challenge, but we accept it. Like other generations of Americans, we will meet the responsibility of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. And by our actions, we will secure the peace, and lead the world to a better day.
____________________________________________________________________________
Had the United States not eliminated this threat, today we would be facing a nuclear armed Iraq and possibly a nuclear armed Iran. Well, there is your talking point Tony Snow.
____________________________________________________________________________
Saddam Closer To Bomb Than Anyone Thought
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away
I’m sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?
What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been “no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat”, for the past three years solid. Now we’re being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.
Let’s go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.
I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a “Boy, did Bush screw up” meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the “there was no threat in Iraq” meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh… al-Qaeda.
The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.
The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn’t dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet. It doesn’t work. It can’t be both no threat to America and yet also somehow a threat to America once it’s in the hands of Iran. Game, set, and match.
____________________________________________________________________________
November 5, 2006 - 07:25 PM on November 5th, 2006
It never ceases to amaze me when folks compare the cold war political landscape to that of post cold war. It reveals a basic ignorance of historical perspective.
November 6, 2006 - 12:13 AM on November 6th, 2006
5 - “An overwhelming majority of Iraqis (including those who support Saddam’s eventual execution) believe that the US had the fix in from the start.”
Oh, sure! They above all should know that Saddam is 100% innocent. Why, he was a benevolent dictator! Sure, he returned libraruy books now and then, but who hasn’t? Saddam was just a big teddy bear. Children playing would stop and chant “Uncle Saddam!” when he would stop to kiss babies on his way to work. He was loved and respected. He presided over the modern golden age of Iraq.
Yes, kelp, you know what few know!
November 6, 2006 - 12:16 AM on November 6th, 2006
…returned library books late…
November 6, 2006 - 09:04 AM on November 6th, 2006
When it comes up to the hanging will their usial liberal bleedinghearts be there lighting their candles to protest the exicution will there be the usial moralist idiots saying its wrong to exicute him becuase were commiting murder? and how long will that dirt bag RAMSEY CLARK drag it out in the usial 14 to 15 years of those stupid appeals? SCREW THE BLEEDINGHEARTS LETS HANG HIM HIGH:mad:
November 6, 2006 - 03:34 PM on November 6th, 2006
12-Sorry for the late reply. I’ll respond to as much of this as time/space allows:
First, and most generally, I’m a little concerned about the prevalence on the right of what Freud called “Kettle Logic.” This is the marshalling of any and every possible argument, whether consistent with one another or not, whether cogent on their own or not. All that matters is whether all the guns are aimed in the right direction. “I did not break your kettle! It was all in one piece when I returned it last week! And besides, I never borrowed your stupid kettle in the first place! So there!” This is always something to be wary of when someone posts a laundry list of arguments…
I’ll try to deal with the arguments, Bush-isms, etcetera as they arise, ignoring repetitions of the same point for the sake of brevity. My comments are non-italicized.
First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone — because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place.
Typical hyperbolic crap. A number of regimes were/are closer to nuclear weapons capabilities than Saddam’s Iraq. North Korea is the obvious example, however questionable their recent nuke detonation
And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.
Nope. Bum steer.
And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein’s links to international terrorist groups. Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace.
If funding/harboring terrorists is what’s at issue, Saudi Arabia is ten times as bad as Iraq. Also, one must be careful when equating Saddam’s regime (though certainly awful) with the harboring of terrorists. Most of the terrorists being harbored were Shiite, not Sunni. Saddam’s regime never had much interest in harboring the former, terrorist or not. Hence the post death sentence celebrations from the Shiite community.
We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
Bush’s own men admitted that this statement was false. Bin-Laden hated Iraq because it was too secular. At one point, he called Saddam a socialist and called for his elimination. Of coursr, they have a common enemy now.
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.
I suppose that this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy as presently Iraq has become the premier terrorist breeding ground.
Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Bum steer no.2.
Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources, and talent.
We’re there for the resources, no doubt.
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
Ah, the NYT article. I love seeing the ridiculous right spin the current administration’s clusterfuck into a positive. Let’s see, the actual statements in the article actually describe Saddam’s capabilties in the 1990s, not in the present. His nascent nuke capabilities were supposedly wiped out in the wake of Gulf War Pt. 1. The implied question is whether Iraq’s nuclear program justified invasion. The fact that the nuclear program was dormant for a dozen years argues for a continuation of the existing policy, not an invasion.
The website was erected because conservative Republicans urged Bush to get the documents in the public domain so that, they hoped, somebody would read through them and find evidence of WMDs. Needless to say, that never happened. Bush overrode Negroponte’s objections and allowed the site to go up. However, apparently nobody vetted the documents, so nuclear secrets were released into the public domain.
One, officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, urged U.S. officials to take the nuclear secrets off the web. (One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.) For reasons that defy comprehension, the Bush administration didn’t act for a full week, and only removed the classified materials after the New York Times started asking questions.
Two, make no mistake, Republican officials in the administration, acting at the behest of Republican lawmakers and bloggers, have seriously undermined national security. As the NYT put it, “The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.”
All because these clowns didn’t want to accept the fact that there were no WMDs. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said the project included “minimal risks,” but chose to do it anyway. It’s exactly the kind of sound judgment we’ve come to expect from leading Republicans on national security matters.
And three, Republicans want to consider criminal charges for those who leaked word that Iraq is slipping into chaos, as if that revelation were truly dangerous, but this little nuclear-secrets incident will probably go by without prosecution.
Now, let’s connect the dots. The aim of releasing the documents was not to fix things in Iraq – it was a Hail Mary pass to bolster the administration’s position and to fog over the fact that we invaded Iraq to find WMDs which did not exist. The documents were disseminated over the objections of the head of national intelligence, and now we have no idea who has downloaded the files and for what purposes. The administration which loudly proclaims itself to be protecting the American public has, once again, made us less safe through its ineptitude and its emphasis on PR over experience.
Does any of this prove that Saddam was an imminent threat? Nope. Releasing the documents was a stupid move because it no doubt made the world that much more dangerous. However, if the documents were actually so dangerous that any wack-job dictator who got his hands on them could whip-up a nuke in his kitchen, we’d be experiencing a shit-storm of a wholly different nature. Maybe the documents made it 10% more likely that some lunatic will build a nuke. That’s 10% too much, but I’m not sure that its worth sacrificing thousands of American and Iraqi lives for.
November 6, 2006 - 06:52 PM on November 6th, 2006
kelf!
You Liberal… Go back to tree huging. We had to do something after 9-11. You probably would have “debated” the issue forever and never DONE anything. Your either with us or against us. I hope that President Bush sends you to Guantanimo Bay and teaches you what America is really all about; Traitor.
November 7, 2006 - 01:09 AM on November 7th, 2006
I hope that President Bush sends you to Guantanimo Bay and teaches you what America is really all about; Traitor.
November 7, 2006 - 11:14 AM on November 7th, 2006
It is remarkable that Saddam has been sentenced for a crime he committed in 1982, at a time when the USA was more than eager to provide support to Saddam Hussein’s regime and was complicit in some of his crimes. As usual, this fact has not even been mentioned by our amnesiac media. Donald Rumsfeld, the incarnation of this administration’s moral bankruptcy, went to Baghdad shaking hands with Saddam, on December 20, 1983 .
At that time, Rumsfeld knew that Saddam was a dangerous dictator (contrary to 2003, when he wasn’t dangerous any more). He knew about the 1982 massacre that has now been recognized as a “crime against humanity”. Donald Rumsfeld knew that Saddam had ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iran in breach of the Geneva conventions (contrary to 2003, when Rumsfeld knew exactly that there were no chemical weapons). And he went to Baghdad in 1983, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, offering him the support of the United States. That’s the story that will be told in the history book.
November 7, 2006 - 08:01 PM on November 7th, 2006
piglet;
I can’t even think of a remotely resonable way to bad mouth this. Can snowy egret or someone please help me out here?
November 27, 2006 - 01:12 PM on November 27th, 2006
Let’s start the next war by bombing San Francisco and Cape Cod. Let’s not forget Berkeley, too.
January 3, 2007 - 09:25 PM on January 3rd, 2007
hey what’s up saddam!!!!!!!
welcome to hell you got what you diserved, it is not a big deal you did it befor on others….even they didn’t deserve it……:cool::cool:
January 3, 2007 - 09:28 PM on January 3rd, 2007
oh damn…..bush got him……:shock: actually,you diserved it…..:cool:
January 3, 2007 - 09:33 PM on January 3rd, 2007
what the hell do you think you are doing is :sad::sad::sad::sad::sad:……..he is my man, i really miss that bitch…really
love you saddam:!::!::!:
January 3, 2007 - 10:21 PM on January 3rd, 2007
Peejz - what the hell happened to RV?
Is there a troll f*cking with people here?
Why are the RV names Zelda and Shiloh being hijacked by some dirty piece of white trash?
Why are you letting this happen?
Why is Private Pyle out of his bunk after lights out?
Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon?
Why are you not stomping Private Pyle’s guts out?