Saddan verdict.... Death penalty

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With the announced verdict yesterday that was expected of Saddam's trial, we hear from Muslim leaders that speak of the potential dangers to the US..

I find that interesting and really makes it clear the true agenda of many anti-west individuals.

What is interesting is that not all Muslims world wide are not celebrating this verdict. Saddam was a man who terrorized Muslims. In his own country no less. The people that speak against this verdict must feel that the life of Saddam is worth more then their own Muslim brothers.

Now , these people are not speaking against the death penalty which would be a valid argument. These are people who enjoy death.

These people that speak of danger to the US are not interested in justice. Their anti-west hatred is fully exposed. Our elected leaders need to be protective of the western citizens.

...not to get up your nose, wolfix, but you are sounding like the bush administration prior to the invasion when they just knew that the "good" iraqi people will rise up and join the u.s. in winning their freedom. saddam is not the first nor will he be the last "muslim" leader to torture his own people [check out the wonderful human rights records of such staunch u.s. allies as saudia arabia and pakistan before you cast about the rest of the middle and near east]. if this is the way the u.s. media is spinning or worse the white house is spinning the verdict, god help us for again superimposing our interpretation of reality on a culture which emphasises clan loyalty and the authoritarian rule by an elder.

...not to get up your nose, wolfix, but you are sounding like the bush administration prior to the invasion when they just knew that the "good" iraqi people will rise up and join the u.s. in winning their freedom. saddam is not the first nor will he be the last "muslim" leader to torture his own people [check out the wonderful human rights records of such staunch u.s. allies as saudia arabia and pakistan before you cast about the rest of the middle and near east]. if this is the way the u.s. media is spinning or worse the white house is spinning the verdict, god help us for again superimposing our interpretation of reality on a culture which emphasises clan loyalty and the authoritarian rule by an elder. I am not trying to turn this into a spin for the Iraqi war. The occupation of Iraqi is an issue where I can fully understand the Muslim outrage.

What I am doing is questioning as why any Muslim in the world would want revenge and defend Saddam's actions. I would think the verdict would be a victory for Muslim freedom ..... Saudi/Paki are different issues.

The verdict should be a good day for human rights. The invasion and occupation is a political issue that is spun by who ever wants to spin it. There is many ways this thread can go off topic. But if we could,maybe someone could tell me .....

"Why should a Muslim be upset with a guilty verdict?"

I imagine what this will do is bring about total civil war in Iraq and set Sunni Moslems against Shia and Kurds. The situation, more than likely, will escalate and heavens knows where it will end and how many people will die.
I confess Saddam wasn't up to much but he was all Arabs had to respect - a strong leader who held the country together. Therefore, it was a big mistake in policy to humiliate this former leader of Iraq.
I imagine if George Bush was ever kidnapped and humiliated worldwide, Americans would also feel outraged and personally insulted.
This is the problem. My feeling is all hell will break loose.


I am not trying to turn this into a spin for the Iraqi war. The occupation of Iraqi is an issue where I can fully understand the Muslim outrage.

What I am doing is questioning as why any Muslim in the world would want revenge and defend Saddam's actions. I would think the verdict would be a victory for Muslim freedom ..... Saudi/Paki are different issues.

The verdict should be a good day for human rights. The invasion and occupation is a political issue that is spun by who ever wants to spin it. There is many ways this thread can go off topic. But if we could,maybe someone could tell me .....

"Why should a Muslim be upset with a guilty verdict?"

"What I am doing is questioning as why any Muslim in the world would want revenge and defend Saddam's actions. I would think the verdict would be a victory for Muslim freedom ..... Saudi/Paki are different issues."

Who do you prefer? A rational, secular hard-line leader or the fundamentalist cleric who now leads Iran and is trying to get hold of nuclear weapons?
Personally, I would rather have Saddam. At least women under his regime could get educated, teach and enjoy far more perspectives than their counterparts in Iran.
Seems to me that Bush has just opened the floodgates for a Shia union between Iran and Iraq, which will create a massive terrain where fundamentalism will thrive.
Bush's policy in this region has me baffled. :confused:





I am not trying to turn this into a spin for the Iraqi war. The occupation of Iraqi is an issue where I can fully understand the Muslim outrage.

What I am doing is questioning as why any Muslim in the world would want revenge and defend Saddam's actions. I would think the verdict would be a victory for Muslim freedom ..... Saudi/Paki are different issues.

The verdict should be a good day for human rights. The invasion and occupation is a political issue that is spun by who ever wants to spin it. There is many ways this thread can go off topic. But if we could,maybe someone could tell me .....

"Why should a Muslim be upset with a guilty verdict?"

With the announced verdict yesterday that was expected of Saddam's trial, we hear from Muslim leaders that speak of the potential dangers to the US..

I find that interesting and really makes it clear the true agenda of many anti-west individuals.

What is interesting is that not all Muslims world wide are not celebrating this verdict. Saddam was a man who terrorized Muslims. In his own country no less. The people that speak against this verdict must feel that the life of Saddam is worth more then their own Muslim brothers.

Now , these people are not speaking against the death penalty which would be a valid argument. These are people who enjoy death.

These people that speak of danger to the US are not interested in justice. Their anti-west hatred is fully exposed. Our elected leaders need to be protective of the western citizens.


Just to clarify : Saddam has been convicted for the murder of his fellow Iraqi citizens at Dujail in 1982.

Saddam, separately, is on trial for the murder of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
That trial has not finished.

It's important to recognise that Saddam has not been found guilty for anything else - although most people accept that he committed atrocities throughout his tenure as President of Iraq from 1979-2003.

Just to clarify : Saddam has been convicted for the murder of his fellow Iraqi citizens at Dujail in 1982.

Saddam, separately, is on trial for the murder of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
That trial has not finished.

It's important to recognise that Saddam has not been found guilty for anything else - although most people accept that he committed atrocities throughout his tenure as President of Iraq from 1979-2003. And he faces several more trials I believe, if the death penalty is not imposed. Many doubt that he will actually hang. I have mixed feelings towards that.

To carrea......I prefer chocolate cookies with milk. The world does not have to accept one bad leader if there is another bad leader somewhere else. There may not have been WMD as the Bush Ad thought there was, but Iraq did have weapon programs in place. They have used bio weapons in the past. Iraq would have been a problem sometime in the future. Maybe not for the US, but for the Israeli's....

But I still return to "why would a Muslim not want the verdict that was reached?"

maybe someone could tell me .....

"Why should a Muslim be upset with a guilty verdict?"

you are answering your own question. define "muslim." it is as difficult as defining "christian" and asking why can't all us christians just get along. is osama bin laden any less a "muslim" because the u.s. brands him pariah?

you are answering your own question. define "muslim." it is as difficult as defining "christian" and asking why can't all us christians just get along. is osama bin laden any less a "muslim" because the u.s. brands him pariah?

Very good points that you make here.

The use of the term Muslim : that is too general in my opinion.
It's like making a statement and applying it to Christians - as you point out.
How many denominations of Christianity are there? Hundreds no doubt.

In addition, cultural/tribal identity needs to be thrown in to the mix.
Is an American........ (and you can select any denomination of any major religion Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist) going to have the same view as a British Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist ? Not likely.

Very good points that you make here.

The use of the term Muslim : that is too general in my opinion.
It's like making a statement and applying it to Christians - as you point out.
How many denominations of Christianity are there? Hundreds no doubt.

In addition, cultural/tribal identity needs to be thrown in to the mix.
Is an American........ (and you can select any denomination of any major religion Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist) going to have the same view as a British Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist ? Not likely.
I realize there are different types of Muslims. I live in an area where we have extreme different kinds......
Ok then..... There are Muslims out there that do not want Saddam to get the death penalty..... Why is this???

The news TV stations are saying that Hussein will appeal the decision which will take a few months to complete.

If the appeal goes against him the law says that he MUST then be hanged within 30 days, so the other charges against him (Kurdistan atrrocities) will never have a resolution in court, theere won't be time for those trials to complete, the defendent having assumed room temperature.

"There are Muslims out there that do not want Saddam to get the death penalty..... Why is this???"

Because the more educated Moslems are probably well aware the Bush and Clinton administrations killed more people than Saddam did and this is a fact that can't be skipped round.
I only just saw Blair getting an easy time on the news, making the claim to reporters that 9/11 happened before the invasion of Iraq e.t.c., justifying the invasion on that basis.
So, I repeat my former statement: Prior to 9/11, thousands of Iraqi children had been suffering on account of sanctions, countless Iraqi people lost their lives, medicine was withheld (believed to be ingredients for a chemical weapons program), Clinton was bombing Iraq to distract attention away from his personal problems and the list goes on.
This policy stirred up a lot of hate and extremism in certain parts of the globe.
Personally, I think there's a possibility 9/11 would never have taken place had the U.S. not subjected Iraq to prolonged economic sanctions that (according to serious investigation) killed thousands of Iraqi civilians).
So, I suppose Moslems wouldn't be upset over Saddam's death penalty if Bush and Rumsfeld were in the dock with him, facing the same charges. It's quite clear the case against Saddam was exaggerated as an excuse for the oil situation and more civilians have been killed by Bush than ever Saddam slaughtered. We're now up to some 500 Iraqis a day being killled in this country.
The Shia and Kurds are quite happy to see S H die but the Sunnis will probably retaliate against their countrymen and that's when we could see full scale civil war. That's the problem.




I realize there are different types of Muslims. I live in an area where we have extreme different kinds......
Ok then..... There are Muslims out there that do not want Saddam to get the death penalty..... Why is this???

It's a pity the reporters from the Beeb are giving Blair such an easy time in these conferences. When he stated 9/11 happened before the invasion of Iraq, maybe he should have been reminded the war with Iraq had already been taking place for some time.
Check out the effect of the sanctions imposed by Clinton and is it any wonder we now have this problem with extremism?

"In as much as the economic sanctions were designed to topple Saddam they were a failure, however the sanctions caused the death of between 400 thousand and 800 thousand Iraqi children (Seatlle-Post Intelligencer August 7, 2003, archived at: www.commondreams.org/views03/0807-01.htm; Hartford Courant, October 23, 2000, www.commondreams.org/views/102300-103.htm).
Critics of the sanctions say that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of them, [2] although certain skeptics claim the numbers to be less. [3] [4][5] UNICEF has put the number of child deaths to 500,000.[6] The reasons include lack of medical supplies, malnutrition, and especially disease owing to lack of clean water. Among other things, chlorine, needed for disinfecting water supplies, was banned as having a "dual use" in potential weapons manufacture. On May 10, 1996, appearing on 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) was presented with a figure of half a million children under five having died from the sanctions. Not challenging this figure, she infamously replied "we think the price is worth it," though she later rued the comment as "stupid."[7]"



Very good points that you make here.

The use of the term Muslim : that is too general in my opinion.
It's like making a statement and applying it to Christians - as you point out.
How many denominations of Christianity are there? Hundreds no doubt.

In addition, cultural/tribal identity needs to be thrown in to the mix.
Is an American........ (and you can select any denomination of any major religion Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist) going to have the same view as a British Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim/Roman Catholic/Anglican/Buddhist ? Not likely.

And he faces several more trials I believe, if the death penalty is not imposed. Many doubt that he will actually hang. I have mixed feelings towards that.

To carrea......I prefer chocolate cookies with milk. The world does not have to accept one bad leader if there is another bad leader somewhere else. There may not have been WMD as the Bush Ad thought there was, but Iraq did have weapon programs in place. They have used bio weapons in the past. Iraq would have been a problem sometime in the future. Maybe not for the US, but for the Israeli's....

But I still return to "why would a Muslim not want the verdict that was reached?"

The verdict (gulity or not quilty) or are you referring to the death sentence
passed on Saddam?

In the case of the death sentence - it's not only some Muslims who oppose the death penalty.
The EU has lodged a protest with the Iraqi goverment over the proposed hanging of Saddam Hussein.
No country within the EU uses capital punishment.

This isn't because of any EU directive : most national goverments in the EU abolished capital punishment years ago (1950/1960's).

The EU since it's inception in 1957 has always opposed capital punishment.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&threadID=4607&start=45&tstart=0&edition=1&ttl=20061107163916&#paginator
Where will people like Bush be tried for the massacres in Iraq?Nowhere.Im tired of these colonialists setting up systems to continue oppressing us.Im disgusted to say the least and it is only going to cause more blood shed,trust me.
Jordana Fofana, Juba
Funny how the USA and UK now regard him as an evil tyrant when previously supplying the gas and weapons and turning a blind eye to his deeds because it suited their politics . Rumsfeld even shook his hand. Blair and Bush are equally guilty of the deaths of 1000s of Iraquis by illegally invading for regime change. The death penalty is immoral and will achieve nothing, only revenge, and to say its the Iraqi people orchestrting the trial is laughable,the USA pulls the strings.
And remember Pinochet , Thatcher thought him a great guy ! Total hypocracy.
G Jones, manchester
So how the can the british government support this? I know bush does - he has signed the death warrents of hundreds whilst governor of texas! not to mention "the hundreds of thousands" of iraq's due to his invasion!
what have we come to? death and more death- yet the two architects of the iraq debacle - bush and blair - swan around like heroes! and what great timing for bush - with the mid-term elections here! no doubt the us will vote for him again! thats the mentality we have to live with!
NEIL HASTINGS, UK

In 1971 Lt William Calley was convicted of 22 charges of murder in relation to the massacre of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.Calley served 3 1/2 years of house arrest as his punishment.A witness described Calley murdering a small child.No other soldier was convicted of murder.Calley was the officer in charge and bore command responsibility.
In 2006 Saddam Hussein was convicted of 149 charges of murder after reprisals against Shia muslims who had attempted to assassinate him and who were in armed rebellion against his government.Hussein gets the death penalty.Former US Attorney-General Ramsay Clark is ejected from the court after handing a judge a note saying that the trial was a "travesty".
Amnesty International,Human Rights Watch,the Vatican and the UN have condemned the verdict and the trial process,which AI has stated "did not meet the international standard for a fair trial.
Saddam will become a martyr to the cause of extremists,more lives will be lost and the civil war will continue.
The US is now returning 28500 former Baath party officials to their old jobs.
Same business...different CEO.

In 1971 Lt William Calley was convicted of 22 charges of murder in relation to the massacre of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.Calley served 3 1/2 years of house arrest as his punishment.A witness described Calley murdering a small child.No other soldier was convicted of murder.Calley was the officer in charge and bore command responsibility.
In 2006 Saddam Hussein was convicted of 149 charges of murder after reprisals against Shia muslims who had attempted to assassinate him and who were in armed rebellion against his government.Hussein gets the death penalty.Former US Attorney-General Ramsay Clark is ejected from the court after handing a judge a note saying that the trial was a "travesty".
Amnesty International,Human Rights Watch,the Vatican and the UN have condemned the verdict and the trial process,which AI has stated "did not meet the international standard for a fair trial.
Saddam will become a martyr to the cause of extremists,more lives will be lost and the civil war will continue.
The US is now returning 28500 former Baath party officials to their old jobs.
Same business...different CEO.
Show me where the Vatican and the UN have condemned the trial process...... And the verdict of guilty was not not what they condemned,it was the death penalty phase of the verdict.

Just more anti-American bullshit.

I realize there are different types of Muslims. I live in an area where we have extreme different kinds......
Ok then..... There are Muslims out there that do not want Saddam to get the death penalty..... Why is this???I think, Wolfix, if it had been the Iraqi people who overthrew Saddam, and subsequently captured and tried him, there would be a different split on the demographics of agreeing with / disagreeing with / not giving a shite about the verdict, and about the sentence.
Regardless of the trial being ostensibly an Iraqi one, it is (and is seen to have been) instigated by the West. Rightly or wrongly, this turns it into appearing as a West vs Muslim event, regardless of Saddam's guilt.
Many of the Muslims I have worked with, in many Countries around the World, feel degrees of oppression. They, therefore, feel sympathies whenever they see Muslims (whoever they may be) under the control of others.
When Saddam was captured and shown cowering, whilst the West crowed, it was seen as the work of an occupier, rather than a liberator. Had it been Iraqi forces who flushed him out, I think there may have been a different perception amongst the Muslim World.

I think, Wolfix, if it had been the Iraqi people who overthrew Saddam, and subsequently captured and tried him, there would be a different split on the demographics of agreeing with / disagreeing with / not giving a shite about the verdict, and about the sentence.
Regardless of the trial being ostensibly an Iraqi one, it is (and is seen to have been) instigated by the West. Rightly or wrongly, this turns it into appearing as a West vs Muslim event, regardless of Saddam's guilt.
Many of the Muslims I have worked with, in many Countries around the World, feel degrees of oppression. They, therefore, feel sympathies whenever they see Muslims (whoever they may be) under the control of others.
When Saddam was captured and shown cowering, whilst the West crowed, it was seen as the work of an occupier, rather than a liberator. Had it been Iraqi forces who flushed him out, I think there may have been a different perception amongst the Muslim World. very good answer.....

I figure this invasion has created major problems that will come to light as time goes on. You also get the impression the U.S. has basically had enough of intervention and will try to retreat from Middle Eastern politics.
The problem is, if and when the U.S. withdraws, Iraq will be effectively handed over to the same Shia clerics S.H. had opposed in the past - which will draw Iraq close to Iran.
The Sunni Moslems may well find themselves a persecuted minority within Iraq so, when the U.S. leaves, the Sunnis may well continue their insurgency against the Shia and Kurds.
As it is, there is evidence to suggest Sunnis are being targeted by Shia militia.
All in all, I hate to be so blunt, but I believe U.S. intervention in Iraq has been catastrophic and Bush seems to have done Iran's dirty work for it with no Iranian blood spilt to attain the goal.
I'm sure the Iranians must love Bush but now just want to see him out of Iraq so they can be more influential.
Nope, Bush ain't evil as such he's just not the brightest spark in the tool shed.

I think, Wolfix, if it had been the Iraqi people who overthrew Saddam, and subsequently captured and tried him, there would be a different split on the demographics of agreeing with / disagreeing with / not giving a shite about the verdict, and about the sentence.
Regardless of the trial being ostensibly an Iraqi one, it is (and is seen to have been) instigated by the West. Rightly or wrongly, this turns it into appearing as a West vs Muslim event, regardless of Saddam's guilt.
Many of the Muslims I have worked with, in many Countries around the World, feel degrees of oppression. They, therefore, feel sympathies whenever they see Muslims (whoever they may be) under the control of others.
When Saddam was captured and shown cowering, whilst the West crowed, it was seen as the work of an occupier, rather than a liberator. Had it been Iraqi forces who flushed him out, I think there may have been a different perception amongst the Muslim World.