"The thousands of people he (Saddam) killed"?

Saddam was put to death for killing 148 people not "thousands" of people.

Originally Posted by Gator

"The thousands of people he (Saddam) killed"?

Saddam was put to death for killing 148 people not "thousands" of people.

Not bad, people get death sentence for killing only ONE individual.

148 is too many.. I say again, Good Riddance

Oh, I like that he's no longer among the living.
I just do not understand why the President of the United States of America would say "thousands" when the Iraqi Court that tried Saddam said 148, and said so not all that long ago if my memory serves.

If Saddam killed thousands he should have been tried for thousands, the outcome would have been the same, the difference would have been merely for people in the future to put what has happened now into historical context.

This from the Chicago Tribune.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...l=chi-news-hed

Hussein legacy: Megalomaniac, nationalist leader

By Aamer Madhani
Tribune correspondent
Published December 29, 2006, 10:03 PM CST


Over his 24 years as president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein earned the moniker Butcher of Baghdad by ruling with brute force, torture and cunning.

His regime murdered at least 300,000 of his countrymen, according to estimates by human-rights groups. During his reign, neighbors spied on each other and children were taught at school to tattle on their parents if they spoke against the regime. More than 1 million Iraqis were killed in wars against Iran, Kuwait and the United States on his watch.
Iraqis, by and large, say they suffered terribly at the hands of the dictator. But Hussein will also leave a legacy in his country and the Arab world as a sort of Mesopotamian revolutionary—a nationalist leader who stood up to the American superpower that deposed and later captured him.

During his reign, speaking ill of Hussein or the regime was punishable by death. Baghdad cabdrivers feared him so much that they avoided even driving past the palaces because they didn't want to take any chances of angering Hussein or his associates.

Hussein was married, but he was rumored to have an insatiable desire for virgins, whom his henchmen would kidnap off the street. He was passionate about cigars, and Fidel Castro kept him stocked with Cuba's finest tobacco.

He earned credibility on the Arab street through his support of thousands of displaced Palestinians he invited to live in Iraq. He ordered the building of mosques to curry favor with Islamic clerics. In the weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq, he issued amnesty to tens of thousands of Iraqis imprisoned for various crimes.

But Hussein's most horrific atrocities were the acts of brutality he meted out against fellow Iraqis. His henchmen amputated the tongues of those who criticized him. He ordered the systematic annihilation of tens of thousands of Kurds, including at least 5,000 in a notorious poison gas attack on the village of Halabja in 1988. Tens of thousands of Shiites were killed by forces loyal to Hussein during the uprisings in southern Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion in 1991.

The crime for which he was executed was the roundup and killings of dozens of Shiites in the village of Dujail in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt on Hussein there.

He and seven other members of the former regime stood trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.

In grim testimony, witnesses of the Dujail massacre recalled how Hussein's cronies, led by his half brother and former head of the secret police Barzan Ibrahim, tortured, imprisoned and humiliated hundreds of men, women and children. In all, 148 people died by execution or while under interrogation during the Dujail incident. Some 700 others were evicted from the village and cast off to live in the desert.

Hussein said in court that the executions were a lawful and necessary response to an assassination attempt on a head of state. Witnesses testified that the roundup was random and some of those taken in for questioning were children.

One of the tactics interrogators used on the Dujail victims was ripping their flesh by running them through a meat grinder, witnesses testified. One female witness described how she was stripped naked and sexually humiliated.

Hussein would later order the use of chemical weapons on Iraq's Kurdish people as part of the 1987-88 Anfal campaign, in which some 180,000 people were killed. He used poison gas against his own citizens more than a half-century after the civilized world had concluded that chemical weapons were too inhumane to use even against enemies. Hussein was still being tried on genocide and other charges related to Anfal when he was hanged.

UNICEF said the first eight years of sanctions may have been responsible for 500,000 deaths of children under 5.

While he hadn't left as long a trail of dead as Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Hussein and his cohorts represented one of the most diabolical regimes in modern history.

The fear he inspired was palpable through his reign. And his cruelty served as an example to his sons Udai and Qusai.

Udai once bludgeoned to death one of his father's valets in front of a crowd at a party. Qusai would order his guards to grab women off the street whom he would rape, and he oversaw the tortures and mass executions of hundreds of Shiites.

MORE--

It is really silly that a few people are upset about death of a monster.

Originally Posted by Young Winston

Just keep reeding sunb but not your redneck sources.

Even though this person is banned I would just like to point out how obviously uneducated they are....

If you are wondering why the world is going to ****, well there is a prime example...

That is all carry on....

Oh and on topic the Iraqis tried him the Iraqis hung him...I didn't see one US official around when the hanging was taking place...

Originally Posted by Missileer

A speedy trial usually is the result of overwhelming evidence. As for the timing, that's Iraq's laws, not ours to judge. As for Texas, don't come to Texas and kill folks and you'll have no problems.

Missileer

I think MontyB said it well, nobody denies his guilt. And aside from the Sunni in Iraq nobody had a real problem in his death sentence. I think think of fewer people more fitting a punishment than he.

That being said, it was a sham trial, even with the overwhelming evidence. You had witnesses intimidated, you had defense lawyers (and their families) murdered, you had the judge changed at least twice The defendant was denied a change a venue even though it was obvious he should have had one, and so on and so forth.

too many of you are judging this as though it was a trial under American law.

It was not! It was a trial under Iraqi law by Iraqi judges.

Originally Posted by tomtom22

It was not! It was a trial under Iraqi law by Iraqi judges.

That may well be true but if that is going to be an example of the new Iraqi judicial process then they haven't come very far from Saddam's courts.

Perosnally the trial was all for show...I mean it was almost a joke from the beginning and I find it very unfair to base the creditability of the Iraqi judicial system on this case....

Can you tell me anyone who seriously thought this guy was innocent of the atrocities he committed?