Is anybody else but me getting skeeved out by the fact that what finally rouses America to the concept that Iraq is fucked up is how mean people were to Saddam Hussein at his hanging?
U.S. officials have declined to comment publicly, but have privately expressed concern at the hastiness of the execution, which came just four days after an appeals court upheld Hussein’s death sentence.
The hastiness of the execution. That’s what concerns them. Sweet self-tanning Christ.
And, yeah, let’s just stipulate up front that the whole fucking thing was gross, and done badly start to finish, and the guy should have been dealt with some other way. That it was highly symbolic of all our problems there, that it was amateur hour, and that a trial at the Hague might have been better, and that this is bad. But I find it strange that this is what U.S. officials are now worked up about, the way in which he was done to death. As though, if it was silent, and dignified, and done by lethal injection maybe a month from now, the Iraqi government would be A-OK with us. As though this is the worst of our problems over there, on what day the noose was finally tightened.
I’m just a little stunned that after headless bodies turning up, after mass kidnappings and reports of women being attacked for being out alone and Sadr essentially running things and nobody being able to get a handle on suicide bombings and anybody important to the government spending more time out of the country than in it, what U.S. officials are peeved about is that a murderer didn’t get his due before he was murdered himself.
Because on a list of 1,000 things that are messed up, this is about number six.
A.
I think you are misunderstanding the White House response. They are trying to put distance between themselves & the Iraqi govt.
This way, it validates the Iraqi govt with the US and Iraqi people; Maliki is strong enough to buck Bush!
It’s a sham, and the US’s fingerprints are all over the timing, the implementation, the invitees, even the “phones for me but not for thee” security, allowing for the ‘leaking’ of the video.
Athenae, why in the world would you take WH statements at face value? I know you are smarter han that.
— joshowitz
Self-tanning?
Hussein is/was not a ‘murderer.’ He was a GENOCIDIST.
Try to understand the scope of the difference.
A murderer may kill something like 1-200 people. A murderer DOES NOT chase down all their relatives and all their neighbors and destroy every vestige of their culture.
Genocide is not murder. Genocide is not a ‘crime’ in the ordinary sense — it’s a crime against humanity, against all of us on a scale that no ‘murderer’ could ever reach.
It doesn’t matter, I agree with you on that, Athenae, how such a ‘person’ dies. He is/was already dead. When he took those actions, he murdered himself by his own hand.
We don’t call that murder; we call it suicide. Hussein committed suicide by commiting the act of genocide. So why was he still breathing up our air? I don’t care if he was bled dry by vampire bats in a cage surrounded by screaming men. I don’t care if he was buried alive. I just don’t care about such a dead person. They forfeited their right to be on earth when they committed those acts, and were ‘owed’ NOTHING.
— Paul in LA
My, my don’t we hate Saddam? Saddam didn’t kill. Saddam ordered the killing. George Bush hasn’t killed. George Bush ordered the killing. If Saddam is an evil “genocidist” (morally is that worse than a “suicider”?), what is George Bush, and how are we bringing him to justice? For me, that is the philosophical problem with our holier than thou attitude towards Saddam. It doesn’t wash that Saddam, as head of the Iraq government, orders the killing of “Enemies of the state”, and is evil. But, George Bush, who is not head of the Iraqi government, orders the killing of innocent Iraqis, but is not evil. Saddam got a form of justice. I hope George Bush someday gets a form of justice too.
You may be right about the distancing, but I’m saying it’s so utterly fucking absurd I want to tear my own head off and eat it. It’s not even a plausible way for the WH to distance itself, because it provokes exactly this response: Sure, sure, sure WHAT THE HELL NOW?
A.
As I wrote today:
if the U.S. had its way, Saddam Hussein would have not only had his neck broken, but also his arms, legs, torso, and head blown to smithereens by four 2,000 pound bombs dropped on Dora Farms on the night of March 19, 2003. No need for a trial, and no need for any of the killers to actually see their victim.
Eli Stephens
Left I on the News
http://lefti.blogspot.com
but he was NOT HITLER. where is the perspective?
I don’t get it either, but I like it.