The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein |
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Duende
Senior Member Joined: 27 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 651 |
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Americans in particular must make an effort to find the facts about
events caused or sponsored by their own administration. The way this officially sanctioned revenge lynching has been reported is another example of the way English language media is controlled in order to send a particular message, and ultimately twist history. The NY Times piece reads like a short movie script, the events 'Hollywoodised' for the easy digestion of an audience accustomed to 'facts' in the form of a movie script. The official version of things has already been cooked to add an additional flavour which will seep into the general consciousness: specifically claiming Saddam cursed Moqtada Al Sadr with his last breath. How better to fan the flames of sectarian fighting and ensure Iraqi civilians, too busy surviving or attacking one another to notice, allow the Bush administration to finalise its deals with the Iraqi puppet government and proceed to suck the oil fields dry? But wait, what am I saying, it is of course aimed at the American public, so that THEY continue to watch their young men and women sacrificed for the sake of their country's economic and strategic hegemony. This is from Riverbend, who also says there were few real celebrations over the 'sacrifice' of Saddam: "Now we come to CNN. Shame on you CNN journalists- you're getting lazy. The least you can do is get the last words correct when you write a story about an execution. Your articles are read the world over and will go down in history as references. You people are the biggest news network in the world- the least you can do is spend some money on a decent translator. Saddam's last words were NOT "Muqtada Al Sadr" as Munir Haddad claimed, according to the article below. If anyone had seen at least part of the video they showed on TV, you'd know that. "A witness, Iraqi Judge Munir Haddad, said that one of the executioners told Hussein that the former dictator had destroyed Iraq, which sparked an argument that was joined by several government officials in the room. As a noose was tightened around Hussein's neck, one of the executioners yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Haddad said, referring to the powerful anti-American Shiite religious leader. Hussein, a Sunni, uttered one last phrase before he died, saying "Muqtada al-Sadr" in a mocking tone, according to Haddad's account." From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family�" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell�" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala�?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood�?". Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah�" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched. So, no, CNN, his last words were not "Muqtada Al Sadr" in a mocking tone- just thought someone should clear that up. (Really people, six of you contributed to that article!)" |
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alibeta
Newbie Joined: 12 October 2006 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 15 |
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Malaysian Former PM says Saddam murdered and read why OIC is so complacent on that matter!
http://www.worldfutures.info/portal/index.php?option=com_con tent&task=view&id=93&Itemid=2 |
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Duende
Senior Member Joined: 27 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 651 |
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I agree with Niqab ummi, this was a terrible mistake to hang him
exactly on Eid. But it was probably a mistake to hang him, period. Take a look at Riverbend's last blog ("Baghdad Burning", just google Riverbend) Bush went out of his way to make it look as though he had nothing to do with the final outcome for Saddam, quite ridiculous. So, Saddam gets what the majority feel he deserved, unfortunately Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Aznar, Barroso and Howard will never see the kind of justice they deserve. That NYTimes piece reeks of romance. How come it doesn't mention the final sound of Hussein's vertebra cracking? The romancing of Saddam Hussein begins. Once, they shook his hand and sold him weapons, but in the end, they hung him like a dog, after a show trial lacking all manner of legal guarrantees. History is being written exactly as they want it. Edited by Duende |
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Patty
Senior Member Joined: 14 September 2001 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2382 |
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It seems there are many mixed opinions on the execution of Saddam Hussein. May God have mercy on his soul, and on all our souls. Patty By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 30, 2006 (AP)� Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm. In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes. Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle. A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed." "Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail. The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed. In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence. It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict. The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror." He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq. Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad. Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death. "Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad. But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death. "The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque. Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance. Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam. A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker. In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles." "He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said. Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone. "We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television. Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments. He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck. Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present. "Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'" Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution. Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine the Imam Kazim shrine. Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body. Al-Arabiya satellite television reported that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan had retrieved his body from Baghdad and was taking it to Tikrit, near the executed dictator's hometown, for burial. The report could not immediately be verified. The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people. "We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq." The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days. A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge. U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq. "First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?" At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution. Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis." In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said. One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings. Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs. "This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country." Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals. Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror. In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety. Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy. When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2760640& ;page=1 |
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Patty
I don't know what the future holds....but I know who holds the future. |
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Hanan
Senior Member Joined: 27 July 2006 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 1035 |
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Hold fast to the rope of Allah, and be not divided Edited by Hanan |
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Hanan
Senior Member Joined: 27 July 2006 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 1035 |
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Hold fast to the rope of Allah, and be not divided Edited by Hanan |
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niqab_ummi
Guest Group Joined: 08 December 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 159 |
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Umm Abdelkhalek
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mariyah
Senior Member Joined: 29 March 2006 Status: Offline Points: 1283 |
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Assalaamu alaikum: Yes brother, you are so right. You daily have to deal with this hard element in America. There is an old proverb that states that charity begins at home. The US needs to tend to its own business and clean its own backyard before invading others. We still need to be charitable but do not need our young going to war to support the whims of a lame duck president. I pray that the new congress will reverse this cycle and remove the power from this man's hands. the US constitution was written by wise men and needs to be followed. We need to restore it. If this is one nation, under God, its constituents need to also realize that it does not state this as the Christian god, but the One God of all. May all have a safe and peaceful Eid and Holiday season. Enjoy your new Year! |
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"Every good deed is charity whether you come to your brother's assistance or just greet him with a smile.
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