Saddam was underrated as a dictator

[salinen]

Somehow, he knew how to manage a country full of tribes who didn't necessarily get along, and for the most part, under strict rule, they had fairly decent lives. Being Secular was a key ingredient to the relative calm.

The Kurds were to Saddam as Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Korea were to the U.S.; a philosophically opposing view that wanted it's autonomy. To condemn Saddam for those atrocities one should mention America's cold war era somewhere in the same paragraph.

Now that the U.S is responsible for a mountain of Iraqi corpses, based on whatever fashionable excuse worked that day, I look at this government as a brutal military dictatorship with the stench of religious dogma used to justify what should be world class guilt. This is an Empire on the move. Capitalism and Christianity will not be contained. Absolute power has no humility nor an eye toward introspection.

[aquart]

1. He was pretty typical for the neighborhood.

Not to mention the charming history of the delightful Babylonians.

[alittlelark]

2. He did a better job than the current dictator has.....

......by a long shot.

[onebigbadwulf]

3. I think Iraq made Saddam the way he was...

not the other way around.

If you rub your skin hard enough for long enough, it toughens up.

[salinen]

4. interesting!

[K-W]

5. Imagine how many times someone tried to kill him.

Imagine how many times people he cared about were killed. It is impossible to seperate someone from thier context.

[JI7]

6. like Tito ?

[JohnnyRingo]

7. $5 cover and two drink minimum.....

...In the "rape rooms"

[donheld]

8. underrated dictators

i think Bush and Asscroft are a bit underrated as dictators also.

[0rganism]

9. maybe bush could offer him his old job back

Saddam at his worst was more stable than the current clusterfuck.

[chuck555]

10. We can dream.

I am hoping that SA has the goods about the whole US/Iraq relationship before 1991 and later. He could be that smart. Lets hope so.

Hey USA, school is in. You must attend.

[Disturbed]

11. Saddam is much more intelligent than Dumbass.

How brutal was Saddam? How do we really know when what we get is reports that have not been substantiated. If he was so brutal why did two US Admins. Reagan and Bush1 do so much business with him? Are there other dictators that the US has been and are still cozy with that are as brutal as Saddam was?

[LynnTheDem]

12. Dictators as brutal?

Yep.

Look at the Human Rights Watch reports for:

-Kurdistan

-Saudi Arabia

-Uzbekistan

-Israel

And read the actual HRW report for Iraq; you know all them "millions disappeared" by Saddam? Funny thing, but HRW and the bush's own gov website both mention "14,674 UNACCOUNTED for over the PAST DECADE"

And of course those rhetorical "millions" to "500,000" to "300,000" to "thousands" of "mass graved" Iraqis is actually to date 5000; most of whom, according to bush's own forensic scientist, date back to the 1980s with some from the putting down of the 1991 Shia rebellion. Like we're putting down (slaughtering) Shia rebels right now.

Oh and the Iraqis never dumped incubator babies onto Kuwaiti hospital floors; that was daddy bush's PR firm's lie. And guess who made up baby bush's "purple plastic people shredder" lie? Uh huh, same PR firm.

Another couple thoughts to ponder...the Iraqis were free to leave Iraq when they wanted to. How come, if SH was so incredibly brutal, there weren't any current ex-pat Iraqis speaking out? Those exiles who did speak out were Chalabi/Allawi liars who hadn't been in Iraq for over 30 years. How come, if SH was so brutal, the Iraqi people were and are so incredibly shocked & angry over the rapes and torture & murders by US forces? Shouldn't that be ho hum same ol same ol to them?

And the ICRC says "humanitarian intervention" is NOT a valid excuse for the invasion & occupation of Iraq coz there were no recent, no on-going, and no imminent atrocities.

I wonder...did Detroit ever get back their Key to the City they honored Saddam with? And how 'bout them Golden Spurs from Daddy Bush when Saddam was "a good ally of America's"?

Things that make you go "hmmmmmm".

[LynnTheDem]

13. Some links...

The vast majority of Americans say "humanitarian" is not justification;

In the latest PIPA polls, only 27 percent of respondents said they think that countries have the right, without UN approval, to overthrow another government that is committing "substantial violations of its citizens' human rights,".

41 percent said that intervention could be justified if the violations were "large-scale, extreme and equivalent to genocide."

In the case of Iraq, however, only 32 percent of respondents believed both that human rights abuses equivalent to genocide justified intervention and that such extreme violations were occurring under Hussein's rule.

Asked, "Do you think that there are other governments existing today that have human rights records as bad as that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein?" an overwhelming 88 percent said there are.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1114-06.htm

The war in Iraq CANNOT be justified as an intervention in defense of human rights even though it ended a brutal regime, Human Rights Watch said Monday, dismissing one of the Bush administration's main arguments for the invasion.

While Saddam Hussein had an atrocious human rights record, his worst actions occurred LONG BEFORE THE WAR and there was NO ONGOING or imminent mass killing in Iraq when the conflict began, the advocacy group said in its annual report.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair cited the threat from Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction as their main reason for attacking Iraq. But as coalition forces have failed to find evidence of such weapons, both leaders have also highlighted the brutality of the regime when justifying military intervention.

Human Rights Watch, however, said SUCH CLAIMS WERE INVALID.

``The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, and neither can Tony Blair," executive director Kenneth Roth said.

Atrocities such as Saddam's 1988 mass killing of Kurds would have justified humanitarian intervention, Roth said.

``But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter," he added. ``They shouldn't be used belatedly to address atrocities that were ignored in the past."

The 407-page Human Rights Watch World Report 2004 also said the U.S. government was applying ``war rules" to the struggle against global terrorism and denying terror suspects their rights. It suggested that ``police rules" of law enforcement should be applied in such cases instead.

The New York-based group further said that European and other governments were ignoring human rights abuses in the conflict in Chechnya, which Russia characterizes as its contribution to the global war on terror.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0126-07.htm

And then of course there's ABU GHRAIB...

Read what the Human Rights Watch has to say about the "disappeared" in Iraq; "No details were available about the fate of the approximately 16,500 people reported “disappeared” in the last ten years, mainly ethnic Kurds and Shi’as but including the approximately 600 Kuwaitis reported to have been in Iraqi custody but unaccounted for since the 1991 Gulf War."
http://hrw.org/worldreport99/mideast/iraq.html

Bush's own website agrees with the 16,500;

"In 1999, the UN Special Rapporteur stated that Iraq remains the country with the highest number of disappearances known to the UN: over 16,000."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect4.html

And during that same ten years...

UNAMIR: United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (1994) of Rwandans killed had risen to 800,000 dead...

http://www.un.org/av/photo/subjects/unamir1994.htm

As for Iraq's actual human rights violations, read bush's OWN WEBSITE http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect4.html

...and then COMPARE to the US Military's OWN REPORT of the torture, rapes and murders committed by US troops against INNOCENT Iraqi men, women and children.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001

Compare it to ISRAEL'S HRW report;

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/israel.html

...compare it to SAUDI'S HRW report;

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/saudi.html

...compare it to bush's good buddy Uzbekistan; the dictator who prefers boiling his political enemies to death.

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/europe/uzbekistan.html

Saddam wouldn't let human rights groups into all prisons? Neither will bush;

Rights Groups Demand That US Open All Detention Facilities

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0510-01.htm

Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0519-04.htm

War Crimes: Gen. Sanchez Hid Prisoner From Red Cross

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/061404B.shtml

Saddam arbitrarily arrested innocent Iraqis? Tortured innocent Iraqis? So does bush;

70% to 90% of Iraq Prisoners 'Arrested by Mistake'

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0511-04.htm

Detainees Suffer Terror at US Hands; Red Cross Says Torture Part of Deliberate Tactic

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0512-10.htm

Saddam arrested and tortured children? So does bush;

Military Analyst Describes Abuse of 16-Year-Old in Iraq Prison

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0520-07.htm

Iraq's child prisoners

http://www.sundayherald.com/43796

By the way, also read the current Human Rights report against AMERICA:

Amnesty Slams "Bankrupt" Vision of US in Damning Rights Report

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0526-02.htm

"Remember we discovered mass graves with hundreds of thousands of men and women and children clutching their little toys, as a result of this person's brutality."
-Bush, November 16, 2003
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/frost/transcript.html
Oh we did, huh?

Blair admits Iraq graves claim untrue

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office has admitted that repeated claims that 400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves were untrue, The Observer newspaper reported on Sunday.

According to the paper, only 5,000 corpses have been uncovered so far.

The claims by Blair last November and December were given widespread credence, quoted by British lawmakers and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-07/18/content_1611454.htm

And of those 5000 corpses, who are they? The mass graves mostly include the remains of ethnic Kurds and Shia Muslims killed for opposing the regime between 1983 and 1991. While Iraq was a US client state.

Sandy Hodgkinson, the U.S. official in charge of disinterring these graves, said the majority of people buried in the mass graves are believed to be Kurds killed by Saddam in the 1980s after rebelling against the government (during the Iran-Iraq WAR, where the Kurds sided with IRAN, and the USA sided with IRAQ) and Shiites killed after an uprising following the 1991 Gulf War (helped and supported by Bush41, Cheney, Powell, etc). And that is straight from bushCartel's own mouthpiece.
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000479.php

In the absence of mass graves from the 1990s to the present, how can we say that we saved more Iraqis by going to war than if we hadn’t?

And of course we won't mention the current Shia uprisings that the US forces are slaughtering in Iraq.

But let's take a closer look at Iraq's "mass graves"...

The USA committed some horrendous atrocities on the Iraqis during the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq's infra-structure, crops, livestock, hospitals, water supply, electrical grid, all were targets of US bombings, an effort to "demoralize civilians of Iraq and accelerate the sanctions" that were to come, admitted the Pentagon.

Many observers commented that the 1991 Gulf conflict was not a 'war' in the conventional sense: throughout its most decisive phase -- from the beginning of the air strikes on 16 January to the onset of the Coalition ground offensive on 24 February -- allied aircraft ranged over the whole of Iraq, bombing at will (by the end of February well over 100,000 air sorties had been flown).

As early as September of 1990, Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Dugan told reporters that, as far as targets went, the "cutting edge would be downtown Baghdad."

The Washington Post reported that the list of targets Dugan proposed included Iraqi power grids, roads, railroads, and "perhaps" domestic petroleum production facilities.

Within days of that statement, Dugan was fired.

In late January 1991, after two weeks of bombing, the London Times observed that allied attacks were closely following Dugan’s description, "with the liberation of Kuwait as only part of the overall plan."

At 2:30 a.m. on 17 January 1991 the bombs began to fall, and for forty-two days U.S. aircraft attacked Iraq on an average of once every thirty seconds.

There were two thousand air strikes in the first twenty-four hours. More than 90 percent of Iraq’s electrical capacity was bombed out of service in the first few hours. Within several days, "not an electron was flowing." Multimillion-dollar missiles targeted power plants up to the last days of the war, to leave the country without power as economic sanctions sapped life from the survivors. In less than three weeks the U.S. press reported military calculations that the tonnage of high-explosive bombs already released had exceeded the combined allied air offense of World War II.

By the end of the aerial assault, 110,000 aircraft sorties had dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq, the equivalent of seven and a half atomic bombs of the size that incinerated Hiroshima.
http://www.iacenter.org/fireice.htm

Thousands of Iraqi troops were buried alive in their trenches, with US troops bulldozing over top of them;

"Many Iraqi soldiers were killed by the simple expedient of burying them alive: in one report, American earthmovers and ploughs mounted on tanks were used to attack more than 70 miles of trenches. Colonel Anthony Moreno commented that for all he knew, 'we could killed have thousands'.

One US commander, Colonel Lon Maggart, estimated that his forces alone had buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers.

"What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples arms and things sticking out of them,' observed Moreno.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=45

The US Pentagon defended this atrocity, saying there was a "gap" in international law that allowed for burying the troops alive.
http://jeff.paterson.net/aw/aw4_buried_alive.htm

And let's not forget THIS bit...

Blair: March 2, 2003
"If military action proves necessary, it will be to uphold the authority of the UN and to ensure Saddam is disarmed of his weapons of mass destruction, not to overthrow him. It is why, detestable as I find his regime, he could stay in power if he disarms peacefully."
http://www.sundayherald.com/print31827

Bush: March 5, 2003

"We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force,"
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Mar/03092003/nation_w/nation_w.asp

Three top Bush administration officials said today they would welcome exile for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and one, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, signaled the United States might allow Hussein to escape war crimes prosecution if he voluntarily steps down.
http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/01/20/official.html

President George Bush last night gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to give up power and go into exile.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31547

Saddam can stay if he disarms, Powell says
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/21/1034561443683.html

Rice and Powell Say that a Disarmed Saddam Could Stay in Power
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages/2159.html

[maxsolomon]

14. he's going to be cleared at his trial, & run for office again

the iraqis will be so desparate for stability & national pride they just might re-elect him.

won't that make bush look good?

[thebigidea]

15. as my father put it last year...

"I can't believe Bush has me almost rooting for Saddam fucking Hussein."

[wadestock]

16. WOW....well said....

You have to wonder if Saddam had come to the conclusion that the US was completely full of chit on a number of accounts. Particularly the first Gulf War in which they came to the US with the plan to take X miles of Kuwait as justification for their drilling sideways into Iraqi fields. Bush's "line in the sand" and decision for all out WAR was completely contrived. We should take that historically note of things because without that specific "Bush doctrine" we might not be in the mess that we're in today.

But then 10s of thousands of lives lost later, sanctions...and they were still rather accommodating don't you think? Truth is, the average American is not aware that we bulldozed their scuds into the ground and took away their ability to DISPENSE WMD...
It's been widely publicized that there were more weapons destroyed during the 10 years of inspections than in Desert Storm....why hasn't that fact stuck?

So the entire BS story that they had some CAPABIILITY as an eminent threat to us was entirely illogical....I view that as the real lesson here...not a failure of intelligence.....a failure of common sense. By the end of the century, Iraq had been reduced to a feeble fighting machine...no air force, no ability to wage war against anyone, let alone be able to do anything (expect destroy one tank by luck) against the world's finest army.

You have to wonder how they could ever believe that the US would pull off such an outrageous blitzgrieg annihilation of every single piece of military equipment (or anything that was standing even close to it).

Get the neocons out of the white house and congress....tweak the rate back up to 39%, and keep the religious right reconstructionists out of world politics and world domination.....

[salinen]

17. Yes to that last sentence.