(UPDATE: Saddam executed) Saddam to be hanged by Sunday

Saddam is gonna be the next Tupac or Ken Lay if we never get to see a clearer video of it.

Thats mighty impressive that someone had the guts to pull out a camera cell phone in the middle of all that.

You would have thought somebody would have checked for electronic devices before hand. But hey its Iraq, where anything goes. The last great frontier.

 

He won't just be the next Tupac or Ken Lay, but all three of them will emerge, and take over Cuba, making it truly, the last frontier. Could you imagine that three headed monster?


Seriously, though, that was gutsy with the camera phone. I wonder when the real video will be out.

 

don't forget elvis... he's still roaming the earth too.


there is another camera, the link was posted earlier in the thread, but that video didn't actually show the break neck point. they stopped after they put the noose around him.

and how do we know it was actually saddam, and not one of his 12 lookalikes?

 

wow.

that looked...

see the way his head was snapped?

 

Congratulations ~ Saddam is officially a martyr and hero.

 

Bush gave Saddam a deadline to leave the country, and then tried to kill him before the deadline expired. Bush is singing the praises of a "fair" trial that was a farce, regardless of how one feels about Saddam. Now the man has been killed, and the last words he heard were the praises of supporters of the biggest sectarian murderers in the country. In between, and before it all started, Bush decieved the American people, and the world, about why he invaded Iraq. He ignored the advice of the military regarding the best way to invade and occupy the country, and then ignored the advice of the people on the spot about how to deal with the Iraqi Army, who were waiting for orders to return to their barracks and recieve a paycheck to feed their families.

Bush has been a complete disaster for the American people and Iraq. Saddam is dead. As things stand now, it changes nothing. The enormity of George W. Bush's mistakes as President far exceeds any satisfaction Saddam's death may give those who longed for it, as it affects the United States of America. Bush has been a disaster. The invasion and occupation has been a disaster. Saddam being dead, at this point, is yet another futile act by a President who is the height of futility, and the very imbodiment of the Peter Principal. That we have to wear this man around the neck of our country for another two years is an abomination.



D&D. Happy Holidays and a Better New Year.

 

that should be bush's punishment. actually, he would probably like it.

"this is just like skull and bones or when me and jeff gannon get together!"

 

excellent post.... not surprised it's receiving little attention.

 

It would have been cheaper for everyone if we had just sent in a hit squad.

DD

 

Just watched the video....

http://arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=90550&d=1&m=1&y=2007

 

You can actually pause the video towards the end (or click and drag the scroll bar) and see a clear picture of the end result as a camera flash occurs and illuminates Saddam. It's pretty horrific the way his neck is bent.

I'd say that confirms the deed.

 

I'm against the death penalty. Moreover, the way this was carried out reminded more of a backyard lynching than a proper process in any way.

 

US troops putting a bullet in his head while he was in the spider hole would have been more humane than masked men taunting him and pulling out cell phones. If anyone needed confirmation that Iraq is a joke.

 

I never believed for a second that it was a trial or anything like that. It was more like a show, a revenge. Not that he doesn't deserve it, but the american role in all this is a shame.

 

Happy New Year all!

Bush administration tries to distance itself from assassination.

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U.S. Questioned Iraq on the Rush to Hang Hussein
By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 — With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.

Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.

The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Hussein’s body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth.

The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end.

The Americans’ concerns seem certain to have been heightened by what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in video recordings made just before Mr. Hussein fell through the gallows trapdoor at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday. A new video that appeared on the Internet late Saturday, apparently made by a witness with a camera cellphone, underscored the unruly, mocking atmosphere in the execution chamber.

This continued, on the video, through the actual hanging itself, with a shout of “The tyrant has fallen! May God curse him!” as Mr. Hussein hung lifeless, his neck snapped back and his glassy eyes open.

The cacophony from those gathered before the gallows included a shout of “Go to hell!” as the former ruler stood with the noose around his neck in the final moments, and his riposte, barely audible above the bedlam, which included the words “gallows of shame.” It continued despite appeals from an official-sounding voice, possibly Munir Haddad, the judge who presided at the hanging, saying, “Please no! The man is about to die.”

The Shiites who predominated at the hanging began a refrain at one point of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!”— the name of a volatile cleric whose private militia has spawned death squads that have made an indiscriminate industry of killing Sunnis — appending it to a Muslim imprecation for blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. “Moktada,” Mr. Hussein replied, smiling contemptuously. “Is this how real men behave?”

American officials in Iraq have been reluctant to say much publicly about the pell-mell nature of the hanging, apparently fearful of provoking recriminations in Washington, where the Bush administration adopted a hands-off posture, saying the timing of the execution was Iraq’s to decide.

While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government — frustrated at what they call the government’s failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.

But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.

A senior Iraqi official said the Americans staked out their ground at a meeting on Thursday, 48 hours after an appeals court had upheld the death sentence passed on Mr. Hussein and two associates. They were convicted in November of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Shiite townspeople of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982. Mr. Hussein, as president, signed a decree to hang 148 men and teenage boys.

Told that Mr. Maliki wanted to carry out the death sentence on Mr. Hussein almost immediately, and not wait further into the 30-day deadline set by the appeals court, American officers at the Thursday meeting said that they would accept any decision but needed assurance that due process had been followed before relinquishing physical custody of Mr. Hussein.

“The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law,” the Iraqi official said. “We do not want to break the law.”

The American pressure sent Mr. Maliki and his aides into a frantic quest for legal workarounds, the Iraqi official said. The Americans told them they needed a decree from President Jalal Talabani, signed jointly by his two vice presidents, upholding the death sentence, and a letter from the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein, certifying the verdict. But Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, made it known that he objected to the death penalty on principle.

The Maliki government spent much of Friday working on legal mechanisms to meet the American demands. From Mr. Talabani, they obtained a letter saying that while he would not sign a decree approving the hanging, he had no objections. The Iraqi official said Mr. Talabani first asked the tribunal’s judges for an opinion on whether the constitutional requirement for presidential approval applied to a death sentence handed down by the tribunal, a special court operating outside Iraq’s main judicial system. The judges said the requirement was void.

Mr. Maliki had one major obstacle: the Hussein-era law proscribing executions during the Id holiday. This remained unresolved until late Friday, the Iraqi official said. He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime minister’s office at which American officers and Mr. Maliki’s officials debated the issue.

One participant described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.’ ”

To this, the Iraqis added what has often been their trump card in tricky political situations: they telephoned officials of the marjaiya, the supreme religious body in Iraqi Shiism, composed of ayatollahs in the holy city of Najaf. The ayatollahs approved. Mr. Maliki, at a few minutes before midnight on Friday, then signed a letter to the justice minister, “to carry out the hanging until death.”

The Maliki letter sent Iraqi and American officials into a frenzy of activity. Fourteen Iraqi officials, including senior members of the Maliki government, were called at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday and told to gather at the prime minister’s office. At. 3:30 a.m., they were driven to the helicopter pad beside Mr. Hussein’s old Republican Palace, and taken to the prison in the northern suburb of Khadimiya where the hanging took place.

At about the same time, American and Iraqi officials said, Mr. Hussein was roused at his Camp Cropper cell 10 miles away, and taken to a Black Hawk helicopter for his journey to Khadimiya.

None of the Iraqi officials were able to explain why Mr. Maliki had been unwilling to allow the execution to wait. Nor would any explain why those who conducted it had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.

But the explanation may have lain in something that Bassam al-Husseini, a Maliki aide closely involved in arrangements for the hanging, said to the BBC later. Mr. Husseini, who has American citizenship, described the hanging as “an Id gift to the Iraqi people.”

The weekend’s final disorderly chapter came with the tensions over Mr. Hussein’s body. For nearly 18 hours on Saturday, Mr. Maliki’s officials insisted that his corpse would be kept in secret government custody until circumstances allowed interment without his grave becoming a shrine or a target. Once again, the Americans intervened.

The leader of Mr. Hussein’s Albu-Nasir tribe, Sheik Ali al-Nida, said that before flying to Baghdad on an American helicopter, he had been so fearful for his safety that he had written a will. Bizarrely, Sheik Nida and others were shown on Iraqi television collecting the coffin from the courtyard in front of Mr. Maliki’s office, where it sat unceremoniously in a police pickup.

After the helicopter trip to Camp Speicher, the American base outside Tikrit, the coffin was taken in an Iraqi convoy to Awja, and laid to rest in the ornate visitors’ center that Mr. Hussein ordered built for the townspeople in the 1990s. Local officials and members of Mr. Hussein’s tribe had broken open the marbled floor in the main reception hall, and cleared what they said would be a temporary burial place until he could be moved to a permanent grave outside Awja where his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried.

At the burial, several mourners threw themselves on the closed casket. One, a young man convulsed with sobs, cried: “He has not died. I can hear him speaking to me.” Another shouted, “Saddam is dead! Instead of weeping for him, think of ways we can take revenge on the Iranian enemy,” Sunni parlance for the Shiites now in power.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Khalid W. Hassan from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Tikrit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/w...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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And Greenwald blows the Times out of the water. --

Iraqis learn the art of legal "workarounds"

This depressing New York Times article by John Burns and Marc Santora details the frantic, reckless manner in which Saddam Hussein was shoved into the noose in clear violation of Iraqi law. We can't even get a hanging right. With all of the world watching, we yet again were the primary authors of a violent, uncivilized, and primitive act which -- no matter how justified in some ultimate moral sense -- was carried out in the most thuggish, wretched, inept, and (we now learn) patently illegal manner.

It really is striking, and a potent sign of just how absurd is our ongoing occupation, that the "Iraqi Government" which we are fighting to empower could not even conduct this execution with a pretense of legality or concern for civilized norms -- the executioners were not wearing uniforms but leather jackets and murderers' masks, conducting themselves not as disciplined law enforcement officers but as what they are (death squad members and sectarian street thugs).

And the most revealing, and most disturbing, detail is that Saddam's executioners -- in between playground insults spat at a tied-up Saddam -- chanted their religious-like allegiance to Moktada Al Sadr, the Shiite militia leader whom we are told is the Great Enemy of the U.S., the One We Now Must Kill. This noble and just event for which we are responsible was carried out by a brutal, murderous, lawless militia. Freedom is on the march.

Despite all of these grim events, it must at least be encouraging to the Bush administration that the Maliki government is quickly learning some of the most important tools for governing. For instance, after Prime Minister Maliki was told that his Order to quickly exectue Saddam would violate several different legal constraints -- i.e., "laws" -- this is what ensued:

That is a sublime phrase -- "legal workarounds". Our polite media here at home refers to deliberate and knowing government lawbreaking as "bypassing" the law, or sometimes they will even pretend that the law being violated just does not exist. But "workaround" is a nice phrase, too.

The article details the "frantic quest" by the Iraqi government to concoct legal contrivances -- any at all -- to "justify" the immediate hanging despite the court's order. They finally compiled enough pretty, signed "decrees" to secure the Bush administration's approval to carry out the hanging. But the rush to snap Saddam's neck did not allow enough time for all laws to be "workedaround." Some laws standing in the way of the hanging had to be deliberately disregarded:

Or, put another way, the Iraqi Government -- revealingly "frustrated" by the need to pretend to operate within the law -- knew that hanging Saddam in this manner was illegal, but they did it anyway because they know there will be no consequences. No wonder the President praised their adherence to "due process" and the "rule of law" -- the President's followers and the Shiite militias ruling Iraq appear to share a similar understanding of those terms.

As Chris Floyd notes, many of the "facts" reported by the Times article are almost certainly rank fiction emanating from the White House with the intent of distancing itself from this grotesque affair -- hence, all of the oh-so-concerned Bush officials oh-so-worried about the need to adhere to legal constraints, urging the Iraqis to slow down and carry out the execution in a dignified, orderly and legal manner, and consenting only because the Iraqis asserted the prerogatives of their sovereignty.

But as Floyd also correctly observes, Saddam was in U.S. custody until the very last minute, and both the fact and the terms of the execution required the approval of Bush officials, which they gave -- implicitly, if not explicitly, by handing over Saddam for his middle-of-the-night noose fitting. Comparisons to the relatively dignified and orderly Nuremburg executions only serve to highlight how far America has tumbled under this administration, on every level that matters.

So this is the grand and noble achievement which the President and his band of bloodthirsty followers are reduced to celebrating -- a lawless, thugish hanging, carried out in clear and deliberate violation of the law, by a bunch of homicidal street thugs and militia foot soldiers who themselves will be included among our next kill targets once our glorious "sustained surge" begins.

No matter what we touch in Iraq, no matter what we do, it only makes things worse -- never better -- because the root of what we are doing is itself so rotted and incoherent and corrupt. It's beyond doubt that we're going to be treated to much more "freedom" and "justice" like this over the next two years in Iraq, at least.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

 

More on the times article --

This is a very curious story. Some of it is probably true, some of it is patently false – and all of it is a massive, panicky CYA job by American officials. However, through the heavy fog of this assemblage of spin, it seems fairly obvious what has really happened: the same group of dim-witted fools, ideological cranks and violent sectarians who have driven the whole misbegotten enterprise in Iraq came up with yet another plan that they thought was a great idea. But as always, it turned out to be a botched job that has made a hellish situation even worse.

Two things stand out in this story by Burns and Santora – or rather, two salient facts lurk behind the furious spin that the reporters have assembled. First, that despite all the protestations by U.S. officials here, it was the Americans who actually had the final say in letting the execution go forward. And second, the rank lawlessness of the execution is in fact a direct emulation of American "democracy" under the Unitary Executive Decidership of George W. Bush.

The latter point brings out some of the bitter black comedy in the story, where Burns and Allen – sorry, Burns and Santora – convey the words of a "senior Iraqi official" eager to tote PR water for the American bosses:

You must admit this is rich: Bush officials – creators of the special "military tribunals" for their special, made-up category of "enemy combatants" who can be jailed indefinitely without trial or charges or even killed, all at the arbitrary order of the omnipotent president – fretting over "due process" for Saddam Hussein. American citizens are no longer guaranteed due process – which is now solely in the Decider's gift – but we are to believe that Saddam's rights were uppermost in occupier's mind before his execution.

Well, who knows? Maybe this is one of the true bits of the story. It may well be that Bush was more concerned with Saddam's legal niceties than those of his own citizens; after all, he and Saddam have much more in common than Bush does with the overwhelming majority of Americans. They love power, love torture, love blood to be spilled at their command, see themselves as world-historical figures, great warriors inspired by God, etc.

But of course, it's far more likely that these concerns over "due process" are ex post facto fictions. At least at the highest levels. It could well be that some of the American officials on the ground realized how utterly stupid it was to rush Saddam's execution and hold it on one of Islam's highest holy days, and to let the hanging itself turn into a farce, with hecklers from Motqada al-Sadr's gang allowed in to thug it up. So yes, there may be a germ of truth in these butt-covering exercises. But obviously, if any such officials really exist, they were overruled by Washington – as always is the case with any U.S. official who has the slightest knowledge of the realities in Iraq.

After all, why should any Bush minion fret over the execution procedure? As a Maliki mouthpiece points out, Saddam was tried and convicted under a "special tribunal" operating outside the ordinary Iraqi justice system – exactly like Bush's "military tribunals." Why shouldn't the Iraqis make up the law as they go along, just like their liberators? These crocodile tears over "due process" for Saddam mask a deep and sinister hypocrisy.

I think this is how the deal went down, more or less. Maliki – the leader of a faction of violent sectarians – wanted Saddam hanged right away, as an Eid holiday gift to his base, as stated in the story. In response to this, Bush Faction leaders said, Well, OK, why not? Bush too wanted Saddam killed as a blood sacrifice to his base. U.S. officials on the ground – the ones who will have to deal with the backlash – tried to make the best of a bad situation and at least delay the execution. But they were overruled – not by Maliki, as the story ludicrously suggests – but by the White House.

For the overriding fact remains: the execution on Saturday could not have been carried out at that time, and in that manner, without approval from Washington. Now, we don't want to fall into the fallacy here that ascribes omnipotent power to the Bush Faction, as if they exercised absolute control over events in Iraq. Clearly, events there have outrun the Bushists control almost from the very beginning. (They are, however, responsible for all the events that have grown out of the war, which they launched, very deliberately, in the full knowledge that it was not necessary.)

But in this particular case, they did have control of events – because they had literal, physical control of Saddam's body. (A control they continued to exercise after the execution, by the way, transporting the corpse to its resting place by an American helicopter. It seems the "sovereignty" of the Iraqi government in this case lasted only for the brief time it took for the hanging.) Saddam could not have been hanged by the Maliki government if the Americans had not physically turned him over to the executioners, who did their work under American auspices, on an American base. If U.S. officials – those with any real power, that is – had had genuine concerns about the timing of the execution, they could have simply refused to turn Saddam over until, say, after Eid or at some other point. What could Maliki have done about it? Nothing.

The fact is, the leaders of the Bush Administration wanted Saddam dead, sooner rather than later. So they let Maliki kill him. They are doubtless glad to let Maliki take the heat for the botchery – thus the insultingly crude stories about Bush and his gang wringing their hands and whimpering, goodness gracious me, we didn't want it to happen this way, but what we could do? That big bad Maliki threw his weight around, and we had to give in.

No, despite the noble stenography of Burns and Santora, the facts are plain: Saddam was killed on Saturday because – or whatever reason, or reasons, or no clear reason at all -- the Bush White House wanted it to be so. If they hadn't, it wouldn't have happened.

http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle....ption=com_content&task=view&id=983&Itemid=135

 

Agree. The Shiites got their revenge on Saddam. Congrats. Maybe the healing can now begin.

 

doubtful


where's the real video???? i'm claiming conspiracy until it's released.


saddam has/had tons of money, it'd be pretty easy to pay off the few in the room and let him live out his life in the desert somewhere.

 

lots of healing


Jan. 1, 2007, 11:48PM
ANGRY SUNNIS DEFACE SHRINE
Protests over Saddam's hanging may signal spread of the insurgency

By LAUREN FRAYER
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — After Sunni insurgents in February blasted the golden dome off Samarra's Al Askari mosque, one of the holiest Shiite shrines in the world, Shiite death squads unleashed a campaign of vengeance.

The remains of tortured Sunnis began appearing daily on Baghdad streets.

On Monday, a Sunni mob enraged over the chaotic execution of Saddam Hussein took their symbolic revenge on Al Askari. They broke the locks off the bomb-shattered building and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the dictator.

This deliberate, public provocation could signal that many Sunnis who have remained on the sidelines of Iraq's sectarian bloodshed will no longer stay there.

Until Saddam's execution Saturday, most Sunnis sympathized with militants but avoided taking a direct role in the sectarian conflict. The current Sunni protests, which appear to be building, could signal a spreading militancy.

Sunnis were not only outraged by Saddam's hurried execution, just four days after an appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence. Many were also incensed by the unruly scene in the execution chamber, captured on video, in which Saddam was taunted with chants of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada."

The chants referred to Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who runs one of Iraq's most violent militias and a major power behind the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Many Sunnis are also upset that Saddam was put to death the day that Sunni celebrations began for Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim festival.

The judge who first presided over the case that resulted in Saddam's death sentence said the former dictator's execution at the start of Eid was illegal according to Iraqi law.

Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, presided over Saddam's trial on charges he killed 148 Shiite men and boys in Dujail, north of Baghdad, who were involved in a botched assassination attempt in 1982. The judge was removed from the case after Shiite complaints that he was too lenient.

In a Sunni neighborhood in northern Baghdad, hundreds of demonstrators mourned the executed leader. Some praised the Baath Party, the outlawed nationalist group that under Saddam cemented Sunni Arab dominance of Iraq.

"The Baath Party and Baathists still exist in Iraq, and nobody can marginalize it," said Samir al-Obaidi, 48, who attended a Saddam memorial in the Azamiyah neighborhood.

In Dor, 77 miles north of Baghdad, hundreds more took to the streets for the dedication of a giant mosaic of Saddam.

Mourners at a mosque in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit slaughtered sheep as a sacrifice. The mosque's walls were lined with condolence cards from tribes in southern Iraq and Jordan who were unable to attend.

Saddam's eldest daughter briefly attended a protest Monday in Jordan — her first public appearance since her father was hanged.

"God bless you, and I thank you for honoring Saddam, the martyr," said Raghad Saddam Hussein, according to two witnesses.

chronicle

 

I was being sarcastic as this is religious feud that has been on going for centuries.