Saddam Is Finally Executed

[demolaynyc 0]

By 11p Eastern Time, Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging. This execution was ruled by the government of Iraq. No video was shown on live television but just reports of it. However, reporters say there are videos and pictures taken before, during and after the execution. It was breaking news in CNN at Larry King Live. Obviously these videos taken at the execution of Saddam Hussein will be published in most video blogs. To me it's a clip that's worth checking out. I'm in favor for the hanging because of all the killing and genocide he's done, he deserved it. What I fear though is the evil plots of those who are against it and what they have in mind to avenge his death. I hope that the rebels die down so that Iraq will finally have a better society but who knows if that may even happen. What are your thoughts in this?

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

yup, he's finally killed, but I could care less.

 

Saddam execution 'will not end the violence in Iraq': Bush

 

U.S. President George W. Bush called the hanging of Saddam Hussein "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime," but acknowledged his execution will not stop the daily killings engulfing Iraq.

 

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself," Bush said late Friday in a statement from his Texas ranch.

 

Saddam, who ruled Iraq with an iron grip for almost 25 years, was hanged in Baghdad around 6 a.m. local time Saturday (10 p.m. ET Friday) in Baghdad's Green Zone, according to state-run Iraqiya television.

 

"Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," the report said. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

 

The station also quoted Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and former member of parliament, saying the execution was filmed and a doctor was present.

 

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein looks out as he sits in court while listening to the prosecution during his second trial in Baghdad earlier this month. Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein looks out as he sits in court while listening to the prosecution during his second trial in Baghdad earlier this month.

(Associated Press/ Nikola Solic)

 

Iraq's Deputy Foreign Minister Labeed Abawi told the BBC early Saturday the execution had been carried out.

Continue Article

 

Arab media showed images of jubilant Iraqis waving flags and dancing in the pre-dawn streets of Baghdad.

 

Also hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, according to the reports.

Appeal denied

 

Saddam, who was captured in December 2003 following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was convicted in early November of committing crimes against humanity in the slaughter of 148 Shia Muslims in the northern city of Dujail in 1982.

 

During his trial, the 69-year-old Saddam requested he be executed by firing squad "as a military man" and not by hanging, which he said would be a fate befitting "a common criminal."

 

His lawyers filed documents in a U.S. court Friday afternoon asking for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of Hussein to Iraqi officials.

 

But the appeal was denied late Friday.

 

The attorneys argued that because Saddam also faced a civil lawsuit in Washington, he had rights as a civil defendant that would be violated if he were executed.

 

The Pentagon said U.S. forces in Iraq were on high alert in anticipation of any violence following the execution of Saddam, whose brutal rule of the country spanned 24 years.

Execution comes amid bloody month

 

The execution comes as the U.S. military announced the deaths of three more soldiers in Iraq, raising this month's death toll to 106, which is the highest this year.

 

Those attending the execution included a Muslim cleric, lawmakers, senior officials and relatives of victims of Saddam's rule, an Iraqi government official told the Associated Press.

 

During a meeting Friday with families of people who died during Saddam's rule, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said opposing or delaying Saddam's execution would be an insult to his victims.

 

There was also speculation that the execution would be delayed by the religious holiday of Eid, which starts on Sunday for Sunni Muslims in Iraq. The Iraqi constitution states that people cannot be executed on state-recognized religious holidays.

Grim end

 

The 69-year-old son of peasant farmers began his reign over Iraq in 1979 and soon plunged his country into a devastating eight-year war with neighbouring Iran, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides.

 

The ruthless and flamboyant Saddam developed his mythology into a cult of personality and used his secret police to crush any opposition through torture and executions. He ordered the use of chemical weapons to crush a rebellion by minority Kurds in the north of the country.

 

He ordered the construction of dozens of lavish palaces around the country and the erection of countless statues and murals glorifying his visage.

 

In August 1990, Saddam and his army invaded Kuwait as a result of a long-standing territorial dispute, proclaiming it Iraq's 19th province. He defied UN orders to retreat from the tiny country, which resulted in the Persian Gulf War with U.S.-led troops launching a relentless air offensive on Baghdad in January 1991.

 

The six-week war proved disastrous for Iraq. UN terms imposed strict conditions on the country, including the destruction of all stockpiles of weapons.

 

His sparring with UN weapons inspectors and three U.S. presidents frustrated the world community for more than a decade until his ouster.

With files from the Associated Press

 

Source: CBC News

 

xboxrulz

[leafbunk 0]

While many people support the hanging of Sadam, others who supported his actions will view him as a martyr. Personally I don't have many thoughts on his death. Death doesn't bring justice, nor does it fix problems that the particular person might have created while living. Still though, for many people his death will be looked at as a huge weight than has been lifted from their conscience. *shrug* It's amazing how one person's actions (or in this case, the action done to them) can affect and captivate the attention of the world.

Edited December 30, 2006 by leafbunk (see edit history)

[seec77 0]

As many people said, Saddam Hussein's death will not help anyone. The only thing it might do is make the tyrant feel less guilty, as he can finally feel closure when he gets his punishment.As an Israeli, I don't feel any safer now that's he's not alive. The threat from Iraq is always there, especially now that our prime minister accidentally blurted out that Israel is working on nuclear weapons at the nuclear reactor in Dimona. Executing dangerous people is not the solution... talking is the only way to solve this world-wide problem!Besides, I don't feel that this man is really dangerous for himself. That's like saying that Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin were of high risk. I mean of course, they created chaos and destruction, but that was only by way of influence. Would you have met in solitude with any of them, you would have found them harmless, because they don't feature extraordinary physical strength (that I know of). Saddam dead is not better than a Saddam cut off from the outside world.

[toby 0]

He got sentanced to death on the first of about 18 charges, each similar sizes. Should be dead, but not on the first offence.

[Markymark2 0]

Wow the usa finally get the blood they wanted...USA sponsered execution is all i see it as...Why didnt they take him to Texas and do it there? We should be glad that the USA that has saved the world by caputuring such a dangerous man!! all those WMD he had pointing at us in the west!! gosh I feel SOO much more safer now this "Evil Doer" is in his grave!All those people in Iraq must feel SOO much safer knowing he is dead..I bet all the fighting will end tomorrow! or will it stay the same? I think more Iraqi people have died in the last 4 years than over the time of the 20 year reign of Saddam..but hey we will NEVER see Bush, Blair, Cheyney and Rumsvelt in the dock..they are "Evil Doers" too..they got just as much as blood on thier hands..

[Elmbonsai 0]

When I found out about Saddam being executed my first response wasn't, YAY for America or for Iraq, but instead it was "why didn't they settle on current pictures to show of him!"Let me clarify, he was an old man, yet we would see pictures of him when they would talk about his reign and they would show pictures of him when he was young-er.I assume when the commentaries wanted him to look mean and scary they would show him with an AK-47 rallying his troop and when they wanted to portray a defeated man they would show him at some table with gray hair. I am not talking about the times they showed him in jail, he didn't look like any of his photos in the video they showed of him in jail. He acutally looked more like some Italian grandpa, mine to be exact.I guess my point is he had many look-a-likes are we sure we got the right one?The buzz seems to be that it doesn't matter how many "Saddams" we kill there will be someone else to take his place.I am concerned that this is just a ploy to draw our attention while something else happens that "they" may not want to us to think about.I am not against the Government, I support our troops, I just think that politicians don't stop being politicians because you give them control over the "big red button."

[Aka_Bar 0]

Well, i think that GOD gave us Life and ONLY GOD can take it back, and No ONE and NO THING able to do so!!!! it had wrote in the Koran and also in the Bible!!!! And i think its a MURDER of the Century!!! Howevery we are not able to know full what he has done and then kill human for it!! Only GOD can see every thing!!

[Grafitti 0]

Saddam perhaps deserved the death sentence, but come on, so does Bush. So does anyone else who kills innocent people. The irony is that America condoned and supported Saddam as long as it was in their best interests and he was a loyal underdog. Then as soon as he started becoming too difficult to keep under their control, they conveniently turned him into a scapegoat. If the US was less powerful, some other country could do the exactly the same thing they did - muscle into the country, murder a bunch of civilians along the way, capture the president, and execute him for genocide, or WMD, or nuclear ambitions, or whatever the current fad is. Saddam was not an angel, but he kept relative law and order in the country. When the US first was mobilizing to invade Iraq, the first thing i thought was that it would end in another Kosovo. I had just come back from humanitarian aid work there, and you saw the exact same thing: a country with varied religions and cultures, where the underlying hatred is so strong, a dictator is the only thing that will keep them together. And under Tito they lived in relative peace. Yes they had their secret police and imprisonment without trial, disappearances, etc, but is the self-righteous USA any better? What about Guantanamo? What about all the other detention camps that aren't as publicized? It's exactly the same thing. So anyways now that the US has removed Saddam, the only one who could hold the country together, all of a sudden up flare these tribal rivalries, clashes between Shias and Sunnis and Kurds and whatnot, and it's a big surprise to them? Read your newspapers. Even TIME, which is strongly slanted towards US and Israeli foreign policy, in their interviews with Iraqis today, every one of them wished that Saddam was back in power. Iraq was an Arab role model. It was technologically advanced, it had proper power, water, sewage, roads and an economy that despite years of almost complete economic sanctions was still plugging along. Saddam enforced peace between the split Muslim factions, and protected the christians. Yes, there was a large christian population in Iraq, and they coexisted peacefully. Saddam's right-hand man Tariq Aziz was a christian. There you had a middle-eastern country more open-minded than any other, and what do we do? Bomb it back to the stone age and create absolute chaos.

[Melanova 0]

Wow the usa finally get the blood they wanted...USA sponsered execution is all i see it as...
Why didnt they take him to Texas and do it there? We should be glad that the USA that has saved the world by caputuring such a dangerous man!! all those WMD he had pointing at us in the west!! gosh I feel SOO much more safer now this "Evil Doer" is in his grave!

All those people in Iraq must feel SOO much safer knowing he is dead..I bet all the fighting will end tomorrow! or will it stay the same? I think more Iraqi people have died in the last 4 years than over the time of the 20 year reign of Saddam..but hey we will NEVER see Bush, Blair, Cheyney and Rumsvelt in the dock..they are "Evil Doers" too..they got just as much as blood on thier hands..

It was an Iraqi court that tried him not an American. It would have been much simpler if the marine tha found him just tossed in the Handgernade.

[unimatrix 0]

It was an Iraqi court that tried him not an American. It would have been much simpler if the marine tha found him just tossed in the Handgernade.

Couldn't agree more. Might have helped three years ago with restoring some order as there would have been no way in the world Saddam would have returned to power. Even handing him over to the Hague and letting the Europeans deal with him might have had a similar effect: he's gone and ain't coming back.

Why Sadr is still alive is well beyond me as Iraq has turned into a proxy war being supported by Iran. They are using the insurgancy in Iraq like Iran used Hezbulloh in proxy action against Israel to deflect attention away from their weapons programs.

Not tears shed here now that the SOB is dead.

[Elmbonsai 0]

I thought the trial was supposed to be held as a tribunal, like Nuremburg. Oh wait they couldn't have done it that way because then "the cowboy" would have to stand for his crimes as well.I am sure the court was completely fair and no jurer threats happened.This is the same story as all the other friend/foes of the US, first they are our friends and they allow us to do what ever we want to their country and their people and then when they start to speak up our leaders turn them into a bad guy with the proper media hype and then up until now the US spends Billions in the effort to find the new bad guy only to loose him at the last second. Then years later the bad guy will show up in the news and nobody thinks twice about him. Look at Castro, the last time you saw him on T.V did he make you mad?I suppose he and us are now friends because he can now recieve American products like Coka Cola and Best foods mayonaise (with a huge tarrif). I hope the terrorists don't want to attack him now because of his peoples way of life, I mean they can get mayonaise now!Think of what the French (freedom) will think of this!I suppose in the near future when you want to learn French you will have to ask to learn freedom, they might as well use it, because they arn't letting the public use it anymore*The reference to they, us, we, our, leaders refers to the persons in the democracy of the US. I as well as most of the rest of the population of the US are not part of this union of democracy as I/we have never been able or allowed to vote on any of the actions relating to us going to war or similar "anti-personnel actions." The president always seems to take this vote away from us, I suppose this is too important to gamble on such a risky 50/50 outcome.Has anyone noticed that since Saddam was executed that gas prices have gone up?Shouldn't they have gone down just as some sort of celebration?I suppose this proves that the war actually has nothing to do with oil, NOT!!

[yobster 0]

Although America was the tool used to bring down Saddam's rule, the real reason behind the war was, in fact, Israel.. Why Israel? might you ask. The answer is quite simple: Israel and Palastine are at total loggerheads with each other, and guess who chose to support Palestine? That's right: Saddam Hussein. I believe he was paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers somewhere in the region of $20.000 - I actually doubt very much if it had anything to do with oil directly, although I do admit that oil is one of the ways that the war has been funded.** oh yes, and lets not forget that it was also about votes.. since that's all any government really cares about. (the whole rally around the flag, strong leadership bollocks) - I mean, you have to be retarded if you think the US government really cares about liberating countries and removing dictators... have any of them heard of a continent called Africa? (funnily enough I bet quite a few of them think that Africa is just a small desert somewhere with a few hungry people)It is much the same as the cold war, in that the fighting ends up being centred in the weaker countries (e.g. Korea instead of China or Russia) and in this case: Iraq instead of the borders of Israel. - This is because America is afraid to fight in any war that it is not definitely going to win, and if you thought they cocked up the war in Iraq just imagine what it would be like fighting the real fanatics.The war had absolutely nothing to do with removing a dictator (one whose army was armed and trained by America) it was all about America protecting it's interests in the East by removing anti-American governments..You would have thought America would have learnt by now.. this is how I see it playing out:1. They remove the dictator through a bloody war2. The population suffers more under American rule than under the dictator3. America instills democracy in a country that knows nothing about it4. The people elect a strong leader who promises to restore order and send the Americans packing5. America leaves because of internal pressures to bring the men home and external pressures for them to pull out of the country6. The final result is another government which hates America, but this time it has more support from the population who have seen what the U.S. Army has done to their country.Granted that is a worst case scenario, but it isn't hard to see that war breeds hate and hate breeds further war. Not that America really cares what happens to the country after they leave, once the American people get bored of the war the government will drop the whole thing and leave quicker than they got there.I hope I didn't come off as some pompus *bottom*, it wasn't my intention.. I just pretend to know everything since it's easier to write something as if it is a fact than to put lots of ifs and maybes in.

Edited December 31, 2006 by yobster (see edit history)

[nightfox1405241487 0]

I first saw it on Digg before he was executed... I was at school helping with our annual web broadcast of our wrestling tournament and we had some downtime so we went on Digg.. I saw it and was like, "holy cow! guys, look at this!"There's also a graphic video someone shot with a cell phone floating around You Tube and Google Videos. It's pretty graphic, not for anyone with a weak stomach. It's not the official video, but if you were making a time capsule, it's good enough to go in there.Personally, imo, I think he got what he deserved, of course it was too late. As soon as they found him quivering in his hole they should have shot him. I know that Iraq is trying to be a democracy just like the US only because the US went in there and forced them to make a democracy. But in case anyone didn't notice, Iraq is NOT a duplicate of the US government and it never will be. I think the US should butt out of other countries' problems and let them work it out on their own. Just MHO.[N]F

[Hercco 0]

No matter who committed and whatever crime, I can't accept capital punishment. Saddam was certainly responsible of the crimes he was sentenced and countless more, there is no argument, but regardless, I can't accept it. I'm not a religious person at all but I don't think man has right to kill someone else. I don't believe in eye for an eye. Death sentence is a revenge and the ones handing out death penalties lower themselves to the level of the perpetrator. Considering Saddam, the most suitable penalty would've been putting him to work for the people who committed crimes against him. They should have made him (and his former allies...) build houses for the Kurds for example.