The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

@achewood I am composing a tone poem about eagles, lawnmowers, and Ted Nugent. It is composed only of the sounds of those things.

Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Saddam Hussein Executed  (Read 2461 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

linnea

  • VIP
  • Ocular Shenanigans
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 168
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 3332
    • View Profile
Saddam Hussein Executed
« on: December 30, 2006, 05:44:58 am »
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6218485.stm

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location outside Baghdad's Green Zone for crimes against humanity.

The news was confirmed to the BBC by the Iraqi deputy foreign minister.

Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). A representative of the prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were present.
Logged

AugustWest

  • Over Easy
  • Philosopher King
  • Dude since Knucklehead times
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 774
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 10549
  • Bulbous, also tapered.
    • View Profile
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2006, 07:22:36 am »
I have extremely mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, if ever anybody deserved the death penalty it's Sadaam.  I'm pretty dubious about the morality of government sanctioned killing, SH was a pretty darn bad guy.

Looking at it from a purely pragmatic/political/how will this affect American interests perspective, I'm concerned that the timing was bad.  It's hard to imagine that this won't spur some level of violence from the Sunnis.  Plus, today is first day of one of the Eids. (What?  They executed him on Christmas?)  And the Kurds were upset because they thought the trial for the Kurdish gassings should be completed before any execution took place.  On the other hand, it does seem possible that such a quick, decisive execution could minimize the reaction.  An extended pre-execution period may have only worsened conditions.

All in all, it sucks.  It sucks that we're over there. It sucks that our soldiers are dying.  It really sucks that thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being killed and injured.  Please please please can we stop killing each other?
Logged
Infinitely vast, infinitely detailed.

littlefallsmets

  • Writer's Workshoppers
  • Philippe is standing on it.
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 363
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 6294
  • the perfect is the enemy of the good
    • View Profile
    • this is where I jot down random ideas
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2006, 08:58:45 am »
What a ghoulish fulfillment of the Celebrity Rule of Threes.

I dunno... I'm of a mind to believe that there isn't something awful enough one can do to deserve death. I don't think that anyone who's ever lived has ever deserved to die... even with the worst of us, the needed communal effort as a species against going into that dreamless sleep supercedes any sin. Sadaam Hussein, Adolf Hitler... the guy who cut me off in traffic, the guy who murdered my cousin when I was a kid... Ted Bundy, Ben Stiller, nobody.

All this said, you wonder who he would've been able to rat out had he gotten to live and talk. Oil For Food culprits in the UN? The neo-con progenitors in Washington who propped him up? All his death does is further burying the secrets to which he was the primary witness further into the ground with his corpse.

Maybe a martyr has been created, maybe it hasn't... maybe this is a milestone, maybe he's one more corpse in a growing pile of Cold War blowback sacrifices.

But nothing's been gained, as far as I can tell.

If for nothing else, the son of a bitch probably had some stories to tell that could bring down more than a couple of gods and monsters and... even if you could deserve death, I'd think that usefulness would trump anything else. But I'm possessed of a contradictory combination of humanism and cynicism and I could be wrong.
Logged
I do the Tweets @Cecconi140

wombat

  • English-Speaking Pizza
  • Mod Squad
  • Dude since Knucklehead times
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 644
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12493
  • Yeah man, these are pugs, not some fuck*ng lolcat.
    • View Profile
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #3 on: December 30, 2006, 12:55:35 pm »
I think there are lots of people who probably deserve to die, but that no one else deserves to decide who they are. 

Aside from that, what August said. The whole situation is so fucked up, and this might just fuck it up more. Happy fuck*ng New Year.
Logged
What is this, the fuckin' Algonquin Round Table or some shit?  - Nabu

If you're going to change your life then you have to change it every day, not just the days the world isn't taking a shit on you. -Doc

theinevitable

  • Writer's Workshoppers
  • Dude since Knucklehead times
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 486
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 12139
    • View Profile
    • tweet tweet fun fun
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #4 on: December 30, 2006, 02:24:59 pm »
yeah. for real, Wombie. My opinion is that the only person who has the moral authority to decide who lives or dies is me.

...but no, seriously, I get all weird about death-penalty stuff. Because there's a very real human urge towards revenge/"justice". But at the same time, that is the result, basically, of people being pissed off and vengeful. And, of course, human beings will always be vengeful.

But shouldn't we strive to make our government better than the sum of its parts?
Logged
Social pressures exist
And if you think about them all of the time
You're gonna find that your head's been kicked in
You're gonna do it all for the grind

dejavroom

  • Writer's Workshoppers
  • -=Ray=-
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 165
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 1362
  • confused and angry
    • View Profile
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2007, 11:58:09 am »
He sure looked incredibly cool and collected in the end (I mean, further down the footage there's also him yelling at the soldiers, calling them cowards and that type of stuff, but I felt like it was coming off more stern-like than whiny). In that there's something to envy already because I really hope I'm not the type of guy that would completely lose his marbles when faced with the prospect of death-in-a-couple-of-minutes. And what were they talking about so much, his executioners and he? For a while it seemed so Lynchian (hah), like if they were overworried about passing on the exact specific details on the whole mechanism and its outcome - and Saddam's expression of quiet assent as the masked men kept talking and waving. All in all, gripping television. A+
Logged
The absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.

Drygioni

  • formerly Judy
  • VIP
  • Onstad's Left Shoe
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 194
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 1796
    • View Profile
    • FACEBOOK
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2007, 12:35:56 am »
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070105/ap_on_re_us/mimicry_hanging

Damn. That's really quite sick revenge from beyond the grave.
Logged
I am sorry for my behaviour last night.

linnea

  • VIP
  • Ocular Shenanigans
  • *
  • Tiny cans of Dr Pepper: 168
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 3332
    • View Profile
Re: Saddam Hussein Executed
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2007, 04:06:15 am »
This whole thing is just creepy and weird. There was taunting between Saddam and some of the crowd before he died, and some Iraqi got it captured with a phone camera. And then there was the little boy in Texas who hung himself, which was linked by Judy.

I'm all for the death penalty, but it's weird how it's really blown up in the face of the current administration.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
« previous next »