:mad: How dare he state this :nook: Freaking Saddam apologist, he should have remembered Halabja. Anyone who states anything remotely similar to this must be a terrorist and must secretly harbour a crush on Sad-damn :nook:
On my less-sarcastic note, by the way, the point of this thread is NOT to have pity for Saddam Hussein. Let’s remember that most of our discussions in this Forum should revolve around what is best for the people of Iraq, especially the future generations of innocent children to come. With him out of the picture, let’s not reduce ourselves to a delusion that our work has finished. It has just begun. It was, and remains, extremely important to have him arrested and to hold him (and other parties) accountable for ALL of the human rights violations that occurred, and are occurring, in Iraq. For too long, this one man has personified an entire society. Let’s remember there are 22 million individuals in that country whose lives depend upon the day-to-day mundane issues of filling up their cars with gas, putting bread on the table for their kids, and finding decent employment. So yeah he’s gone, but this isn’t a time to party about it. He should face victims’ justice, not victors’ retribution - for the future domestic, political and legal stability of Iraq, i think that is extremely important.
*(I feel sorry for Saddam, says Pope's aide | World news | The Guardian), John Hooper
The Guardian, 17 December 2003
In a move that seems certain to outrage the US administration, one of the Pope’s most senior officials yesterday expressed “pity” and “compassion” for Saddam Hussein, and warned that his capture might do more harm than good.
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the pontifical council for justice and peace and the equivalent of a minister in the Catholic church’s “government”, was speaking at the presentation in Rome of a message from the Pope in which, among other things, he included a coded reminder to the world that the invasion of Iraq had been carried out without UN backing.
Cardinal Martino, whose department deals with a wide range of international issues, said he was pleased with the capture of Saddam and hoped it would bring peace and democracy. But he added: “I felt pity to see this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures … Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him.”
The Pope was fiercely critical of the Iraq war, which he repeatedly described as a “defeat for humanity”.
The cardinal described the capture of the former dictator as a “watershed”, but hoped “this will not have worse … consequences”. He said it was “illusory to hope that this will repair the dramas and the damage of the defeat for humanity that a war always brings about”.
A similar note was sounded in the Pope’s own message, prepared for the World Day of Peace which the Vatican celebrates on January 1. The pontiff did not allude directly to the US, but in a clear allusion to its side-stepping of the UN, he said: “Peace and international law are closely linked to each other: law favours peace.”
His message also appeared to echo the Vatican’s disquiet over the way that Washington is conducting its “war on terror”. Acknowledging that international law, as presently framed, was unable to cope properly with the phenomenon of terrorism, the Pope called for reforms to equip the world with “effective means for the prevention, monitoring and suppression of crime”.
But he pointedly remarked that “democratic governments know well that the use of force against terrorists cannot justify a renunciation of the principles of the rule of law.”
He added that the war on terrorism required more than just repression and retaliation. The Pope said those who wanted to put a stop to it had to do so “by eliminating the underlying causes” and “insisting on an education inspired by respect for human life”.*
