Saddams last words.

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Re: Saddams last words.

Sunnis will be slaughtered in eye-rack whether Americans leave or stay. eye-racky Shias are led by the same people that hung saddam.

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Actually, the ones who made him out to be a ruthless dictator are the same ones who once praised Ariel Sharon as 'a man of peace...'

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Saddam is the one who made himself out to be a ruthless dictator by his own actions. The proof is there. To propose anything else is nothing short of complete ignorance or denial.

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As the below article states you dont need to be a Saddam sympathiser to feel disgusted with the way he was treated.

These shameful events have humiliated the Arab world | Ghada Karmi | The Guardian
Ghada Karmi
Tuesday January 2, 2007
The Guardian

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein’s execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. The vengeful Shia mob that was allowed to taunt the man’s last moments, and the vicious executioners who released the trapdoor while he was saying his prayers, turned this scene of so-called Iraqi justice into a public lynching. One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathiser to be horrified that he should have been executed - and, so obscenely, on the dawn of Islam’s holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world.
What was the executioners’ hurry? Why was Saddam condemned for one of his lesser crimes, ignoring the far larger ones for which many of his victims had sought retribution? In their unseemly haste to kill him, the judges ended up looking mean-minded, bloodthirsty and vengeful, while Saddam retained a dignity to the end that drew the reluctant admiration of many of his enemies.
It was always clear that Saddam’s fate was sealed from the moment US forces “got 'im”, in Paul Bremer’s tasteless phrase. He was to be used as a trophy of a mindless and catastrophic war, to redeem America’s dented image. But it was also essential to stop him revealing secrets about the west’s past enthusiasm in supporting and arming his regime. Hence he was tried on the relatively minor charge of killing 148 people in the village of Dujail, after a plot to assassinate him. Far better to put him away safely for that rather than risk his exposing western hypocrisy, treachery and double-dealing.
For the Arab world, this has been a shameful, humiliating event that underlines its total surrender to western diktat. The execution was carried out under the auspices of a foreign occupying power, and with a clear western message: we give ourselves the right to invade a sovereign Arab state and remove its leader because he offends us; we think you Arabs are incapable of sorting out your own affairs in accordance with our interests, so we will do it for you.
Saddam was held in US custody right up to the end and only handed over to the Iraqis for the distasteful deed, his body whisked away immediately afterwards by a US helicopter for a hasty burial. Yet this was billed as an independent decision of a “sovereign state”, as if any such thing were possible under occupation. The fact that this was the act of an Iraqi government dominated by Saddam’s Shia enemies made the final outcome a foregone conclusion. Yet the Arab states stood by, swallowing their humiliation in silence and letting US/Iraqi “justice” take its course, hoping no one would notice how some of them had supported Saddam’s war on Iran in the 80s, fought to a large extent on their behalf.
But the west should also be ashamed of what was a clear miscarriage of justice, carried out in the face of its strident demands of the Arabs for democracy and the rule of law. The trial judgment was not finished when sentence was pronounced. Saddam’s defence lawyers were given less than two weeks to file their appeals against a 300-page court decision. Important evidence was not disclosed to them during the trial, and Saddam was prevented from questioning witnesses testifying against him. Several of his lawyers were threatened or actually assassinated, and the trial was subjected to continuous political interference.
Any pretence that this was an exercise of due process is farcical. Of course Saddam himself was a brutal tyrant, but the kangaroo court that tried him lacked any serious legal credibility. Yet no western leader (or Arab one for that matter) was prepared to say so, or exert any pressure to have the defendant tried by an international court. Whatever else Saddam was, he was the constitutionally recognised Iraqi president. Yet he was left to the mercies of a campaign of revenge masquerading as legal process.
Britain, which does not support the death penalty, did not strive hard to prevent it. No western leader has been treated in this way, and Arabs should ask themselves why this exception was made. Was it because there is one rule for them, and another for western “civilised” people?
For everyone concerned, this was a lost opportunity: for the Arabs, to have protested against this western humiliation and regained some dignity; for the Islamic world, to speak out against a sacrilegious act; and for Britain and America, to have made up, however belatedly, for their arrogance and aggression against an Arab nation that had never harmed them. Most of all, it was a chance for the “new” Iraq to have shown that it would not conform to the western stereotype that led to the country being invaded in the first place - of an unruly, despotic people who thrive on bloodshed and revenge.
· Ghada Karmi is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter [EMAIL=“[email protected]”][email protected]

first day in office..
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Re: Saddams last words.

I was just watching CNN where Jim Clancy and Hala Gorani were grilling the Iraqi National Security Advisor on the cell phone pictures of Saddam’s hanging and the taunts from the Shia extremists. The minister seemed very irritated and angry, also blaming the American’s for the failure of their security checks which allowed these extremists into execution room with their cellphones.

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This guy and the former Iraqi Information Minster need to get together and have their own show, it’s pure comic gold.

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The rational seems to be that that the behaviour of the government was ok however the problem was that someone made an unauthorised recording.

In fact the real problem is the behaviour of the u.s and its puppet government and the recording is not an issue in fact it was in public interest. The person that recorded the event should be given an award.

Talk about the twisted logic of these morons.They want to control what we think and they way we think.

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The problem wasn't with the taping of the incident as much as it was the barbaric, inhumane way he was treated before being hung. It came across as vengence, not justice.

2nd ODI, India vs Sri Lanka @ Nagpur
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Re: Saddams last words.

“Came across as” ???

From the whole farcical trial with overwhelming government interference and murdered defence lawyers through to chanting the names of Saddam’s opponents as he died, it was vengeance, not justice.

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Quite an eye-opener

For all his sins Saddam was a muslim and the few good things about the whole tragedy were

a- he truly faced it like a man, with dignity and calmness, with an erect head without asking for mercy. It takes immense guts to look so brave and composed despite knowing you are going to be hanged in a few seconds.
b- he died instantly and thank god for that. Allah made his last few seconds easy for him and his suffering was finally over &
c- he was able to say the Shahada twice (cut off at Mohammad pbuh during second recital) before his death.

I cannot imagine Bush or Blair going with the same dignity. They would have soiled their pants in fear and wept openly.

We all know from late Tarah Masih’s (the executioner) account how Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (not quite an angel himself) broke down and wept openly when they took him for hanging. How very relieved Benazir must be to know that there was no internet back then in 1979 (hence there is no cruel video footage of his hanging) but it must have brought back sad memories of her father’s death.

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Yes, the "unauthorized argument" was the one that the Iraqi minister was using on CNN, and then Jim Clancy cornered him saying 'well you filmed the whole thing yourself but cutoff at a certain point.' He pinned the minister down (in fact exposing his lies) when he said 'sir you came on CNN after the execution (and before the cellphone video released) to state that the excecution was conducted professionally and without any incident'. The minister made no reply to that all - in fact he looked a bit shell shocked by the question. Every news network in the west and the east is talking about the execution as an ugly, vindictive and Sectarian event, which the American's don't want anything to do with.

I was dining in an Iranian restaurant over Eid, and I spoke to some Iraqi Kurds who were working there, and although they were clearly happy that Saddam was dead, they were also angry at the Shia Arabs for executing him for crimes against them (the Shia's) only. They wanted Saddam tried for crimes against the Kurds as well, and then executed. There was a BBC debate involving an Iraqi Shia and a Kurd straight after the execution, and those divisions and resentment (by the Kurd) were exposed there as well.

The botched execution is probably the second biggest fiasco in the Iraq saga - after the invasion in 2003 that is. In fact I believe in may ways it is more dangerous than that as well, as now clearly the Shia extremists have acheived what the Sunni terrorists have not till date, namely clearly divide the country along bloody sectarian (and ethnic) lines.

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The deputy prime minister of uk tried to use the same argument, focusing more on the mobile phone recording than the incident itself. I think that the PR people worked this strategy out in washington and its being repeated everywhere else.

In Saddams letter posted at the start of this thread he does talks about the Americans and the Iranians trying to divide the people for their own interests. This appears to be the case.

Why would the Iranians and the Americans want to divide the Iraqis? Iranians want the Shias to prevail which they would as they are in majority in Iraqi. They see the removal of Saddam as an opportunity for them to fill the void. The US would be worried about Iraq coming under the influence of Iran. It is worried about the influence of Iran on Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The US may want to turn the Sunnis and the kurds against the Shias so that then it can use them as its proxy in the country and counteract the influence of Iran. The problem at the moment is that Sunnis are against the U.S so the U.S needs to change that situation.

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haha.. funny how they modified the translation.

Why didn't they translate Saddam's words - *hay elmargala - *right after the masked man said - *ela jehanum (to hell) *?