Saddam Hussein Execution, Iraq, Talk Radio

CLOSURE

Saddam's Execution Brings End To Brutal Era





*** Update below: HuffPo writer goes off deep end! ***

With Saddam Hussein's execution just minutes away, cable news networks have been well- positioned to capture the interest of Americans who ordinarily wouldn't be paying much attention to the news during a holiday week.

Update: it's over and was filmed! As of yet, no violence, only celebrations in Iraq. More here. FOX: Iraqi- Americans cheer execution

For talk radio, however, it's yet another squandered opportunity during evening hours when most are running syndicated reruns these days.

Meanwhile, executives for the major television networks were unsure as to how they should proceed with these fast- breaking developments, reports the New York Times.

At the FOX News Channel, Bill O'Reilly has been busy monitoring the situation tonight, while his foes at the Huffington Post are busy doing the same kind of hand- wringing we've seen so often from them since September 11.

Countering their sad attempts to minimize Saddam's reign of terror is the Boston Herald, which has published a particularly astute personal account of life under Hussein's tyranny:

Iraq native: ’It’s about time justice came down’

By O’Ryan Johnson
Friday, December 29, 2006 - Updated: 08:20 PM EST

Anwart Diab, 67, of Natick was born in Iraq and lived in Baghdad most of his life. In 1980 he had seen enough of Saddam Hussein’s beheadings, executions and mass graves. He worked as a government official in a state-run construction business from 1970 to 1980. He says he met then-Vice President Saddam Hussein on a few occasions and was still employed by the government during Saddam’s bloody power grab in 1979.

Diab left Iraq in 1980 to get a management degree in the United States. He opposes capital punishment, he says, but supports Hussein’s execution.

“My feeling is that it’s about time that justice came down. I personally am against capital punishment, but there is an issue with ethnic cleansing, there’s mass graves, there’s persecution on a grand scale. He’s not a common criminal.

“I was a government official from 1970 to 1980. Saddam was a strong vice president. Everybody feared him. In official meetings I had the chance to see him. He inspired awe. He inspired fear. He was the master manipulator. The master of the carrot and the stick. Those he could not buy, he would just execute.

“For instance a doctor from Tikrit, Raji al-Tikrit, he was executed by launching on him wild dogs. (Saddam) used to behead women that were accused of being prostitutes and leave their bodies without their heads in front of their families’ homes.

“Or somebody would get executed and he would demand the bullet back from his family. . . . He used to publicize that to inspire fear. You know (the novel) ‘1984.’ Iraq is a dramatization of ‘1984.’ He was the Big Brother.

“The insurgency. This has nothing to do with them. The Islamists, they don’t care about Saddam. They care about defeating the U.S. That’s the aim. Saddam is immaterial.

“The second point is there’s a vast silent majority in Iraq. The silent majority, the vast majority of the silent majority, supports the execution. (Carrying this) out . . . gives (credibility) to the government. Saddam, let’s not forget, his main source of power was he created an awe and respect and fear inside the people.

“The government in Iraq . . . will gain respect from the people through this execution. The government is looked on as a paper tiger. A government that’s a paper tiger goes nowhere. A real tiger is a source of respect.

“Besides again, the story is that this is thousands of murders. Not one or two. Every day there were mass graves.”

From O'Reilly's latest report:

It is about 4 a.m. in Iraq and Saddam's fate is now in the hands of his countrymen, as American officials have or soon will hand him over to the Iraqi Central Authority in Baghdad.

We learned while we were in Iraq a couple of weeks ago that Saddam was being held near Camp Victory on the outskirts of Baghdad by U.S. forces. But, since the Iraqi justice system has condemned Hussein to death, the Iraqis themselves will execute him. And that's good because the people Saddam brutalized should take care of him.

Now, some people are objecting to Saddam's execution. I myself oppose capital punishment, but I also understand that in cases involving crimes against humanity — like this one — a statement has to be made to the world.

There is no difference between Saddam and the Nazis who were executed at Nuremberg. Mass murder is mass murder. Evil people who destroy thousands of lives must be held to account.

Politically, the government of Iraq must show the world that it is viable and this is a step in that direction.

From the Huffington Post's Sheldon Drobny, an Air America co-founder:

Sheldon Drobny

December 29, 2006: A Typical Day In Baghdad


While the MSM is reporting about the insane plan to execute Saddam Hussein, there is not a whimper about the consequences of executing him and making him a martyr. Any sane U.S. President would order him to be tried as an international war criminal by the World Court. The problem is we have a mentally unstable President who should also be tried by the same court.

In the meantime, life (and death) goes on in Baghdad.

Below is an email I received today from an investgative reporter who is working with John Loftus and Nova M Radio to get the truth out to the American people that is not being fully reported by the MSM. It is yet another reason to support the disssemination of the truth by independent media. I have redacted some of the expletives.

Michael,

>>
>> Bagdhad is grim as hell. At the moment I'm scuttling
>> from dead body to
>> dead body. Everywhere, miserable f-ing people with
>> miserable f-ing
>> stories and no hope for the future.
>>
>> This city has gone from bad to worse. Christmas Day,
>> some Shiite kid
>> got shot down in his bakery by Sunni gunmen and we
>> turned up at the
>> scene a few minutes later; the blood was still wet
>> on the floor and
>> the body had been dragged out in the street. His
>> mother, little
>> brother and sister were mourning over the corpse. I
>> felt like a crap.
>> for taking photos, but I did it anyway because it
>> seemed important.

And from the HuffPo's Raed Jarrar:

Raed Jarrar

There Is No Victory in Saddam's Execution


Although news reports everywhere are contradicting themselves during this fluid situation, the truth is Saddam might be hanged very soon, within the next few hours or days.

This comes at a time when the Bush project is collapsing in Iraq. On the American side, the number of U.S. troops killed will reach to 3000 in the next few days.
On the Iraqi side, new attempts to create a pro-occupation coalition in the Iraqi government (led by Hakim, Hashimi, and Talbani-Barazani) failed after Sistani rejected the idea and refused to give his blessings. At the same time, an anti-occupation coalition is emerging inside and outside the Iraqi government and will include everyone except the failed pro-occupation alliance.

Clearly, there are problems.

* At the same time that millions of Iraqis were and are still being killed, injured, and displaced because of the U.S. interventions;

* At the same time that the Iraqi social fabric is being destroyed and turned into fragments;

* At the same time that the state Iraq is being literally "wiped off the map" and cut apart;

And here, the unhinged-athon continues at Arianna's Fun House, with Russell Shaw jumping in as well.

Between the Iraqis and Americans alike, it doesn't appear the angry left is going to gain much traction with this line of "reasoning". But we're not surprised they're giving it a try anyway.

Meanwhile, it's too bad talk radio is in such a damaged state these days, otherwise it could join the cable networks in celebration of a major accomplishment: the elimination of one of the world's greatest- ever tyrants.


UPDATE: post- hanging, they're burning up over at the HuffPo! Get a load of this new one:

Martin Lewis

WELL HUNG! Saddam Hung To Prove Bush is BETTER Hung... (Than His Dad)

bush1.jpg (Photo of well-hung leader by www.wacotrib.com)

We Got Him!!!! Only $354 Billion & 3,000 US Military!
(I'd call that a Bargain. The best we've ever had...)

Some thanks are in order:

1) To George W. Bush. It only cost $354 billion (and counting) and the lives of 3,000 very expendable US military to enable the President to demonstrate to his dad that he has a bigger Dick. Or is one...

Isn't it ironic - don'tcha think? Saddam hung so that Dubya can prove that he's BETTER hung...

2) To George H.W. & Barbara Bush for raising a child with such wonderful values.

3) To Dick Cheney. If it wasn't for his remorse about his part in the "failure" in 1991 to kill off Saddam (one of the most-cherished allies of the Reagan-Bush administrations) - he might not have had his "fever" to expend thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of American tax-payers' dollars getting Saddam this time around.

Meanwhile, here's a dose of sanity from Pirate's Cove. And many updates, including the president's statement, from Kathryn Jean Lopez and the rest of the team at NRO Online.

CNN notes that spectators were cheering and dancing:

Rubaie said the execution was videotaped and photographed extensively from the time Hussein was transferred from U.S. to Iraqi custody until he was dead.

Many of those who witnessed the execution celebrated in the aftermath.

"Saddam's body is in front me," said an official in the prime minister's office when CNN telephoned. "It's over."

In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said, "These are employees of the prime minister's office and government chanting in celebration." (Watch what Hussein's death could mean in Iraq Video)

He said that celebrations broke out after Hussein was dead, and that there was "dancing around the body."

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki did not attend the execution, according to an adviser to the prime minister who was interviewed on state television.

Saddam RIP: David A Lunde, Saddam photo: AP, Hanged: FOX, Saddam execution scene: Drudge, Noose: AP

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