do any Americans believe US politicians should be punished for supporting Saddam?

[Woodrow]

Originaly posted by Brother Zulkiflim

Salaam,

the question is ,,,do any American beleive any US politician should be punished likewise for arming and supporting saddam?

If the answer is no...why?

Even accomplices to murder is punished,and yet,the US has cavalierly given WMD to Saddam and encourged his murder of Kurds and Iranians...

will any US politician heads role?

If the answer is none,then all i cna say is the day will come when even repenting is of no use,the punishment will be where even stones burn.

Escaping Justice from this world ensures your Justice will be met in the next.

All the western world notion of Justice it seems is never oft pointed inwards but outwards,so can there be peace?

[Islamicboy]

True justice is with Allah on the last day Inshallah

[Curious girl2]

Originaly posted by Brother Zulkiflim

I'm not American but yes, I think all those the formed the decision to invade Iraq should be investigated, preferably by a 3rd party, possibly the UN and if need be, prosecuted. Now either the intelligence gatherers deceived the decision makers over the WMD or the decision makers knew there wasnt any WMD there and decided to invade anyway. The *job* of sorting Saddam out should have fell to the international community.

But, will it make any difference now? Iraq is in a state of civil war, if the US and UK withdraw now what will it acheive? I dont know the answer, if they stay I cant see them bringing peace and if they go it will be mass slaughter. Perhaps the answer is for the muslim nations to send in troups to take over. I really dont know.

Peace CG

[Woodrow]

Excellent point curious girl:

Perhaps the answer is for the muslim nations to send in troups to take over. I really dont know.

That is the most sensible suggestion I have heard. It is agreed that Iraq is in Chaos. The pull out of any troops is going to result in slaughter. Now is the time the Muslim world needs to unite and form a peace keeping force to go in and help restore order to Iraq.

[Jayda]

i think so... just not punished like saddam... i hope i do not offend anybody with this (why does it seem like everytime i say this somebody gets offended?) but i do not believe in the death penalty and i think executing him... even though he was a monster... was wrong...

i think anybody connected to his crimes should be punished for their part in them...

[worldpolice]

Yes of course why double standard. One dictator is gone, and now it is time for the others.

[Woodrow]

I also agree that equal crimes deserve equal punishment, without regard as to who commits them.

[Trumble]

the question is ,,,do any American believe any US politician should be punished likewise for arming and supporting saddam?

If the answer is no...why?

No. Mainly because, inconvenient though the facts may be, the US didn't arm Saddam, the Russians (mainly) and French did. The 'precursor' chemicals for chemical weapons (nobody sold Iraq WMDs) came both from the US and (mostly) from elsewhere. That is not to say that the Reagan administration (and the British administration, and the German administration, and the Chinese administration, etc, etc...) didn't turn a blind-eye on occasion to the supply of 'dual-usage' goods and chemicals, or that they didn't supply some support (probably intelligence) once the Iran-Iraq war started. But the basic thesis that the US was responsible, or at least more so than anybody else, is simply untrue. The other reason is simply that the person ultimately responsible for what the US may have done in that period, Reagan, is now dead.

I'm British, rather than American, BTW.

[Dahir]

That picture speaks volumes on the term 'traitor' and that picture also speaks volumes about relationships.

Donald Rumsfeld was once a good friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld sold out Saddam Hussein and handed him over to his political rivals because Saddam failed to comply with their verbal contracts.

Shortly after, Rumsfeld lost his job and Saddam lost his life.

Two treasonous men met with cold judgement.


*the other men in the picture are assured to be sleeping with an open eye*

[Keltoi]

I don't think I would go as far as to call Rumsfeld and Saddam friends. Rumsfeld was a very good Secretary of Defense in my opinion, and became the fall guy due to his combative relationship with the media. It is common form of greeting when meeting the head of state of any country to at least shake hands. That is hardly signs of a friendship.

On this issue of whether U.S. politicians should somehow be held as responsible as Saddam for the atrocities he committed is a foolish notion to begin with. As Trumble mentioned in an earlier post, the U.S. had no more involvement in what Saddam Hussein chose to do or who he chose to kill any more than various other countries who did business or had some sort of political relationship with him.

[Trumble]

That picture speaks volumes on the term 'traitor' and that picture also speaks volumes about relationships.

No, it shows two people shaking hands. Sometimes diplomatic protocol involves doing that with people who wouldn't exactly be your first choice as dinner guests.

Perhaps you would like me to google up a few other 'famous' handshakes to see if you give them the same interpretation? Perhaps I should start with another Saddam 'shake', maybe that with arch Zionist and neo-con George Galloway?! :X

[Dahir]

I don't think I would go as far as to call Rumsfeld and Saddam friends. Rumsfeld was a very good Secretary of Defense in my opinion, and became the fall guy due to his combative relationship with the media.

Rumsfeld was handed one task: Defend America!

Under his watch, the United States was victim to its worst terror attack. Shortly after, he led the United States into one of the worst military campaigns in modern history; and his campaign of vengeance actually took the same number of American lives as the act which is supposed to avenge.

He is the definition of failure. At least George Bush and other incompetent leaders can say they had OTHER tasks; but Rummy had ONE task and he failed it to the highest degree humanly imaginable.

And THAT is not an overstatement. *OFF TOPIC -- sorry*

No, it shows two people shaking hands. Sometimes diplomatic protocol involves doing that with people who wouldn't exactly be your first choice as dinner guests.

Perhaps you would like me to google up a few other 'famous' handshakes to see if you give them the same interpretation? Perhaps I should start with another Saddam 'shake', maybe that with arch Zionist and neo-con George Galloway?! :X

They were diplomatic friends; is that more politically correct...

And as for Galloway, you just furthered my point; handshakes signal friendships. Galloway is a longtime and somewhat infamous friend of Galloway.

[imaad_udeen]

Only if it can be proven that they had a specific role in any of the massacres Saddam committed.

[Curious girl2]

Only if it can be proven that they had a specific role in any of the massacres Saddam committed.

Ok lets put it this way:

A man goes into a knife shop. He buys one then goes out onto the street and kills 3 people. Do you prosecute the shop keeper who sold him the knife. Probably not.

How about this:

A man goes into a knife shop. He asks for a knife, the shop keeper sells him one, despite knowing the man very well, knowing that he has a prior history of violence with knives and knowing that the man is looking mentally unstable. The man goes out onto the street and kills 3 people. Do you prosecute the shopkeeper?

YES! He has to take some responsibility for the deaths, he knew the man's history, knew that the man who was buying the knife would in likelyhood commit a violent offence. His excuse could have been that he thought the knife was for cutting bread. But in reality we know that was unlikely given the mans history.

All the countries that sold Saddam componants for WMD, knew Saddam's history. They knew he was a violent man, who had killed to get to the top, killed to stay there and would kill anyone who opposed him. Their excuse could have been that the componants also could have been used for innocent purposes. But in reality that defence wont stand, as all the leaders of the countries that sold componants to Saddam Hussein, knew about his violent history.

So, every single leader who was in power when their country sold componants for WMD to Saddam Hussein, is culpable. They knew what he was likely to do with them, but they still sold the weapons to him. No excuse, they should have been tried alongside him.

Peace CG

[Woodrow]

Ok lets put it this way:

A man goes into a knife shop. He buys one then goes out onto the street and kills 3 people. Do you prosecute the shop keeper who sold him the knife. Probably not.

How about this:

A man goes into a knife shop. He asks for a knife, the shop keeper sells him one, despite knowing the man very well, knowing that he has a prior history of violence with knives and knowing that the man is looking mentally unstable. The man goes out onto the street and kills 3 people. Do you prosecute the shopkeeper?

YES! He has to take some responsibility for the deaths, he knew the man's history, knew that the man who was buying the knife would in likelyhood commit a violent offence. His excuse could have been that he thought the knife was for cutting bread. But in reality we know that was unlikely given the mans history.

All the countries that sold Saddam componants for WMD, knew Saddam's history. They knew he was a violent man, who had killed to get to the top, killed to stay there and would kill anyone who opposed him. Their excuse could have been that the componants also could have been used for innocent purposes. But in reality that defence wont stand, as all the leaders of the countries that sold componants to Saddam Hussein, knew about his violent history.

So, every single leader who was in power when their country sold componants for WMD to Saddam Hussein, is culpable. They knew what he was likely to do with them, but they still sold the weapons to him. No excuse, they should have been tried alongside him.

Peace CG

Paradoxoly that arguement is what is being used to prevent many countries from having Nuclear Reactors.

[AvarAllahNoor]

Well this Kurdish revolt against Saddam would have jeopordised
the relationship between Iraq and the U.S. So, all those that have been menntioned in previous posts all turned their eyes away and ignored what he was doing.

So yes, all should be held accountable and tried. But, what are the chances of that? Zilch. Let Waheguru deal with them in his own way.

Paapo Paap Kamaavday Paapay Pacheh Pachaa-ay.

Those who sin again and again, shall rot and die in sin.

(Guru Granth Sahib)

[snakelegs]

Perhaps the answer is for the muslim nations to send in troups to take over. I really dont know.

this is what i would support - the u.s. stay until this all-muslim force is in place and then get out. after that, i think the amount of money that is spent on the military in iraq now, should continue to be spent on rebuilding the country, and putting it on a firm economic and political base. none of this $ should go to any u.s. or other corporations who have profited from this criminal war.
our condemnation of saddam hussein is sheer hypocrisy - we have never shied away from supporting ruthless dictators.

[SilentObserver]

this is what i would support - the u.s. stay until this all-muslim force is in place and then get out. after that, i think the amount of money that is spent on the military in iraq now, should continue to be spent on rebuilding the country, and putting it on a firm economic and political base. none of this $ should go to any u.s. or other corporations who have profited from this criminal war.
our condemnation of saddam hussein is sheer hypocrisy - we have never shied away from supporting ruthless dictators.

Such a simple perfect answer. Why can't the world governments fiqure this out?

[Ann]

Im American and yes I think they should be punished but how to make that happen I havnt the first clue. Heres an interesting story along the same lines though...

Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

Published: 30 December 2006
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2112 555.ece

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more
deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck
at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the
Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies?
Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for
Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his
death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government" , but on behalf
of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of
the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and,
indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this
weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western
newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our
presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W
Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded
Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and
thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair
and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and
the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of
lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great
brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of
2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and
killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to
Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget
these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the
dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest
war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and
a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical
weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder
the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any
mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against
him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for
sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that
would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted
uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous,
the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-
disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the
aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will
be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will
come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush,
written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife,
Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given
up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to
take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and
had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the
president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face
a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die
with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last
hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that
spread over the mass-murderer' s face - showed us which path Saddam
intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked
to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against
the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us -
and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their
wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only
months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison
for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched
Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves
of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a
medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly
from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I
have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war
criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for
The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just
before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone,
part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught
the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the
grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who
suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds
wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and
Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other
Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at
the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be
sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the
ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners
from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities, " he may have
been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly -
as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss
to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer
obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and
this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving
away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the
new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against
American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will
redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of
Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no
reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden
will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a
thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

[Ann]

I'm not American but yes, I think all those the formed the decision to invade Iraq should be investigated, preferably by a 3rd party, possibly the UN and if need be, prosecuted. Now either the intelligence gatherers deceived the decision makers over the WMD or the decision makers knew there wasnt any WMD there and decided to invade anyway. The *job* of sorting Saddam out should have fell to the international community.

But, will it make any difference now? Iraq is in a state of civil war, if the US and UK withdraw now what will it acheive? I dont know the answer, if they stay I cant see them bringing peace and if they go it will be mass slaughter. Perhaps the answer is for the muslim nations to send in troups to take over. I really dont know.

Peace CG

Too bad though that the UN is not always effective. I mean heck they still cant get Isreal to withdrawl from occupied territory in accordance with the resolution they passed in 1967.......so even if they did investigate...how long then for justice to catch up with the US goverment...only Allah knows.