Saddam Captured?

My reactions:Yeay! Saddam is gone! One less brutal dictator in the world, and it only cost bringing a country into anarchy and ~10,000 civilian lives. Sure, Donald Rumsfeld will have to find someone new to shake hands with, April Glaspie may miss her old invasion partner, and we'll need to find our next brutal dictator to target that's not also an ally of the US (Karmov, you get off easily this time!), but it's worth it! Who'se up for a good game of "What Dictator Who Uses Torture And Oppresses His People Will We End Up With Next?" Yes, yes, I know, we play it every other year, but this time, I'll let you guess first!On the downside, now Bush can't call the resistance "Saddam Loyalists". Let's take bets on what they'll call them now when they keep on killing US troops:1) Baath Party loyalists
2) Foreign fighters
3) TerroristsI'm betting on "all of the above".And what will the US do with Saddam? We can't send him to the International Criminal Court because, well, we've pretty much sabotaged its existance. We can't try him at home, because he might get off. There would be a lot of dissent if we sent him to Guantamo. No, I'd put my money on:1) The Iraqi PuppetGoverning Council will make a "request" that they get to try Saddam. They'll set up a nice kangaroo court. Plenty of witnessess will be brought in to bring up sob stories - and every last one of them will be widely televized, with the blessing of Bremer's administration. Then, Saddam will be put to death - all under the auspices of the "Interim" Council.Anyone else have ideas?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-15-2003]

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And how many Innocent lives were lost while Saddam was in power, and Klinton did nothing to stop the killing?

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Actually, virtually all of the mass graves found are from 1991 and earlier. The worst human rights violations were during the Iran-Iraq war - when he was our ally, and we were selling him weapons. Since 1991, there has been relatively little that has gone on in Iraq that hasn't gone on in every other middle eastern nation, often even in Israel itself.

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Tape 1: A man tied up in a chair with electrodes connected to many parts of his body.

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Every middle eastern nation, including Israel.

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Tape 2: A man being wiped with a piece of metal cable (covered in plastic)

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Not sure about the plastic, but the practice of being hung up and beaten with cable is a common arab security service interrogation tactic.

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Tape 3: Two men in chains go to the gallows.

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And capital punishment is supposedly... rare... in the middle east? Toss some lopping off of limbs into the mix, and you might start to approach Saudi Arabia.

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Tape 4: A naked man is made to sit on a bottle.

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Torture. Quite common in all of the middle east.

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Tape 5: A naked man is made to sit on a gas heater.

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Torture. Quite common in the middle east.

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Tape 6: A man hanging by the feet from a rotating ceiling fan while being beaten.

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Just a twist on #2.Etc. I'm not trying to justify the use of torture in the middle east - and, at least pre-1991, Iraq was one of the worst in the middle east. But it is critical that you realize that our *allies* there do the exact same thing, so it is hypocritcal to do this one-sided denouncement. Not just the middle east, either. For example, when are we going to liberate Uzbekistan from Islam Karimov? (of course, you know the answer: Never. He's US-friendly). Is literally boiling prisoners to death not bad enough for you?So confident that Iraqis are happy so far? Check Gallup's survey - note that this was before things really went downhill with the resistance. 2 to 1 they say the invasion was "worth it", but it was almost exclusively hedged on a hope that it will be better in the future (67% think it will be better, 8% worse 5 years in the future). Their view of the current situation is awful: 94% of Baghdadis say that the city is more dangerous than before; 99% have been without power at times, and 69% without drinking water (note: this was before gasoline rationing began; the country is nearly out of refined fuel). What do they think of us for it? 44% view the US negatively, 48% view Britain negatively; the positives are 29% and 24%, respectively. 55% like France, and only 12% don't like France. 29% like Bush, while 50% don't; 42% like Chirac, while 20% don't. I could go on.Is this what you were expecting to see when we went in there? Was this:?07/12/03 (1 killed)Pfc. Ray J. Hutchinson, 20. Killed Dec. 7 in Mosul, Iraq. Hutchinson was returning from a patrol when an improvised explosive device hit his vehicle. He died as a result of his injuries. (2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault))08/12/03 (4 killed)Pfc. Jason G. Wright, 19. Killed Dec. 8 in Mosul, Iraq. Wright was on security duty when his vehicle came under fire from a passing vehicle. Wright died as a result of his injuries.
(1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault))Staff Sgt. Steven H. Bridges, 33. Killed on Dec. 8 in Ad Duluiyah, Iraq, when Stryker vehicle flipped into a canal. (1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division)Spc. Joseph M. Blickenstaff, 23. Killed on Dec. 8 in Ad Duluiyah, Iraq, when Stryker vehicle flipped into a canal. (1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division)Spc. Christopher J. Rivera Wesley, 26. Died Dec. 8 in Ad Duluiyah, Iraq. Wesley was in a Stryker vehicle when it flipped into a canal. He died as a result of his injuries. Wesley was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division09/12/03OH-58D, Kiowa Helicopter took fire south of Fallujah. The helicopter was conducting a reconnaissance/security mission when it was forced to make an emergency landing. (1/82d Aviation Brigade (Attack))10/12/03 (3 killed, 1 missing)AH-64D Attack Helicopter crash-landed near the northern city of Mosul and might have been hit by ground fire while making a low pass over the area (101st Airborne Division (Air Assault))Staff Sgt. Richard A. Burdick, 24. Killed Dec. 10 in Mosul, Iraq. Burdick was in a convoy when his vehicle was hit by an improvise explosive device. He died as a result of his wounds. (Company C, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault))Spc. Todd M. Bates, 20. Was on a river patrol on the Tigris River south of Baghdad, Iraq, on Dec. 10 when his squad leader fell overboard. Bates dived into the water and did not surface. Bates has been placed in duty status whereabouts unknown. (135th Military Police Company, Army National Guard)Staff Sgt. Aaron T. Reese, 31. Died Dec. 10 south of Baghdad, Iraq. Reese was on a river patrol on the Tigris River when he fell overboard. (135th Military Police Company, Army National Guard)Pfc. Jerrick M. Petty, 25. Killed Dec. 10 in Mosul, Iraq. While guarding a gas station, Petty was attacked by enemy forces. He died of his injuries. (Company B, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault))11/12/03 (1 killed)C-17 transport plane was struck on takeoff with a guerrilla ground-fired missile, forcing it to return to the capital's international airport (US Air Force)Spec. Marshall L. Edgerton, 27. Killed Dec. 11 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Edgerton was killed when his camp was attacked with an improvised explosive device. (Company A, 82nd Signal Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division)12/12/03 (1 killed)Pfc. Jeffrey F. Braun, 19. Died Dec. 12, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq. Braun died from a non-hostile gunshot wound. (Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division)(etc - 541 coalition casualties, excluding Iraqi paramilitary forces who have increasingly become the target)How about these:
MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest Videos
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Suicide blast wrecks Italian base
http://usinfo.state.gov/...or/unbaghdad/gallery/homepage.htm
Page not found | TIME
(etc)Need I keep going?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-15-2003]

That's correct. He didn't import chemical weapons (although he did import the biological cultures, largely from the US); his chemical, biological, and nuclear programs were largely developed in-house from imported equipment. The biggest thing that we're guilty for is selling the weapons - we actually went out of our way to sell some of the very helicopters (Bell 214STs, I believe) that were used in the attack on Halabja. U.S./Iraqi relations were cut off since the end of the Yom Kippur war; Reagan dispatched Rumsfeld (then a civilian) to reestablish relations, even as Iraqi use of deadly gas was beginning to be documented. After the infamous Halabja attack, the Reagan administration moved to help defeat a resolution merely *condemning* the attack.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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And of course, the managers of the Iraq Body Count have no political agenda...

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Instead of insinuating, why don't you attempt to call into question some specifics? It's not like they hide their data sources. Also of note is that this really is a lowball, because it only covers A) people who made it to the hospital, and B) people lucky enough to be reported on by western media. Also, this only covers deaths; the wounded are always far more common than the dead. Also, this omits military casualties, both dead and wounded.

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And why is health care and sanitation inadequate? How much is due to the war and how much because it never was up to par?

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Name a case that you feel was due to a preexisting condition - to quote the saying, "put up or shut up". Insinuation isn't a good style of argument when the data is sitting right in front of you.

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Also note that the website makes no distinction from Iraqis killed by Americans and Iraqis killed by insurgents and Iraqis who were simply...killed. Essentially this would be tallying up every murder that happened in Iraq and blaming it in on America.

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Actually, it does make a distinction for Iraqis who were "simply...killed". And, if you'll read the referenced articles about, say, the hospital counts, you would find the hospitals discussing the *extra* influx of patients (often, a crippling influx). You would also learn about the huge numbers of deaths that were *omitted* - entire hospitals, at times, because they were so flooded they either had to stop keeping track of whether it was a civilian or military, or even stopped signing death certificates all together. When this happened, the entire dataset was thrown away.

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And some are ambiguous as being civilian. Note that the 14 year old son of Qusay is included.

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Ah. So if Iraq came over and killed Jenna Bush, she would be a "combattant"? Get real.

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Oh sure, he was a civilian...a civilian with an AK-47 firing at American troops, at least two of which were wounded if my memory doesn't fail me.

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A few members of the military claimed that while others claimed that he didn't - and remember, the military often end up claiming that *everyone* is shooting even when they're not (look at the cases where the US shot into crowds of people after the war, which were later investigated).By the way - if you were 14, and Iraqi forces invaded your home and just killed your father (regardless of what you think of Qusay, he *was* "dad" to someone, and young kids look up to their parents)... would you fight back? Whether he did or not is irrelevant; I'm just asking whether you would.

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Some other of the Iraqi casualties, such as the incident on July 8th are labeled as "attackers". Also included in the list of the "innocent" Iraqi dead are "grenade throwers" (2 June), "Baath Party members" 8, 13 June), "Resistance fighters" (8, 13 June), "fleeing attackers" (12 June), "celebrants firing into the air and/or at US outposts" (28 April), "bank robbers" (11 April), "mobile radar equipment", (6 January), and a "mobile SAM system" (10 February).

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You're misreading the table. That column is titled "target". For example, in the one where they targeted al-Majid (Chemical Ali), they missed him, and instead killed 10 neighbors. The disturbing thing is that so many times, their target *actually was* a civilian target - that's why you didn't notice.Try to read better before you post.

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And even if the website owners don't have an agenda, check the sources. I'm sure Al-Jazeera and AlterNet.org don't have political motives, nor are they playing for an audience.

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And I'm sure FoxNews doesn't have political motives, nor is it playing for an audience. Right?Get real. Al-Jazeera is a legitimate network, and one of the more popular ones in the middle east at that; what, do you think they forged footage or something conspiratorial like that? Also note that they always use multiple sources, as a check (at the very least, it means that an editorial board reviewed the story, and it met their standards of journalistic integrity).Nice attempt to try and portray them as some sort of sneaky underhand organization, but you've failed. Try again, and this time, read the table better before you post. And take into account the massive volumes of data that was *deliberately omitted* because it couldn't be guaranteed to be all civilian deaths, and because many deaths were never reported.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-15-2003]

Just an addendum on the subject of soldiers as seing everyone firing on them (whether they're lying or just so panicked that they get scared):US Troops Gun Down Iraqi DemonstratorsRemember when this happened? When US troops occupied a school in Fallujah (and vandalized it horribly, but that wasn't uncovered until later) - and then, when there was a demonstration against them, they gunned down the crowd, claiming that the crowd was shooting at them?"Contradicting the US claims, the British Independent correspondent Phil Reeves reported April 29: "Yet there are no bullet holes visible at the front of the school building or tell-tale marks of a firefight. The place is unmarked. By contrast, the houses opposite-numbers 5, 7, 9, and 13-are punctured with machine-gun fire, which tore away lumps of concrete the size of a hand and punched holes as deep as the length of a ballpoint pen. Asked to explain the absence of bullet holes, [US] Lieutenant-Colonel Nantz said that the Iraqi fire had gone over the soldiers' heads. We were taken to see two bullet holes in an upper window and some marks on a wall, but they were on another side of the school building."The same article also mentions some of the other incidents from around the same time, such as forcing accused theieves to strip naked (in a relatively conservative society), writing "Ali Baba" on their chest, and parading them around the city at gunpoint. Here's pictures (I've got pictures of everything... the child casualties are the hardest to deal with, though, especially the ones ripped apart by cluster bombs... those things tear a kid to ribbons)------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I just figured I'd clarify some of your confusion about issues related to the Left, and issues related to Clinton.

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True, it seems odd that human rights violations were adequate to justify the Clinton/UN war in Kosovo but not the Iraq war and I feel that there is a double standard at work.

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Clinton was hardly liberal; he drove many of the more liberal democrats batty. He signed the federal DOMA, he continued economic and trade policies that help the wealthy, he was pro war in several cases (not as much as Bush, but still...), etc. He also bombed Iraq regularly (don't forget about the No-Fly zones and Desert Fox) - he just didn't invade. He prefered "containment".

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I also find it odd and inconsistent that the Left which normally pushes for human rights protested the removal of a flagrant human rights abuser

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The left also is much more likely to be antiwar. War is one of the worst ways to create A) Peace, B) Democracy, and C) Freedom from oppression. Our track record in military conflicts since the end of WWII is really rather pathetic on this front; I'd have to do the numbers again, but I think our rate of producing democracies works out to somewhere around 5%, and most of the replacement governments have been pretty darn bad. Things like democracy and freedom from oppression, by and large, come from long periods of peacetime.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."