The Iraq Thread 2

[theavonlady 2]

Whoooyea Saddam is arrested by US Rangers. saw it on the dutch television today.

I think this is posted already right?

You must have a night watchman job!

[GoOB 0]

yeah, maybe they will focus on a real threat to national security  

Like George Bush and son you mean

Well it's good that they caught him, finally something newsworthy from the mess down there...

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]Who says Sadaam's doubles are available for parties and special events in Iraq these days?

Well, who says they are not? And who says new ones cannot be found?

[Heavy Metal 0]

I figured you'd say that.

I find it hard to believe aswell, but it's not just the arabs that accuse Israel.

That's right. Other antisemites are more than happy to swallow this trash up as well.

I am compiling a list of all Israeli conmspiracies I believe to be genuine!

We are on to you Avonlady! We know you are the ringleader!

So far:

One sock dissappears in the washer??? The Israelis did it!

A cake falls? Yup, the Israelis!

Cat claws up the sofa? Yep! Those darned Israelis put him up to it!

Who took the last cup of coffee in the pot and didn't make another? Israelis again!

Who invented telemarketers? Thats right! the Israelis did!

[waffendennis 0]

Whoooyea Saddam is arrested by US Rangers. saw it on the dutch television today.

I think this is posted already right?

You must have a night watchman job!

Nightwatch? hmm I can use more money....Hey thnxs for the idea Avon

But: no it was 16:00 ( Dutch time ) when it was on the tv and in the States it was some thing like in the morning or some thing.

[ralphwiggum 6]

Great news that he is now captured. as denoir mentioned it would be interesting to see what will happen with resistance.

[shinRaiden 0]

Is he the only bogeyman in the world? No.

Is one less a good thing? Yes.

Has he personally fired a shot using his personal weapon at a confirmed US citizen? No.

Has he ordered the liquidation of an indeterminate number of 'surplus population' of 'undesireables'? Yes.

What to those who were attacked under his express order have to say?

Iraqi Journalists

jpost.com poll

Yomiuri.co.jp - NIHONGO!

Did you know that his son's had SBDM-modified pictures of G.Bush's daughters with them when they got taken down?

He also ordered a hit on Bush.Sr, while a standing president. What goes around comes around.

Furthermore, it would appear that his friends in the surrounding terror-sponsoring banana republics have got the message - otherwise he'd be there under their care by now.

Give him to the Iraqi Council, and let them try him for crimes against the iraqi people. They won't let him make a farce of law, order, and humanity like you let Milosevic do to the Hague, and what so many here would do likewise.

May God bless ALL the children of Abraham, and their friends at this season.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Oh Saddam. Dont feel left alone. I know there is quite a lot of people out there that know the feeling!

Pic;

[blackdog~ 0]

You have to wonder what kind of morale boost this gave all of the soldiers in Iraq, and what the OPFOR will do next. Will the daily attacks on US Soldiers stop? Are Iraqis celebrating in the streets?

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Okay this is a useless comment but... Ever thought about what happens if you loose your contact lenses in the desert? Ask these guys

[denoir 0]

He should have blown his brains out or attacked the soldiers and let them do the job. As it looks now, the trial will be held by the Iraqis. This will ultimately mean execution for him anyway. But only after a long line of humiliating trials.

It also very much depends on how Saddam will act and if his trials will be public. For instance in Serbia support for Milosevic surged once the trial in den Haag started. On the other hand, it might be a poor comparison as Milosevic wasn't a dictator and he never killed his own people. (The Serbs didn't complain too much about him killing other people)

And the effects in Iraq? Very difficult to say. I don't know exactly what symbolism this will have to the common Iraqi. Overthrowing Saddam was comparatively a much more important achievement from their perspective but after the collation failed to restore normal living conditions in Iraq, the significance of the Baathist regime being overthrown faded very fast. Also, it should be noted that even without including the resistance, there are huge problems in Iraq. There has been a gigantic failure in rebuilding the infrastructure. People still don't have regular water and electricity and the unemployment is enormous. Iraq is a completely paralyzed country. And Saddam or no Saddam, this won't change over night.

As for Bush, this is Christmas coming early - too early perhaps. It would have been much more beneficial if this came later, once the serious campaigning for re-election had started. If this won't bring any change to Iraq, or if matters get worse, people are going to forget this very fast, as they did with the deaths of Uday and Qusay. Capturing Saddam alive was probably a good bonus in that respect. Now they can remind people by showing him on TV now and then.

For Britain, this is probably bad news in the long run. A living Saddam can once more confirm that there are no WMD in Iraq. And as opposed to the Americans, the British are much more likely to remember that the reason for war given to the public and to the international community was that Iraq had WMD which were a regional and world threat

The biggest question mark of course is what this will mean for the resistance. One of the problems with assessing this is that nobody really knows who makes up the bulk of the resistance. Is it remnants of the Baathist - like the Fedayeen Saddam, or is it fundamentalist Å• la AQ, or is it simply Iraqi nationalists? Nobody seems to know for sure. If the resistance is pro-Saddam Baathists then this will be a huge blow. They'll remember Saddam wowing never to be taken alive and then see him here, hiding in a hole, surrendering without firing even one shot. And the man liked to call himself the "Lion of Babylon". So this must be quite humiliating for all Saddam followers (at least objectively, what they make of it is another story).

If the resistance on the other hand consist of the likes of AQ or/and Iraqi/Arab nationalists, then it's a completely different story. Privately they'll celebrate as they hated Saddam's guts as well and publicly they'll just go on with their business of killing US soldiers and sabotaging reconstruction efforts.

[python3 0]

Quote[/b] ]For Britain, this is probably bad news in the long run. A living Saddam can once more confirm that there are no WMD in Iraq. And as opposed to the Americans, the British are much more likely to remember that the reason for war given to the public and to the international community was that Iraq had WMD which were a regional and world threat

yes, this is the sad part, im gonna have to go to college tomorrow to hear everyone shouting victory, when there is only a minor victory at all. Americans will forget the WMD, if they haven't already, now that they have Saddam. Now comes the long road to convince them that this was only a nice morale booster and maybe a minor setback for the resistance over there. I can see my old, 100% behind Bush, economic teacher from H.S. giving her class a day off in celebration.

[Necromancer- 0]

American Delta Force Operative at moment of capture:

"Ghee guys, look what I found... its Santa Claus!"

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Finally, I get to do a side by side mugshot comparison between two of the most notorious criminals of our time...

Saddam Hussein and Nick Nolte!

[Pipski 0]

What will be more influential with the resistance, Fedayeen or Baathist, is what it does to their funding. If Saddam's capture enables intelligence agencies to interrupt funds to the resistance then they're done. According to reports they are already very short of readies and have been selling crops to buy arms. They can't keep that up forever.

[Baron von Beer 0]

*Desert Picture*

Well, guess they are just being considerate. If they get incoming and die, no one has to move em. (Is it just me, or does that shot seem kinda morbidly humerous? I know if that were me, there would be some observations about my sleeping arangements.

As for celebrating in the streets Blackdog, that is all I saw on evey news channel today. There were also several explosions in Baghdad as darkness fell. Turned out it was fuel containers on a truck, didn't hear mention of injury. Suspected that bullets from all the gunfire into the air may have caused it. Sometimes people forget that whole "What goes up must come down" thing.

[denoir 0]

Notes From Saddam in Custody {TIMES}

Quote[/b] ]

Saddam Hussein was captured on Sunday without a fight. But since then, according to a U.S. intelligence official in Iraq, the fallen dictator has been defiant. “He’s not been very cooperative,†said the official, who read the transcript of the initial interrogation report taken during the first questioning session.

After his capture, Saddam was taken to a holding cell at the Baghdad Airport. He didn’t answer any of the initial questions directly, the official said, and at times seemed less than fully coherent. The transcript was full of “Saddam rhetoric type stuff,†said the official who paraphrased Saddam’s answers to some of the questions. When asked “How are you?†said the official, Saddam responded, “I am sad because my people are in bondage.†When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, “If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?â€

The interrogators also asked Saddam if he knew about the location of Captain Scott Speicher, a U.S. pilot who went missing during the first Gulf War. “No,†replied the former Iraqi president, “we have never kept any prisoners. I have never known what happened.â€

Saddam was also asked whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. “No, of course not,†he replied, according to the official, “the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to war with us.†The interrogator continued along this line, said the official, asking: “if you had no weapons of mass destruction then why not let the U.N. inspectors into your facilities?†Saddam’s reply: “We didn’t want them to go into the presidential areas and intrude on our privacy.â€

The official is doubtful that the U.S. will get a significant amount of intelligence from Saddam’s interrogations. “I would be surprised if he gave any info,†he said. Other high-ranking regime members, he said, have by and large remained mum. “Tariq Aziz [former deputy prime minister] hasn’t really spoken,†he said, “and Abid Mahmoud [saddam’s former personal secretary] hasn’t really given any information.â€

The raid on the farm in al-Dawr, a village 15 miles from his hometown of Tikrit, initially came up empty, the official said. There was no Saddam Hussein in sight. Then one man on the property, apparently realizing the game was up, pointed out a bricked-in wall inside the basement of a small house on the property. Saddam is in there, he told the special forces operators from Task Force 121, who took down the farm with the aid of soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division. Saddam was bricked into his hiding place, he added. “They couldn’t get him out at first and had to dig, from either side of the hole,†said the official. The soldiers finally made a large enough passageway to drag him out. When he came out, he looked bedraggled, said the official: “He looked like a homeless man at the bus station.â€

Along with the $750,000 in cash, two AK 47 machine guns and pistol found with Saddam, the U.S. intelligence official confirmed that operatives found a briefcase with Saddam that contained a letter from a Baghdad resistance leader. Contained in the message, the official said, were the minutes from a meeting of a number of resistance leaders who came together in the capital. The official said the names found on this piece of paper will be valuable and could lead to the capture of insurgency leaders around the Sunni Triangle.

The official said it may soon be clear how much command and control over the insurgency Saddam actually had while he was in hiding. “We can now determine,†he said, “if he is the mastermind of everything or not.†The official elaborated: “Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?â€

[toadlife 3]

Quote[/b] ]“Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?â€

That's the most important question. I think the later is true and the majority of the 'resistance' in Iraq aren't even Iraqis.

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/15/sprj.irq.main/index.html

Quote[/b] ]BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- now in the hands of U.S. forces at an undisclosed location after his capture Saturday -- is cooperating with his captors and is answering questions, officials said, but is only giving rote answers.

Two senior Bush administration officials told CNN's John King that Saddam has told his captors he did not have weapons of mass destruction before the war.

Time magazine correspondent Brian Bennett in Baghdad told CNN's Aaron Brown the former Iraqi leader asserted that the United States invented the presence of WMD to justify an invasion of his country.

"He also said he didn't play nice with U.N. [weapons] inspectors so that he could protect the privacy of his presidential areas," Bennett said on CNN's "Newsnight," quoting a U.S. official in Iraq who had seen an initial interrogation report.

Both Bennett and CNN's David Ensor said their sources report that Saddam was giving rote answers to the questions, or answering with nationalist and patriotic rhetoric.

duh...

Quote[/b] ]Bennett said intelligence officials were hopeful they could dismantle part of the resistance structure, however, using documents found with Saddam that detailed the minutes of a meeting of resistance cell leaders in Baghdad, including their names.

[ozanzac 0]

With the big cheese finnally taken, we have 14 people left on the deck of cards. Who are they?  

(Looks at Avon to provide a link to some obscure site showing exactly whose left)  

Edit: I found one. But not as picturesque as I had hope for.

Deck of cards

[Gollum1 0]

Quote[/b] ]When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, “If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?â€

Sounds like Saddam needs some fresh air! "how can I use the bathroom..."

Quote[/b] ]

“Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?â€

I'd vote for the latter!

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Quote[/b] ]When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, “If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?â€

Truely, pearls of wisdom! ! Reminds me of stupid phrases in "SWAT" such as "sometimes doing the right thing is not the right thing to do!" Someones GOTTA explain that to me!!

[stgn 39]

Okay this is a useless comment but... Ever thought about what happens if you loose your contact lenses in the desert? Ask these guys  

Is that a buget cut?

Does the soldiers now have to dig there own grave

STGN

[DarkLight 0]

I am happy for the Iraqi ppl that Saddam has been captured but on the other hand i feel a bit... uhm... dunno how to call it...

I don't know... but the capturing of Saddam has probably made Bush so popular that most ppl already forgot that there was no good reason to start this war and that Europe did not agree at all.

But yeah, i guess i'm the only asshole in here who always keeps bashing america, right?

Oh and for the less intelligent ppl, the bashing america part was a bit ironic...

Oh well, good job capturing the idiot, although i still don't agree with the war...

Good luck to the iraqis!

[theavonlady 2]

Good luck to the iraqis!

Nope.

Quote[/b] ]

Suicide Bombers Kill 8 Policemen in Iraq

1 hour, 10 minutes ago

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber killed eight Iraqi policemen in an attack Monday on a station on Baghdad's northern outskirts, their commander said, as insurgents continued attacks despite the capture of Saddam Hussein.