The Iraq Thread 2

[denoir 0]

Yeah, my point still stands though. He lied under oath about a matter that had nothing to do with his abilities as president.

It has to do with breaking the law, not about lying itself.

Quote[/b] ]But hey, if you rather have a president that lies to start a war than one that lies to try and protect his private life, and his families, thats fine by me. Your call.

Lying on television to the people is not a crime punishable by law. Had Bush lied under oath then there would be clear grounds for impeachement.

It has nothing to do with substance, but only with form.

[Longinius 1]

Two more iraqi police officers killed by American troops recently. I doubt they will have problems finding more police officers soon. Many of their own people want to see them dead, and American soldiers are seeing it done. Must suck big time.

Was a documentary on TV yesterday about Iraqi police. They are supposed to take over police matters soon and most police stations do not have cars. No police stations have radios. Few police have access to weapons (we discussed this all ready though). Police stations have been bombed and burnt out. As a police officer, you are a hot target to the resistance and at risk from being shot by your allies.

If I was Iraqi, I wouldnt even consider becoming a police officer during those circumstances.

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]Lying on television to the people is not a crime punishable by law. Had Bush lied under oath then there would be clear grounds for impeachement.

It has nothing to do with substance, but only with form.

Yes, I know this. I know he lied under oath and I know that its wrong. But I am talking about using common sense (something not done often enough). The lie he told had nothing to do with his presidency. But yeah, for sure, it was a good excuse for the Spanish Inquisition ;)

[Acecombat 0]

i support the name to be Al-gebra.

just in case people did not know, CNN is still keeping its special report site up regarding the war.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/index.html

hehe its a saudi channel though and will be starting by 11 JAN i think i have only seen one advert on the local tv atm.....

The channel seems very flashy

[Acecombat 0]

Pentagon: Saddam is POW

Deposed Iraqi leader's status could affect eventual trial

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon has declared former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an enemy prisoner of war, officials said Friday.

The declaration could affect how Saddam is treated in captivity and if, or how, he'll be tried.

Since his capture by U.S. troops in December, Saddam has been afforded protection under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. Because of the POW declaration, the United States will have to adhere to the letter of the treaty, which could limit its options in dealing with the deposed ruler.

According to Article 17, prisoners of war are not required to divulge anything more than their name, rank, date of birth and serial number, and may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment to force more information from them.

Also, Saddam's classification as a POW means that he can be tried only under the authority of occupying forces, which might require a U.S. military trial. That would interfere with U.S. plans to turn the former Iraqi leader over to an Iraqi war crimes tribunal

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/09/sprj.nirq.saddam/index.html

[ozanzac 0]

If that's the case, and Saddam is trialed by a US military court. I suspect Saddam might face up to the death penalty................ Or could Saddam be handed over after trial according to US military law?

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]Also, Saddam's classification as a POW means that he can be tried only under the authority of occupying forces, which might require a U.S. military trial. That would interfere with U.S. plans to turn the former Iraqi leader over to an Iraqi war crimes tribunal

Whoops, there go the plans for a trial by an Iraqi court .

[walker 0]

Quote[/b] ]Also, Saddam's classification as a POW means that he can be tried only under the authority of occupying forces, which might require a U.S. military trial. That would interfere with U.S. plans to turn the former Iraqi leader over to an Iraqi war crimes tribunal

Whoops, there go the plans for a trial by an Iraqi court .

Hi m21man

Maybe he threatened to say who in the TBA sold him the WMD and who in the Previous Bush Administration (PBA) told him it was OK to invade Kuwait.

Cant have any public trials for people like that.

Kind Regards Walker

[bn880 5]

BTW I watched a BBC documentary about a friendly fire incident during the Iraq war, when an F-14 mistakenly bombed a convoy of Kurdish troops, U.S SF and BBC journalists. It was due to incorrect information from an American in the convoy calling in an airstrike on Iraqi armor in the horizon (he didn't bother giving coordinates). The whole convoy was halted and everyone was basically taking a break, the camera was filming and suddenly the tape skipped, 3 seconds later the convoy was on fire and mutilated corpses were lying all over the place. The cameraman just kept filming and you saw the entire tape continuosly, with ammo cooking off and blackened half-skeletons peeking out of burning cars.

Everyone who sometimes thinks real war is a bit cool should watch the doc.

At least 16 Kurds were killed and over 40 wounded.

Has anyone else seen it?

Yees, I've talked about this a while back, the ocumentary was originally aired on CBC. You should see some of the stuff you can catch on CBC and their French version here.

I have a tape or two I want to digitize as well, but I'm too lazy to get aorund to it.

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]Maybe he threatened to say who in the TBA sold him the WMD and who in the Previous Bush Administration (PBA) told him it was OK to invade Kuwait.

Yeah, I'm sure someone in the first Bush administration told him to invade .

[toadlife 3]

...Maybe he threatened to say who in the TBA sold him the WMD and who in the Previous Bush Administration (PBA) told him it was OK to invade Kuwait...

Oh you are bringing the last Bush administration into the fray now eh?

Quote[/b] ]To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability.

Can you tell me who wrote that?

[ralphwiggum 6]

so....i guess US interrogators got info they wanted, so now they are giving him POW status...

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/09/sprj.nirq.contracts/index.html

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has signaled it may be open to making Canada and other opponents of the Iraq war eligible for major reconstruction contracts after an initial $5 billion in contracts are awarded in the near future.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday the initial $5 billion in contracts will go to countries on a list the Pentagon previously declared eligible for the reconstruction work.

Countries that either participated in the Coalition effort in the war or supported it -- including Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Turkey and Japan -- are on the list.

Canada, Russia, France and Germany are among Iraq war opponents excluded from those major contracts, stirring anger in those countries and accusations the Bush administration is not willing to put pre-war bitterness aside.

Just after the Pentagon list was released Bush appealed to those nations to forgive or reduce much of Iraq's international debt burden.

At the time, Bush said, "It is in every nation's interest that Iraq be free and peaceful, and we welcome contributions."

In voicing its disappointment, Canada cited its cooperation -- and deployment of troops -- in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

The contracting dispute is likely to be an issue next week when the president is to hold his first meeting with new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin during a Summit of the Americas in Mexico.

Rice suggested Friday the contracting policy could change after the initial round of contracts are awarded.

"As further contracts are let, as further funds are released over the next several months, then we can review in some detail the circumstances, the changed circumstances for different countries," she said. "And I think that we will talk to the Canadians about this. I think there is some understanding of where we are going."

There is $18.5 billion budgeted for the major U.S.-funded reconstruction contracts in Iraq -- meaning some $13 billion or so still to be awarded after the initial $5 billion worth now in the pipeline.

wonder if coalition authorities are lacking resources to get Iraq up and running properly?

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]Yeah, I'm sure someone in the first Bush administration told him to invade

In a way, yes. It was his own initiative of course. But he asked a member of TBA what their stance would be on a Kuwaiti invasion. The answer was that they wouldn't intervene. He took this as an OK by the US, and went ahead with his plans.

So while they didnt tell him to do it, they didnt try to stop him either. Quite the contrary.

[denoir 0]

Iraq's other Saddams

LOL. People are such spineless cowards.

[quicksand 0]

That made me remember this article I read a couple of months ago about Iraqis frustrations.

Iraqis are Naming Their Babies "Saddam"

Quote[/b] ]But in Baiji a clerk at the local registration office for births and deaths said he noticed that over the last couple of months parents of newborn babies had started to name them 'Saddam'.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Yeah, I'm sure someone in the first Bush administration told him to invade .

Saddam indeed informed US embassy about his plans to invade Kuwait. A female US govt (embassy) got the note and the US did not react. This was taken as a silent "go" from the US.

Search into it. I´m to lazy.

[denoir 0]

That made me remember this article I read a couple of months ago about Iraqis frustrations.

Iraqis are Naming Their Babies "Saddam"

Quote[/b] ]But in Baiji a clerk at the local registration office for births and deaths said he noticed that over the last couple of months parents of newborn babies had started to name them 'Saddam'.

That's an excellent article. I'll quote it below:

Quote[/b] ]

Iraqis are Naming Their Babies "Saddam"

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Baghdad.

The centre of the book trade in Baghdad is al-Mutanabi Street, which runs between the Tigris and Rashid Street, now shabby and decayed but once the city's commercial heart. The bookshops are small, and open all the time; on Friday there's a market, when vendors lay out their books in Arabic and English on mats on the dusty and broken surface of the road. Most are second-hand. In the 1990s, after the first Gulf War, I used to walk around the district looking at books, often English classics once owned by students. Difficult words were underlined and translated into Arabic in the margin. There was plenty of stock as the Iraqi intelligentsia, progressively ruined by sanctions, sold off their libraries.

The market was carefully monitored by a section of al-Amn al-Amm, the General Security Service, led by Major Jammal Askar, a poet who used to write verses in praise of Saddam. He oversaw the banning of books on modern Iraq, mostly histories and memoirs written by exiles, and works by Shiite and Sunni clerics. Even so, books, often printed in Beirut, were smuggled in through Jordan, Syria and Turkey. 'You could bribe the officials at the border to let in religious books, but not political books,' one bookseller said. 'We used to take off the covers and replace them with the covers of Baath Party books which they approved of.' Often only one copy was brought in, photocopied a hundred or more times and then sold covertly. The Amn al-Amm, its operations on the street led by a certain Captain Khalid, launched repeated raids to find out who was selling them.

In 1999 my brother Andrew and I wrote a history of Iraq after the first Gulf War called Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein. It was later republished in Britain as Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession. I knew the regime wouldn't like it because of its sympathetic treatment of the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings of 1991 and its account of the feuds within the ruling family, and decided after publication that it would be wise to keep out of Baghdad for a few years. When it became obvious that the White House was determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein, I applied to the Iraqi Information Ministry for a visa, although I was worried about how safe it was to do so. Saddam Hussein wasn't short of critics, and possibly the regime didn't know or care what Andrew and I had written about them. On the other hand, Saddam had hanged Farzad Bazoft, an Observer journalist, as a spy in 1990. When the Kurds arranged with Syria to let me cross the Tigris in a tin boat into Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq, the problem resolved itself.

It turned out I was right to be nervous. After the fall of Baghdad, the new deputy mayor, a book collector, gave me a copy of Out of the Ashes in a copperplate long-hand translation into Arabic specially made by the Mukhabarat--Iraqi Intelligence. He said it had been found by looters in the house of Sabawi, Saddam's half-brother who was once the head of al-Amn al-Amm. It turned out that the book was well known to the booksellers in al-Mutanabi Street and had sold well--mainly, they said, because 'it gave an account of the uprisings in 1991 and of the relationship between Saddam and the US.'

One Friday, halfway along al-Mutanabi, I met Haidar Mohammed, a man in his mid-thirties with nervous, darting eyes, who had been the main seller of my book. He was known in the street as Haidar Majala, meaning Haidar 'Magazine', because he pretended that he was only interested in selling magazines. He said that he found life flat since the fall of Saddam, 'because in the old days, when I had to take a customer down an alleyway to secretly sell him a book and we both knew we could go to jail, life had a taste to it.' The first

copy of Out of the Ashes he bought was an Arabic translation made in Beirut and smuggled into Iraq by a man called 'Fadhel', who other booksellers believed was later hanged. Haidar used a photocopier to make 50 copies and sold them to relatives and close friends for two dollars each. He then made another 200 copies and sold them quickly as well. He said: 'Once when a man who had bought the book was arrested in Kerbala I disappeared for three weeks, but he didn't give me away and only told them that he'd bought it on the street from a man he didn't know.'

Haidar, who had been selling books in Baghdad and Najaf since 1994, was finally arrested in November 2000, when he was caught by Captain Khalid with a book by Saad al-Bazzaz, an Iraqi editor, once a Saddam loyalist, who had gone into exile and published an expose of the regime. 'I pretended I was a little simple and did not know what the book was about,' Haidar said ruefully. 'The judge accepted that my story was true so he only gave me two years in prison, though this was extended to three years when they found out I had deserted from the Army.'

The booksellers of al-Mutanabi are relieved that Major Askar and Captain Khalid have disappeared, but are wary of talking of the future. These days they are selling books by Shiite clerics as well as big pictures of Hussein and Abbas, the Shiite martyrs. When I asked a group of booksellers standing beside Haidar what they thought would happen, one said, without much confidence, that 'Saddam Hussein was difficult to overthrow, but the Americans will be easier to get rid of.' Iraqis have had difficulty in adjusting to the pace of events since the beginning of this year: the bombing of Baghdad, the fall of Saddam, the looting, the broiling summer without electricity, the banditry and now the sporadic guerrilla attacks and car bombs. New problems appear almost daily. As we walked away from the book market a Kurd came up to us. He had just heard that the US had invited 10,000 Turkish troops into Iraq. 'I want to tell you the Americans are going to betray us again just as they did in 1975 and 1991,' he said.

Paul Bremer, the chief US civilian administrator who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority, has been claiming, somewhat ludicrously, that life in Baghdad is back to normal. An energetic and arrogant man, who wears a smart New York suit with army boots protruding from the bottom of his trousers, he is inclined to speak of 'the extraordinary progress made since liberation'. With each car bomb or attack his tone gets shriller: 'The terrorists know that the Iraqi people and the Coalition are succeeding in the reconstruction of Iraq.' Bremer is keen to sell Iraq as a success, and so, of course, is the US President, who mentioned recently that satellite television antennae were sprouting over Baghdad. It is true that the streets look cleaner and the heaps of rubbish are disappearing: 180,000 street cleaners have been hired at three dollars a day. Some of them are assiduously painting curbstones white and yellow. The electricity supply is better and there are fewer power cuts than there were at the height of the summer heat. There are thousands of US-recruited police back on the streets, so Iraqis are less frightened of being robbed, raped or murdered than they were three months ago. They no longer lock themselves in their houses or refuse to send their daughters to school for fear of kidnappers. But they don't compare the situation today with what things were like during the first two terrible months after the US captured Baghdad: they compare it with life as it was 12 months ago under Saddam Hussein. And for most Iraqis life has not improved. For many it has got worse.

The overwhelming political and economic fact is that 70 per cent of the labour force--12 million people out of a total population of 25 million, according to the Ministry of Labour--are out of work. Engineers try to make a little money selling glasses of tea to passers-by from a table on the pavement. Men stand all day in the markets trying to sell a bunch of blackened bananas or a few cracked plates. As under Saddam Hussein, it's only the ration of basic foodstuffs provided almost free by the state that fends off starvation.

There is a horrible desperation in the hunt for work. A Russian company asked a man who was trying to get a job as a driver about his qualifications. He said he felt he should get the job because, quite apart from his great experience as a driver, he had a live grenade in his pocket. He then showed the grenade to the Russian interviewing him and threatened to remove the pin unless he was immediately taken on.

By allowing the state to dissolve and disbanding the Army, the US, in its ignorance, has brought about a revolutionary change in social and ethnic relations in the country. Everyone who was part of the Sunni-dominated Administration has lost out, which isn't surprising; but the Government was the only big employer. 'The first mistake occurred when they disestablished the Army and police forces,' said Nouri Jafer, the labour under-secretary in the interim government created by the US-appointed Governing Council. 'This created more unemployment because Saddam Hussein had more than a million in the security forces.' So far, the new US-trained Army has just one battalion of 700 men in a force which will eventually grow to 40,000. Former conscripts and soldiers queue for hours trying to pick up a final pay-off of $40, and there are often riots. Even former members of the Intelligence service have demonstrated to demand their jobs back. One man, almost in tears, said he had travelled seven times from his home city of Kut, south of Baghdad, and had still not been paid. 'If the US would just pay the salaries of those who have recently lost their jobs I promise you that resistance attacks would go down by 50 per cent,' Nahed al-Ghazi, a sheikh in a village north of Baghdad, who had just had a grenade explode in the forecourt of his house because of his supposed pro-American sympathies, told me.

The losers after the convulsions of the last six months are becoming clear. The winners are not. Ethnic relations are rapidly deteriorating. The Sunni, who ruled the country under the Ottomans, the British, the Hashemite monarchy and Saddam Hussein, are frightened by their loss of power. The Shia, the community to which more than 15 million Iraqis belong, hope that their moment has come. But they fear that the US will impose a constitution they do not like and delay an election they would inevitably win. Thanks to the refusal of the Turkish Parliament to allow its territory to be used by the US Army to invade Iraq, the Kurds seemed for a few months to have got what they wanted. They regained their lost lands in the north. They captured the oil city of Kirkuk. But, with the US inviting in 10,000 Turkish troops in the hope of keeping American casualties down, they, too, now see betrayal around every corner. They want Iraq to be a federation in which Iraqi Kurdistan will enjoy something close to independence. Recent meetings between the Kurdistan Democratic Party leader, Massoud Barzani, and Bremer have been chilly. When Bremer said that in a unitary Iraq the Kurds would have their own language and culture, Barzani replied: 'But we already had that under Saddam.'

Iraqis jokingly call those who have done well out of the collapse and occupation hawasimi or 'finalists'. This is a reference to Saddam's prewar claim that Iraqis were about to witness 'a final battle with the Americans'. Newly recruited policemen are hawasimi, said with a slight sneer. (The same word is used about those who are obviously much better off since the looting of Baghdad.) The US is hopeful that the new police force will be the front line against resistance attacks, but when I asked a policeman, who had just caught a car thief in al-Masbah Street, if he was doing anything to stop assaults on Americans, he replied: 'That isn't really our job. What we do is provide security for ordinary Iraqis.' When police in the town of Hawaija, west of Kirkuk, shot dead a Fedayeen they were warned by local tribesmen to stick to their policing duties if they wanted to stay alive.

The changes in the physical appearance of central Baghdad since mid- summer leave no doubt where power lies. Ever more elaborate fortifications are being built to defend Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace where Bremer and the CPA live and work, inside a sort of Forbidden City. It is now surrounded by grey prefabricated concrete walls, with red painted warnings forbidding drivers to stop next to them. The few entrances are protected by tanks and rolls of razor wire. New notices have gone up saying it is not permitted to swim in the Tigris outside the palace, presumably for fear of underwater saboteurs. The British Embassy, abandoning its spacious enclave, has fled inside the Rashid Hotel, its entrance guarded by Nepalese soldiers. In future, it will work from a villa inside the Republican Palace. The attack on the Baghdad Hotel in October led to a new frenzy of construction, with every hotel now sealed off by armed guards. The guards at the hotel where I live say they do not like the concrete defences because they give the impression that something suspicious is going on inside. Since the latest bombings, the US Army has set up a multitude of checkpoints around Baghdad, producing enormous queues of traffic.

It may not be enough. When there was an explosion in the Foreign Ministry, just outside the office of the General Council's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, it was first blamed on a rocket-propelled grenade. But it turned out to have been caused by half a kilo of explosives with a timer--which could have been left there only by a member of the Foreign Ministry staff, about a thousand of whom were inherited from the old regime. 'We have got the number of suspects down to 80,' one of Zebari's security men said triumphantly.

The Americans in Baghdad live in conditions of extraordinary isolation. An Iraqi friend spotted a group of visitors from the US holding a party in a hotel at which the waiters were all wearing turbans reminiscent of the Raj. He went up to one of them and said: 'I would like to shake you by the hand.' Gratified, the American did so. 'Now,' my friend said, 'you can go home and say you met at least one real Iraqi.'

The overall mood of Iraqis has darkened over the last months as they have come to feel that, with the UN on the sidelines, they are dealing with an old fashioned colonial regime. Even Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician and a member of the Governing Council, said: 'The Council has little power. On important issues, like inviting in the Turks or sending 30,000 Iraqi policemen to train in Jordan at a cost of $1.3 billion, the Coalition acts first and tells us afterwards.' In fact, protests over Ankara's intervention may have caused the Turkish Government to have second thoughts, though that would be a tribute more to the influence of the Kurds on Washington than the authority of the Governing Council.

The guerrilla attacks are almost entirely confined to the Sunni heartlands north of Baghdad, though they are better planned than they were and are spreading further north towards Kirkuk and Mosul. In early October I went to Baiji, an oil refinery town with a population of 60,000, some 145 miles north of Baghdad, where I was told there'd been an uprising. I was sceptical, suspecting the account was exaggerated, but in the main street a crowd of a thousand was holding up pictures of Saddam Hussein and chanting: 'With our blood and with our spirit we shall die for you Saddam.' The previous morning, the local Iraqi police had fired at demonstrators who were demanding the dismissal of the US-appointed police chief and wounded four of them. More protestors gathered and burned down the mayor's office. The police--300 of them--fled to a nearby US base, where the American officers told them to go back or be sacked. The police refused, saying they would be killed if they did so. The US military command has been trying to leave these confrontations with protestors to Iraqi police to deal with, but finally their tanks moved gingerly back into Baiji, most areas of which remained in the hands of the protestors. In the weeks since, there have been pin-prick guerrilla attacks on US troops with home-made mortars, mines, bombs and Kalashnikovs.

The reasons behind the brief uprising in Baiji are common to all the Iraqi provinces immediately north of Baghdad. There is anger over the loss of jobs in the Army, Security Forces and Civil Service. 'Half the teachers in the schools have been dismissed because they were Baathists and there is no one to teach our children,' one man complained. Prices have risen because cheap Iraqi kerosene and bottled gas are being smuggled into Iran and Turkey. Protestors set fire to two Turkish road tankers in the main street. Above all, there is the day to day friction with the occupation forces. 'My nephew Qusai went onto the roof to fix the TV antenna and the US soldiers shot him dead,' Faidh Hamid told me. A US patrol had beaten an elderly man half to death with their rifle butts because they thought a mortar had been fired from the window of his house--a Swedish journalist embedded with the US patrol had watched in horror as the beating took place. A 75-year-old merchant was trying to recover $16,000 in Iraqi dinars and $4500 in gold taken from his house in May during a US raid. He showed me the petition he had sent to Baghdad: an official had scribbled a note along the bottom saying the money was being permanently confiscated because a Fedayeen had been found in his house, something the merchant denied.

The US has the military strength to retake a town like Baiji easily enough. But the friction points between occupation forces and Iraqis are so numerous and diverse that there will always be fresh crises. The US lacks allies not seen as its pawns. In Baiji, the local office of the Iraqi National Accord, one of the members of the Governing Council, had been set on fire. There is a self-defeating crudity about the occupation's methods. US troops routinely tie up those they detain, force them to lie on the ground and put bags over their heads.

Saddam Hussein should not have been a hard act to follow. Iraqis know that he ruined their country with his disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait. But in Baiji a clerk at the local registration office for births and deaths said he noticed that over the last couple of months parents of newborn babies had started to name them 'Saddam'.

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ]Yeah, I'm sure someone in the first Bush administration told him to invade  .

Saddam indeed informed US embassy about his plans to invade Kuwait. A female US govt (embassy) got the note and the US did not react. This was taken as a silent "go" from the US.

Search into it. I´m to lazy.

It was the US AMBASSODOR'S own words if i remember , they were posted in this thread sometime back just flip through. it was basically an invitation more double handed decietfulness courtesy US.

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ]Also, Saddam's classification as a POW means that he can be tried only under the authority of occupying forces, which might require a U.S. military trial. That would interfere with U.S. plans to turn the former Iraqi leader over to an Iraqi war crimes tribunal

Whoops, there go the plans for a trial by an Iraqi court .

Hi m21man

Maybe he threatened to say who in the TBA sold him the WMD and who in the Previous Bush Administration (PBA) told him it was OK to invade Kuwait.  

Cant have any public trials for people like that.

Kind Regards Walker

This probably is the reason why some newsis around these days that Saddam is being given some 'medicine' by US troops to help him stabilize or something i wonder what that 'medicine' contains maybe it might make him forget such stuff , you know become partially schizophrenic , people already think of him as a retarded psycho no one will believe anything if hes slowly made insane ....

[quicksand 0]

Saddam has cancer

Quote[/b] ]The ousted Iraqi dictator, who is currently under custody with the coalition forces, suffers from cancer of lymph glands, Kuwaiti Al-Anba daily reads, citing an Iraqi official. According to the daily, the disease is in an advanced stage, so doctors predict the former dictator would probably live a couple of years more.

Doctors came out with the fatal diagnosis while making thorough medical checking of Saddam Hussein at his capture near his hometown of Tikrit in December 2003.

How conveniant.I have a feeling that Saddam will be burried long before facing any sort of trial were he can expose all the dirty affairs of the previous administrations during the 80`s

[Acecombat 0]

Saddam has cancer

Quote[/b] ]The ousted Iraqi dictator, who is currently under custody with the coalition forces, suffers from cancer of lymph glands, Kuwaiti Al-Anba daily reads, citing an Iraqi official. According to the daily, the disease is in an advanced stage, so doctors predict the former dictator would probably live a couple of years more.

Doctors came out with the fatal diagnosis while making thorough medical checking of Saddam Hussein at his capture near his hometown of Tikrit in December 2003.

How conveniant.I have a feeling that Saddam will be burried long before facing any sort of trial were he can expose all the dirty affairs of the previous administrations during the 80`s  

actually this could work both ways you know , he dies before telling the world where he got the WMD's from ....

Well hes got the same type of Cancer my mother suffered from ..... the treatments a bitch though allthose chemo therapys and all really drain the life out of the person alive.

Atleast he'll die a natural painful death.If he isnt hanged already before.

Inother news:

Bomb Kills Six at Iraqi Mosque

Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 10 January 2004 — A bicycle bomb killed six people as they ended Friday prayers at a crowded Shiite mosque in Baqubah, central Iraq, underscoring the threat of religious conflict in a country already racked by an anti-American insurgency.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4....y=World

[quicksand 0]

What do you mean were did he get his WMD from?I fought it is a  common fact that America encouraged Saddam WMD ambitions during the 80`s

A quick search brought this article:

Quote[/b] ]In 1985 the Reagan administration encouraged American corporations licensed by the US Department of Commerce to export a whole lot of nasty biological and chemical materials to Iraq -- anthrax, botulinum toxin, and other toxigenic and pathogenic substances -- according to a 1994 Senate report.

"The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents,"

I am aware of the fact that Saddam was helped by others also, but clearly right now the country that would benefit the most from Saddam`s death before trial would be America

[m21man 0]

The US sold Iraq a lot of WMDs, but most of the conventional Iraqi arsenal was provided by ------ and --- ------ -----.

*Guess what names were blanked out.*

[ran 0]

France or maybe Russia and ? who else ?