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man with no head

They could have executed him when justice was served. Justice was not served by leaving other crimes unprosecuted.

Even in the United States a person won't be executed until all crimes he has been charged of have been disposed of. A person accused of three separate murders will have three trials and three sentences.

Where is ths justice for the others Saddam killed but will never be found guilty of killing?

raycarey

apparently, my guess was wrong.

according to....

Iraq to Review Abusive Acts at Hussein’s Execution - New York Times

the US is less than pleased with the audio that accompanies the video.

Butterfly

^^ good point sura. But I guess the Iraqi government didn't take care much about those crimes against humanity, all they wanted was to kill him. Who cares anyway since they will commit the same atrocities if they stay in power long enough.

Butterfly

And the execution will be remembered as being carried out by the US infidels, even if this is not entirely true, making the situation much worse.

Agent_Smith

Agreed. The "free" media is not allowed to show video of the thousands of coffins of dead U.S. military arriving from abroad but we can all get a front row view of a Iraqi lynching. Fair and balanced my ass.

raycarey

in all honesty, what has the US done well in iraq? going all the way back to the rationale for the war (wmd), it's been one fuck up after another.

the elections seemingly went well, but the truth is that iraqis simply voted along sectarian lines, and these elected officials are impotent to stop the violence or provide basic services.

stroller

That could take several decades, why waste time and expenses when the result is going to be the same anyway, i.e. death in nations like Iraq and the US?

man with no head

To deny victims their day in court is to deny justice. If it took a decade to bring forth cases and convict then it should have been done. At least let the world know what Saddam really did even if the end result (execution) would have been the same.

Plus, important details of the biggest mass killings (and who might have supplied the chemical weapons) now will never be known. Is it a surprise? Makes you wonder.

attaboy

I have read news reports of prosecutors in the US not trying serial rapists or serial murderers, due to time and money restraints, for every murder or rape they have evidence of the accused having commited.

Those people who didn't have their loved one's cases heard in the Iraqi court may well be satisfied in knowing he is dead. Why do you wish to impose your sense of western justice on them? I thought you found imposing western values on other people distasteful?
I think spending a decade trying Saddam would have been unrealistic. He get's a fair trial for enough killings to justify his sentence. How many murders he is tried for, ultimately, is the Iraqi's business. If people need more the government can build a Saddam War Crime Museum and Library chronicling his crimes.

So there are no records? It's all secreted away in Saddam's head. If there were any secrets you can bet he told his lawyers so it could be played as a final fcuk you to the US after his death. I wonder how many millions his lawyers negotiated out of Saddam to do it for him?

__________________
As a kid I always thought my nickname was "attaboy" until I realized they were rooting for the dog: "Attaboy, get 'em! Get 'em!".

raycarey

i'm guessing you what you tried to post was that saddam got a fair trial.

if so....

3 of his lawyers were murdered, and i lost track of how many judges were replaced.

by most accounts saddam was an evil guy, but his trial wasn't even close to being 'fair'.

man with no head

^ Failure to prosecute a crime due to lack of money or time is a miscarriage of justice. Every victim of a mass murderer deserves his or her day in court if nothing else to prove to the world that John Doe did in fact kill the victim.

I would have liked to have seen Saddam hang for the mass exterminations of the Kurds rather than the 'lighter' crime of being responsble for killing a few hundred people.

The point that bothers me is that we hold people without charges in secret prisons around the world yet here we caught someone who really was a nasty horrible person and we handed him over to the Iraqis to hang for what is a lesser crime? Just doesn't make any sense.

There should have been an international tribunal in the fashion of the Nuremberg Trials in which evidence was present and a verdict reached. We didn't let the post-Nazi government in Germany convict and try the worst Nazis; why did we let the Iraqi government hang Saddam when it wasn't the post-Saddam Iraqi laws that were broken?

Saddam's crimes were crimes against humanity and the trial, sentence, and punishement should have been conducted in an international arena.

raycarey

these boys thought they knew best......about everything.

and they were wrong about practically everything.

attaboy

http://teakdoor.com/the-captains-lou...tml#post238977 (Saddam Hussein's execution video)

I don't like to cut corners when it comes to the justice system either. It's sad that some people didn't get an official acknowlegement that society has recognized their loss and has passed judgement for what happened to their loved one. But not everyone gets to feel good, especially the surviving relatives of 100s of 1000s of dead people. I hope most are satisfied he's dead because that is all they are going to get unless they build the museum as I suggested as an option. Perhaps they could have some sort of Desmond TuTu tribunal of testimony which could allow people to express their grief before an official body of listeners. I'm not sure Iraqi society at this time could use it in a positive manner.

stroller

That's your personal understanding, it's not shared by most jurisdictions around the world. Once someone is convicted for something like 15 life-sentences, or lined up for execution, what's the point of adding to the sentence? Other victims and their relatives will have to accept that the perpetrator is being punished, with or without their particular case making a difference to the punishment, with or without trial.

man with no head

Here in the U.S. even if a person has been convicted of one murder he or she will often stand trial for any others committed (typically, though, they usually confess to the rest of them, thus, saving the need for a trial and most of the time the trial rolls up all crimes into one for efficiency).

I'm just confused as to why we accused Saddam of crimes against humanity/genocide but never tried him on that.

Butterfly

^ Saddam trial was key and very important. It was foolish to let the Americans handle it alone, and give it away to revengeful nationals. The Hague would have been a better place and probably more entertaining to watch.

lom

Hans Blix, the former UN weapon inspector said it so well:

"I hope that Saddam will be put on trial for all the crimes he has committed, and not executed in a rush.
Coming generations of Iraqies has the right to know what he was responsible for, what he did."

As a consequence of the quick execution, Saddam is not guilty for all the other crimes he was accused of.
Innocent until found guilty in court..

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Hey mister tally man tally me banana

stroller

Yes, one would have expected him to be tried in Den Haag, but then, the US aren't exactly known to adhere to or aid the implemetation of international law.

Yes, I can see how this would have been better in a high-profile case like this, as I said earlier, I would have prefered for him to get several life sentences, for various reasons.

Then other crimes could also have been looked at on an as-needed basis. But he was tried in Iraq and dealt with by the system there. I am not going to shed any tears over his death.

RDN

He's dead and good riddance. Ask the families of the other people he killed how they feel about that.

Yes, maybe they would've had a cell-phone below and above the trap door.