Sadam Hussein gets Death Sentence

[Tom Yum]

one of the main problems with the iraqi police and security forces are that they have been completely infiltrated by insurgents and terrorists.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/25/iraq.police/

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.ph...1-111831-6144r

Exactly.

Which brings us to the question how are police officers selected? And what can be done to minimize the influence of those with insurgent/terrorist sympathies whom are currently in the police force and can they change the composition of this police force to make it effective at policing rather than using force to excercise age-old violence...

[Tom Yum]

i think calling your fellow countrymen who dont support your opinions anti-american is reprehensible.

Look at the long list of things Saddam has been responsible for...

[3mptin3ss]

70% of Iraq's national police force is made up of Shiite Muslims, those who staunchly supported Saddam Insane. Saddam's execution would probably be handled by a non-Iraqi muslim to quench any political backlash from Shiites. Too much publicity of the execution and the Shiite-lead police force could errupt in even more mayhem.

Shifting the hearts and minds of the national police force on the job of policing instead of sympathies/ties to Shiite insurgent militias will be a long-term job.

The police force could be divided into different jobs, each with varrying access to firearms/weapons. Not sure exactly how their police force is structured at the moment, but restructuring it into different groups like administrative units, public police force units and SWAT units would be easier to manage. Each new unit could be overseen and managed by western troops.

How are police officers selected? Are they volunteers? I believe young Iraqi men were conscripted into the army under Insane's rule. If they still are, they could give young men the option of serving in the police force as well as a substitute for that kind of civil service.

Would it be possible to break down applicants into the police force thoroughly enough to get them to accept, say a new police-force culture, forget their old ties and accept new ones with their former rivals? This probably sounds more ideal than pragmatic in the short-term...

They could randomize job selection or offer more incentives to minority groups to remove Shiite dominance, while keeping rotations in jobs short enough to be effective but not too long so as to aid shiite milita efforts.

one of the main problems with the iraqi police and security forces are that they have been completely infiltrated by insurgents and terrorists.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/25/iraq.police/

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061031-111831-6144r

[Tom Yum]

I think the big issue, is, to the minds of the people in Iraq, whether this is indeed an "Iraqi-run" trial.
From what I see in the press, that's kind of 50/50.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Getting off the fence for a moment, assuming 1/10th of what he's alledgedly been up to is true, I'd rather he was 'stoned' than hanged.

So far, it points to an Iraqi-run trial. I haven't done my homework on this one, but all of the staff in the courtroom are Iraqi, aren't they?

[3mptin3ss]

Calling it a "distraction" is simply reprehensible to all those who lived to see Saddam's despotism firsthand.

i think calling your fellow countrymen who dont support your opinions anti american is reprehensible.

[Troll Virus]

I get the feeling that this will polarize the Arab world toward the west, despite the trial being completely Iraq-run. This is history in the making....

I think the big issue, is, to the minds of the people in Iraq, whether this is indeed an "Iraq-run" trial.
From what I see in the press, that's kind of 50/50.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Getting off the fence for a moment, assuming 1/10th of what he's alledgedly been up to is true, I'd rather he was 'stoned' than hanged.

[Tom Yum]

70% of Iraq's national police force is made up of Shiite Muslims, those who staunchly supported Saddam Insane. Saddam's execution would probably be handled by a non-Iraqi muslim to quench any political backlash from Shiites. Too much publicity of the execution and the Shiite-lead police force could errupt in even more mayhem.

Shifting the hearts and minds of the national police force on the job of policing instead of sympathies/ties to Shiite insurgent militias will be a long-term job.

The police force could be restrutured into different units, each with varrying access to firearms/weapons. Not sure exactly how their police force is structured at the moment, but restructuring it into different groups like administrative units, public police force units and SWAT units would be easier to manage. Each new unit could be overseen and managed by western troops to make sure that those who fulfill their civil duties can go home safely.

How are police officers selected? Are they volunteers? I believe young Iraqi men were conscripted into the army under Insane's rule. If they still are, they could give young men the option of serving in the police force as well as a substitute for that kind of civil service.

Would it be possible to break down applicants into the police force thoroughly enough to get them to accept, say a new police-force culture, forget their old ties and accept new ones with their former rivals? This probably sounds more ideal than pragmatic in the short-term...

They could randomize job selection or offer more incentives to minority groups to remove Shiite dominance, while keeping rotations in jobs short enough to be effective but not too long so as to aid shiite milita efforts.

[3mptin3ss]

and btw, i dont think ive ever said anything anti american. just because i dont support the war in iraq, doesnt make me anti american.

[3mptin3ss]

Could it be because you saw this simply as another opportunity to jump into an intelligent discussion and spout your anti-American, anti-war bullshit?

actually i was stating my opinion about how saddams trial is just a distraction from the real problems in iraq.

[3mptin3ss]

i clearly stated that saddams verdict is irrelevant to the massive problems and violence that are tearing up iraq, so i dont know why you are trying to say im trying to tie the two together.

theres a possibility that the virdict could make the sunni insurgency more motivated to carry out attacks, mabye then you could tie them together.

[3mptin3ss]

I doubt seriously that it is meaningless for the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered under Saddam's rule. I'd be willing to bet that it holds real meaning for those who saw their daughters raped by Saddam's sons, their son's gassed by Saddam's generals, and their fathers tortured and murdered for speaking their minds. For those, I would not call the decision meaningless in the least.

the verdict still doesnt fix any of iraqs many problems, nor is it going to slow the ever increasing rate of attacks on american soldiers.

[3mptin3ss]

the verdict is meaningless because either way iraq is still a huge mess that just breeds endless violence.

[Tom Yum]

The World Responds...

I get the feeling that this will polarize the Arab world toward the west, despite the trial being completely Iraq-run. This is history in the making....

----------------------------------------------------
World opinion divided on Saddam sentence

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 5, 11:37 PM ET

Saddam Hussein's death sentence was celebrated by some on Sunday as justice deserved or even divine, but denounced by others as a political ploy two days before critical U.S. midterm congressional elections.
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Worldwide, the range of reactions — including a European outcry over capital punishment and doubts about the fairness of the tribunal that ordered Saddam to hang — reflected new geopolitical fault lines drawn after America's decision to invade
Iraq in 2003 and depose its dictator.

The
European Union welcomed the verdict but said Saddam should not be put to death. At the
Vatican, Cardinal Renato Martino,
Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues, called the sentence a throwback to "eye for an eye" vengeance.

"This is not the way to present the new Iraq to the world, which is different from Saddam, who was behind hundreds of thousands of deaths as well as death penalty sentences," said Hands Off Cain, an Italian organization working to rid the world of capital punishment.

Islamic leaders warned that executing Saddam could inflame those who revile the U.S., undermining
President Bush's policy in the Middle East and inspiring terrorists.

"The hanging of Saddam Hussein will turn to hell for the Americans," said Vitaya Wisethrat, a respected Muslim cleric in Thailand, which has its own Islamic insurgency in the country's south.

"The Saddam case is not a Muslim problem but the problem of America and its domestic politics," he said. "Maybe Bush will use this case to tell the voters that Saddam is dead and that the Americans are safe. But actually the American people will be in more danger with the death of Saddam."

Bush called the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

Praising the Iraqi judiciary for its independence, the White House denied arranging for the verdict to be announced just two days before pivotal elections in which Democrats are fighting for control of Congress.

"The idea is preposterous," said Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman.

Yet there was a touch of contempt as well, reminiscent of the international response when the United States failed to find the weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted had made Saddam such a threat.

Intervening militarily was "a grave error," said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose country withdrew its troops from Iraq, contending that conditions there have worsened since the U.S.-led invasion.

Although some voiced doubts that Saddam would actually be hanged, the International Federation for Human Rights denounced the death sentence, warning that it "will generate more violence and deepen the cycle of killing for revenge in Iraq." The Council of Europe called it "futile and wrong" to execute Saddam.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld.

In Pakistan, an opposition religious coalition claimed American forces have caused more deaths in Iraq in the past 3 1/2 years than Saddam did during his 23-year rule, and insisted Bush should stand trial for war crimes.

"Who will punish the Americans and their lackeys who have killed many more people than Saddam Hussein?" asked Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior lawmaker from the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition, which is critical of Pakistan's military cooperation with the United States.

In the Arab world, some Muslims saw the sentence as divine retribution, but others decried it as a farce.

"Saddam is being judged by traitors, Americans and Iranians, and those who came on the backs of American tanks," said Mahmoud al-Saifi of the Arab Liberation Front.

Iran, which fought an eight-year war against Saddam's Iraq and is a bitter opponent of the United States, praised the death sentence and said it hoped that Saddam — denounced by one lawmaker as "a vampire" — still would be tried for other crimes.

Key U.S. allies — including Britain and Australia — welcomed Sunday's verdict, which had been widely expected.

"Appalling crimes were committed by Saddam Hussein's regime. It is right that those accused of such crimes against the Iraqi people should face Iraqi justice," British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said in a statement.

"The whole process of the trial is a sign of democratic hope and I believe the world should see it as such," Australian Prime Minister John Howard told the Nine Network television.

Amnesty International questioned the fairness of the trial, and international legal experts said Saddam should be kept alive long enough to answer for other atrocities.

"The longer we can keep Saddam alive, the longer the tribunal can have to explore some of the other crimes involving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," said Sonya Sceats, an international law expert at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London.

"The problem really is that this tribunal has not shown itself to be fair and impartial — not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards," she said.

Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Malaysian-based International Movement for a Just World, also voiced concerns that Saddam's trial "violated many established norms of international jurisprudence."

Even so, "Saddam was undoubtedly a brutal dictator, and even though I wouldn't subscribe to the death penalty, he deserves to be punished severely for the enormity of his crimes," he added.

Konstantin Kosachyov, the Kremlin-allied head of the international affairs committee in Russia's State Duma, or lower house of parliament, said the sentence would deepen divisions in Iraq.

But Kosachyov expressed doubts that Saddam would actually be executed.

The verdict, he said, was mostly symbolic — "retribution that modern Iraq is taking against Saddam's regime."

[Tom Yum]

Some questions come to mind: How can US forces and locals keep the peace between the Sunnis/Kurds and the Shiites? What does the rest of the world make of this sentence?

[Tom Yum]

Saddam gets death for Shiite killings

By STEVEN R. HURST and HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writers 34 minutes ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061106/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_verdict

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced
Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.
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The former Iraqi dictator and six subordinates were convicted and sentenced for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town after an attempt on his life there.

Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Saddam's iron rule, erupted in celebration — but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.

Saddam trembled and shouted "God is great" when the hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, declared the former leader guilty and sentenced him to hang.

Televised, the trial was watched throughout
Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Saddam was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for his political harangues, and his half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.

The nine-month trial had inflamed the nation, and three defense lawyers and a witness were murdered in the course of its 39 sessions.

"Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!" Saddam cried out after the verdict, before bailiffs took his arms and walked the once all-powerful leader from the courtroom. There was a hint of a smile on Saddam's face.

With justice for Saddam's crimes done, the U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister called for reconciliation and delivered the most eloquent speech of his five months in office.

"The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq's history," Nouri al-Maliki said.

The White House praised the Iraqi judicial system and denied the U.S. had been "scheming" to have the historic verdict announced two days before American midterm elections, widely seen as a referendum on the Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

President Bush called the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

"It's a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government," the president said.

"Today, the victims of this regime have received a measure of the justice which many thought would never come," he added.

But symbolic of the split between the United States and many of its traditional allies over the Iraq war, many European nations voiced opposition to the death sentences in the case, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. A leading Italian opposition figure called on the continent to press for Saddam's sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.

Lost in the drama of Sunday's death sentence was any mention of the failed search for the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Bush said led the United States to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003.

Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.

Twenty-two months later, he went on trial for ordering the torture and murder of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujail. Saddam said those who were killed had been found guilty in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.

Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, was sentenced to join the former leader on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.

Iraq's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid, were party officials in Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.

A local Baath Party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted for lack of evidence.

In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read. In Baghdad, the Shiite bastion of Sadr City exploded in jubilation.

But in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, not far from Dujail, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city's favorite son through the streets. Some declared the court a product of the U.S. "occupation forces" and condemned the verdict. Policemen wept in the streets.

"By our souls, by our blood we sacrifice for you, Saddam," the Tikrit crowds chanted.

A trial envisioned to heal Iraq's deep ethnic and sectarian wounds appeared rather to have deepened the fissures.

"This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed," Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told Al-Arabiya satellite television.

The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted. If the verdicts are upheld, those sentenced to death would be hanged despite Saddam's second, ongoing trial for allegedly murdering thousands of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

"The problem really is that this tribunal has not shown itself to be fair and impartial — not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards," said Sonya Sceats, an international law expert at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London.

Saddam's Sunni supporters, the bulk of the insurgency that has killed the vast majority of American troops in Iraq, could still explode in violence once an open-ended curfew is lifted in coming days.

But the former leader's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, told The Associated Press his client had called on Iraqis to reject violence and refrain from taking revenge on U.S. invaders.

"His message to the Iraqi people was 'Pardon and do not take revenge on the invading nations and their people,'" al-Dulaimi said.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad issued a statement saying the verdicts "demonstrate the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them accountable. ... closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future."

U.S. officials who advised the tribunal on standards of international justice said Saddam's repeated courtroom outbursts may have played a key part in the convictions. They cited his admission in a March 1 hearing that he had ordered the trial of the 148 Shiites, insisting that was legal because they had conspired to kill him.

"Where is the crime? Where is the crime?" Saddam asked the five-judge panel then.

Later in the same session, he argued that his co-defendants must be released and that because he was in charge, he alone must be tried. His outburst came a day after the prosecution presented a presidential decree with a signature they said was Saddam's approval for death sentences, their most direct evidence against him.

About 50 of those sentenced by the Revolutionary Court died during interrogation before they could be executed. Some of those hanged were children.

The United States has denied direct involvement in the trial, but some legal observers believe it was tainted by association with the American presence. Miranda Sissons, head of the Iraq program at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, said: "There will always be some doubt as to how much influence it exerted on the trial."