Jolie Rouge

Saddam Accused of Genocide in New Charges
By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 20 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraq tribunal announced new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others Tuesday, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds.

The move, tantamount to an indictment under the Iraqi legal system, paves the way for a second trial of the ousted ruler. Saddam already is being tried in the killings of more than 140 Shiites in a town north of Baghdad.

Under Iraqi law, the second trial could begin anytime after 45 days.

Investigative judge Raid Juhi said the charges against Saddam and the others had been filed with another judge, who will review the evidence and order a trial date.

The new case involves Saddam's role in Operation Anfal, a three-phase move against Kurds in northern Iraq during the war with Iran in the late 1980s. Anfal included the March 16 gas attack on the village of Halabja in which 5,000 people, including women and children, died.

Human rights groups consider the Halabja attack one of the gravest atrocities allegedly committed by Saddam's regime.

However, Juhi told The Associated Press that the Halabja gas attack would be prosecuted separately and was not considered part of the charges filed Tuesday. "These people were subjected to forced displacement and illegal detention involving thousands of civilians," Juhi said. "They were placed in different detention centers. The villages were destroyed and burned. Homes and houses of worshippers and buildings of civilians were leveled without reason or a military requirement."

Others accused in the Anfal case include Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan Majid, or "Chemical Ali"; former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad; former intelligence chief Saber Abdul Aziz al-Douri; former Republican Guard commander Hussein al-Tirkiti; former Nineveh provincial Gov. Taher Tafwiq al-Ani; and former top military commander Farhan Mutlaq al-Jubouri.

Saddam and seven others have been on trial since Oct. 19 for the deaths of Shiite Muslims following a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail. Iraqi authorities chose to try Saddam separately for various alleged crimes rather than lump all the cases together.

The Dujail trial was the first of what Iraqi authorities say could be up to a dozen proceedings. Saddam could face death by hanging if convicted in the Dujail case.

It is unclear whether the sentence would be carried out while other trials were in progress.

In December, a Dutch court sentenced chemicals merchant Frans van Anraat to 15 years in prison for selling Saddam's regime the chemicals used in the gas attacks. The ruling, the first ever dealing with atrocities under Saddam, concluded that the attacks constituted genocide.

The court had no jurisdiction to try Saddam, but prosecutors named Saddam and "Chemical Ali" as co-conspirators. The Iraqi tribunal has access to several weeks of testimony and evidence presented in that trial.

One document was a government decree said to have been signed by Saddam on June 20, 1987, ordering "special artillery bombs to kill as many people as possible" in the Kurdish area. Special artillery, Dutch prosecutors said, meant chemical weapons.

"Chemical Ali" was heard in an April 21, 1988, audio clip ordering that people caught in Kurdish areas "have to be destroyed ... must have their heads shot off." In another radio fragment, he said: "I will attack them with chemical weapons and kill them all."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq_sadd...kxBHNlYwN0bQ--

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Facing gallows, Saddam offers "sacrifice" for Iraq
By Mariam Karouny and Claudia Parsons
Wed Dec 27, 3:10 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein, due to be hanged within 30 days, said his execution should be seen as a sacrifice for the nation and called on Iraqis to unite and fight U.S. forces in the country. "Here I offer myself in sacrifice," Saddam said in a letter obtained from his defense lawyers in Jordan on Wednesday. "If my soul goes down this path (of martyrdom) it will face God in serenity."

The defense team said he had dictated it shortly after he was sentenced to death in November for crimes against humanity. The Iraqi High Tribunal appeals court upheld the sentence on Tuesday and said Saddam should be hanged within 30 days.

Saddam's execution will come as President Bush looks to usher in a new era for U.S. policy in Iraq amid public anger at home over rising U.S. casualties.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist who heads a national unity government that also includes Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds, has said Saddam's execution cannot come soon enough. But he faces the challenge of implementing the sentence without fuelling sectarian and political tensions.

Saddam's Baath party threatened to retaliate if the ousted leader was executed: "Our party warns again of the results of carrying out such a verdict, on the situation in Iraq and America in particular," read a statement posted on the Internet.

"It is the most dangerous red line that the American administration should not cross," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.

In his letter, which was also posted on a Web Site on Wednesday, Saddam called on Iraqis to unite.

"O brave, pious Iraqis in the heroic resistance. O sons of the one nation, direct your enmity toward the invaders. Do not let them divide you ... Long live jihad (holy war) and the mujahideen against the invaders."

But he said Iraqis should not blame the populations of the United States and its allies: "I urge you not to hate the peoples of the countries that committed aggression against us, but instead to differentiate between the decision-makers and the peoples."

RECONCILIATION EFFORTS AT STAKE

There were no major celebrations or protests against the decision to execute Saddam as many Iraqis, preoccupied with sectarian violence and shortages in basic services, had expected the appeal to fail.

"This is a just sentence because Saddam oppressed the Iraqi people but I think it came at the wrong time because we're living through a cycle of violence," said Mohammed Nasir.

With the government silent on how Saddam would be executed, speculation ranged from a swift hanging within days, announced only after the fact, to a public execution broadcast on television -- though few believed the latter was likely.

Political professor Hazim al-Naimi said the government appeared to want to dampen down media coverage. "..they are playing a clever game by not commenting and letting it cool down," Naimi told Reuters.

A car bomb in Baghdad killed eight people on Wednesday and 40 bodies were discovered, most shot and tortured, serving as a reminder of the daily carnage in the capital.

The United States said its troops were braced for any violence over the execution.

"The enemy has always used just about any excuse they could find to foment violence," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in Texas. "That's something that we're monitoring."

Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who beat Bush's close ally Silvio Berlusconi at an April election and pulled Italian troops out of Iraq, condemned the decision to execute Saddam.

"Without wanting to minimize the crimes Saddam Hussein committed and the ferocity with which he wielded power during his reign ... I can only express the firm opposition of the Italian government and of myself, to the death sentence for the former dictator," he said in a statement.

Anti-American anger bubbled to the surface when a spokesman for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc called for a government investigation into the killing by U.S. forces of a senior Sadrist official near Najaf. Thousands of angry Sadr supporters marched through Najaf chanting anti-American slogans.

Two U.S. soldiers died on Wednesday from their injuries, the U.S. military said, bringing the total U.S. military death toll to 2,983 since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Two soldiers from Latvia, which has 113 troops in Iraq, also died on Wednesday.

The Pentagon said it would send about 3,500 troops to Kuwait as a standby force for use in Iraq or elsewhere in the region.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Dubai and Dina al-Wakeel in Amman)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061227/ts_nm/iraq_dc_15

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Saddam urges Iraqis to seek coexistence
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to embrace "brotherly coexistence" and not to hate U.S.-led foreign troops in a goodbye letter posted on a Web site Wednesday, a day after Iraq's highest court upheld his death sentence and ordered him hanged within 30 days.

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A top government official, meanwhile, said Saddam's execution could proceed without the approval of Iraq's president, meaning there were no more legal obstacles to sending the deposed dictator to the gallows.

One of Saddam's attorneys, Issam Ghazzawi, confirmed to The Associated Press in Jordan that the Internet letter was authentic, saying it was written by Saddam on Nov. 5 — the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal for ordering the 1982 killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in Dujail.

"I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking," said the letter, which was written in Arabic and translated by the AP.

"I also call on you not to hate the people of the other countries that attacked us," it added, referring to the invasion that toppled his regime nearly four years ago.

Against the backdrop of sectarian killings that have dragged Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims into civil warfare over the past year, Saddam urged his countrymen to "remember that God has enabled you to become an example of love, forgiveness and brotherly coexistence."

But he also voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency, saying: "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen." He urged Iraqis to be patient and rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations."

Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of that struggle. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

Despite his calls for conciliation among Iraqis, Saddam's legacy is brutal. He put suspected foes to death without trial, oppressed Kurds and Shiites, waged war on Iran and twice fought U.S.-led armies. He left an impoverished nation now gripped by sectarian bloodshed and an insurgency against the U.S. presence.

Violence struck Baghdad again Wednesday, with a car bomb killing eight civilians and wounding 10 near an Iraqi army checkpoint. Four more civilians died in a mortar attack in a Shiite neighborhood, and police found the bodies of 51 apparent victims of sectarian killings.

Questions had arisen about whether the appeals court's ruling needed to be approved by the Iraqi presidency, which customarily signs off on death sentences.

Busho Ibrahim, deputy justice minister, said it wasn't necessary. "According to the legal provisions of the court, there is no need for the approval of the presidency," he said.

A spokesman for President Jalal Talabani acknowledged the legal argument that the execution could go ahead without ratification by the president, who has expressed opposition to the death penalty.

"Some people believe there is no need for his approval," spokesman Hiwa Osman said. "We still have to hear from the court as to how the procedure can be carried out."

An official from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said that "the government wants Saddam executed as soon as possible."

Another official close to al-Maliki, who also refused to be quoted by name, said the execution would take place before the end of the 30-day period.

Saddam will remain in a U.S. military prison near the airport, Camp Cropper, until the day of the execution, at which point he will be handed over to Iraqi authorities, the official said.

Ghazzawi, the defense lawyer, said the letter by Saddam was released Tuesday and published Wednesday on the Web site of Saddam's former Baath Party.

The deposed leader said he was writing the letter because his lawyers had told him the Iraqi High Tribunal that tried his case would give him an opportunity to say a final word.

"But that court and its chief judge did not give us the chance to say a word, and issued its verdict without explanation and read out the sentence — dictated by the invaders — without presenting the evidence," Saddam wrote.

"Dear faithful people," he added, "I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any honest believer."

Some Saddam loyalists threatened to retaliate if he is executed, warning in a posting on the same Web site that they would target U.S. interests.

"The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime," the statement said, referring to Baath fighters as "the resistance."

The Baath Party was disbanded after U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003. The Web site is believed to be run from Yemen, where a number of exiled members of the party are based.

The appeals court also affirmed death sentences for two of Saddam's co-defendants, including his half brother. It ruled life imprisonment for a third was too lenient and demanded the lower court also sentence him to death.

Some Iraqis said Saddam should be hanged immediately, but others feared Iraq's bloodletting could escalate if the former dictator is executed at a time when sectarian attacks are already on the rise.

"Executing him now is dangerous. The situation is very bad. Things need to be calmer," said Saadia Mohamed Majed, a 60-year-old Shiite in Baghdad who wants the penalty to be postponed for at least three years.

Saddam is in the midst of another trial, charged with genocide and other crimes during a 1987-88 military crackdown on Kurds in northern Iraq. An estimated 180,000 Kurds died during the operation. That trial was adjourned until Jan. 8, but experts have said the trial of Saddam's co-defendants is likely to continue even if he is executed.

The U.S. command reported three American military deaths Wednesday, bringing the U.S. death toll for December to 93 in one of the bloodiest months for U.S. troops this year. Some 105 soldiers and Marines were killed in October, according to an AP count.

"This has been a difficult month for coalition forces, and the month is not over yet," a military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, said.

Two Latvian soldiers were also killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded under their Humvee, the Latvian Defense Ministry said. It was unclear where the incident took place, but Latvia has about 130 soldiers serving in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.

A top aide to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was killed in a raid by U.S. troops Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, an Iraqi lawmaker said.

The U.S. military said the death occurred during a joint operation by American and Iraqi troops. It described the man, Sahib al-Amiri, as a criminal involved in the use of roadside bombs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061228/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Report: Saddam is dead
December 29, 2006 10:11 PM

Fox News reporting that al Arabiya has announced that Saddam has been executed.

Allah Pundit: "Al-Hurra is reporting it too. I’m monitoring Al Jazeera in the expectation that they’ll have the video before American media does."

Reuters:

Still and video cameras were in the chamber at the time of the execution. How long before it's on YouTube?

Celebrations are on in Sadr City, according to Arab media and Fox News.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

***

Bryan Preston sums up the tyrant's bloody resume. http://hotair.com/archives/2006/12/2...bering-saddam/

Remembering Saddam
posted at 10:29 pm on December 29, 2006

He was a street tough who took power in a coup and immediately singled out his enemies for summary execution.

He initiated a nuclear weapons program that the Israelis destroyed by airstrike in 1981.

He launched a war against Iran that led to the deaths of about a million people.

He invaded Kuwait, killed scores of its royal family and raped the country. During the US-led war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control, Iraqi troops briefly invaded Saudi Arabia and frequently launched missiles at Israeli civilians. That makes four of his neighboring countries that he invaded or attacked directly.

He conducted the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, a brutal campaign against civilians that saw the use of chemical weapons against defenseless women and children. By some estimates he was responsible for the deaths of 300,000 Iraqis. He allowed rape rooms and torture chambers to proliferate, and raised his sons to be even worse monsters than he was. He brutally supressed a Shia uprising against him and subjugated the Marsh Arabs to terrible cruelty.

He worked with terrorists Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, two of the most notorious terrorists of the 20th century, who had American blood on their hands. He paid the families of Palestinian suidice bombers in Israel. He attempted to assassinate President George H. W. Bush. He had at least a tacit relationship with al Qaeda, to the point that the Clinton administration bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on the suspicion that it was manufacturing chemical weapons for al Qaeda that were of Iraqi design.

Saddam Hussein was an evil man. He was the Hitler that we stopped before he could do even more damage. Tonight he’s dead. Good.



Mark Coffey draws on Thomas Jefferson.
http://decision08.net/2006/12/29/sad...been-executed/

Saddam Hussein Has Been Executed

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

- Thomas Jefferson, letter from Paris to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787…

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Lots of readers are peeved by CNN's memorial tribute to Saddam. Reader Roger writes, "Did Gerald Ford get this much respect on CNN's home page?"





The New York Times, to its credit, does better:





Brian Maloney notes hand-wringing over at HuffPo.
http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2...iraq-talk.html

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Iraqi TV says Saddam Hussein executed
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writers
8 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday, Iraqi state-run television reported.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

Also hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court. State-run Iraqiya television news announcer said "criminal Saddam was hanged to death and the execution started with criminal Saddam then Barzan then Awad al-Bandar."

Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and a former member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was also present there."

Al-Rayes, an ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, did not attend the execution. She said Al-Maliki did not attend but was represented by an aide.

The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

Al-Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam be spared, telling families of people killed during the dictator's rule that would be an insult to the victims.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki's office quoted him as saying during a meeting with relatives before the hanging.

The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless in ordering executions of his opponents, will keep other Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted leader.

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds.

Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

On Thursday, two half brothers visited Saddam in his cell, a member of the former dictator's defense team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press by telephone from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator handed them his personal belongings.

A senior official at the Iraqi defense ministry said Saddam gave his will to one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen."

Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations" that ousted his regime.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.

The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.

U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait invasion remained in place when Saddam failed to cooperate fully in international efforts to ensure his programs for creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled. Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were impoverished.

The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam's regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/...e_mi_ea/saddam

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Status of some of Saddam's family
By The Associated Press
20 minutes ago

Status of some of Saddam Hussein's relatives:

• Barzan Ibrahim, half brother and former intelligence chief, was hanged Saturday along with Saddam for 1982 killings of 148 Shiite Muslims.

• Ali al-Majid, cousin known as "Chemical Ali" for alleged role in use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, on trial charged with genocide for crackdown on Kurds in 1987-88.

• Sajida Khairallah Tulfah, wife, believed in Qatar and sought by Iraqi government for allegedly supporting and financing terrorism in Iraq.

• Odai and Qusai Hussein, sons, and grandson Mustafa died July 22, 2003, in gunbattle with U.S. troops in Mosul.

• Raghad and Rana Saddam Hussein, daughters, along with their nine children, granted refuge in Jordan on humanitarian grounds in July 2003.

• Ayman Sabawi, nephew, escaped from Iraqi prison Dec. 9 where he was serving life sentence for financing insurgents and possessing bombs.

• Mulhana Hamood Abdul Jabar, brother-in-law, arrested by U.S. military in May 2003 in Tikrit.

• Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid and Saddam Kamel al-Majid, sons-in-law, executed at Saddam's order in February 1996 after returning from defection to Jordan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/...addam_family_1

These two fled the country with their husbands and children at one point. Saddam got them to come back with promises and lies. Executed the husbands ( his son-in-laws ) in front of the wives and children - told his daughters if they were ever "disloyal" again, he would have the children ( his grandchildren ) executed in front of them. If the SOB would do this to his own kin ....

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Bill Ardolino, on his way to Iraq for his first embed tour, visited Kuwait's "Not to Forget" Museum -- a "timely place to be," Bill notes, as Saddam Hussein's date with the noose approaches.

Go check out his photos and interview.
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/002905.php

The victims of Saddam's atrocities deserve not to be forgotten.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Iraqi-Americans pray for Saddam's death
By KRISTIN LONGLEY, Associated Press Writer
31 minutes ago

DEARBORN, Mich. - Dozens of Iraqi-Americans gathered late Friday at a Detroit-area mosque to celebrate reports that Saddam Hussein had been executed, cheering and crying as drivers honked horns in jubilation.

Dave Alwatan wore an Iraqi flag around his shoulders and flashed a peace sign to everyone he passed at the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in this suburb of Detroit, a city that has one of the nation's largest concentrations of people with roots in the Middle East. "Peace," he said, grinning and laughing. "Now there will be peace for my family."

Alwatan, 32, said Saddam's forces tortured and killed relatives that were left behind when Alwatan left Iraq in 1991.

A crowd of more than 150 men gathered in anticipation of the former Iraqi dictator's execution, singing and dancing and chanting "Now there's peace, Saddam is dead" in English and Arabic.

The center's director, Imam Husham Al-Husainy, said members prayed for Saddam's death. Outside, traffic slowed as people drove in circles around the mosque, honking horns. "This is our celebration of the death of Saddam," Al-Husainy said while standing on top of a car following reports by Iraqi state-run television that Saddam had been hanged. "The gift of our New Year is the death of Saddam Hussein."

Meanwhile, some local Arab-American leaders warned that Saddam's execution would increase violence in Iraq.

Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and chairman of several Arab-American groups, said the former dictator's death sentence was one more casualty in a war that has killed thousands. He said it will not end the power struggle among Iraqi religious groups. "The execution might bring some amusement and accomplishment to the Bush administration, but it will not help the Iraqi people," Siblani said. "The problem we're facing in Iraq is going to multiply."

Rauf Naqishbendi, 53, an Iraqi Kurd who moved to the U.S. in 1977, said he was pleased that Hussein was being executed, but lamented the loss of family members who he said were gassed by the dictator's henchman in 1988. "Psychologically, the execution is good news, and people will feel that justice has been served," said Naqishbendi, who lives a few miles south of San Francisco. "But the reality is that it's not going to bring back my family members who he killed."

The Detroit area's Iraqi community includes a group of Chaldean Christians, many of whom fled their homeland during Saddam's rule.

Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, based in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, said his humanitarian organization is against the taking of human life. But, he said, the world must reflect on Saddam's execution, "so we never again relinquish our destiny to tyrants like him."

Imad Hamad, director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, said the glee surrounding Saddam's death was laced with uncertainty about the future. "The joy would have been complete if we were to see the healthy Iraq, the united Iraq, the safe Iraq," Hamad said. "Then everybody would be jumping up and down, celebrating."

___

Associated Press writers David Runk in Detroit and Jason Dearen in San Francisco contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_iraqi_reaction

TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution
By Paul J. Gough

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Television networks face a killer of a conundrum with the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, whose hanging could be videotaped and perhaps aired on Iraqi TV.

The timing of Saddam's date with the gallows was unclear, but late Thursday CBS, NBC and Fox News Channel reported that the former dictator, convicted this year in the deaths of 148 people in 1982, would be turned over by the American military to the Iraqi government within 36 hours and hanged before the start of a Muslim holiday on Sunday.

Several sources said Saddam's execution would be videotaped by the Iraqi government, though it wasn't clear whether it would be released to the public or broadcast. "We will video everything," Iraqi National Security adviser Mouffak al Rubaie told CBS News.

Judging by the Iraqi government's release Tuesday of videotape of the hanging of 13 convicts, it could be a gruesome affair. Meetings were held Thursday in at least two network headquarters over how to handle the potentially graphic images.

ABC and CBS said they wouldn't air the full execution if the video became available. "We're very aware that we're coming into people's living rooms and that there could be children watching," CBS News senior vp Linda Mason said.

Mason and her network counterparts have broadcast standards and procedures they follow in these cases. Phil Alongi, special-events executive producer at NBC News, said there are ways the network can approach the video or photographs that will get the point across without having to be graphic.

The operative word: taste.

"We have very, very strict guidelines with how to deal with that," said Bob Murphy, senior vp at ABC News. "If there were pictures made available of the execution, they would have to be viewed by senior management before we would put them on the air, and we would make a judgement of taste and propriety of what we would show."

CNN and Fox News Channel still were discussing what they would do if the footage were made available. It also wasn't clear what the newly launched network Al-Jazeera International would do. An e-mail and phone call to the channel's Qatar headquarters weren't returned Thursday. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Al-Jazeera's pan-Arab channel has never shown an execution.

While video of an execution would be unprecedented in U.S. television, the war in Iraq has led to a number of judgement calls on graphic video. The U.S. military released graphic photographs of Saddam's two sons who were killed in a U.S. raid on their Mosul hideout in July 2003. "We edited down the pictures to show only what was appropriate, what we thought was appropriate," Murphy said. "We didn't show the pictures live (when the network received them), and we made sure that they showed enough of the bodies so that it was clearly them, but we didn't dwell on it."

None of the networks showed the beheading of Nick Berg, an American who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq in May 2004. But Berg's beheading by kidnappers -- along with the killings of others, including a South Korean -- was distributed on the Internet and fed to American networks that chose not to use the footage.

Mason, Alongi and Murphy said Thursday that an execution video widely distributed on the Internet wouldn't change their minds about not airing the graphic portions of any video.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1925372006

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Comments on the death penalty for Saddam
By The Associated Press
Fri Dec 29, 8:21 PM ET

Some comments on the executing of Saddam Hussein:

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence." — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

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Saddam's execution punishes "a crime with another crime. ... The death penalty is not a natural death. And no one can give death, not even the state." — Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues.

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"Today marks an important milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law." — deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel, on day appeals court upheld death penalty.

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"Imposing the death penalty, which is indefensible in any case, is especially wrong after the unfair proceedings of the Dujail trial." — Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program for Human Rights Watch.

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"Saddam is paying the price for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis. This is an unprecedented feeling of happiness. ... Nothing matches it, no festival or marriage or birth." — Abu Sinan, a resident of Sadr City, Baghdad's impoverished Shiite slum.

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"This is an unfair verdict and if Saddam is executed or not ... he will remain a symbol and no one can delete it, neither the Iraqi government nor the Americans." — Muhssin Ali Mohammed of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

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"As long as he's alive, there's still some power and people still rise up. Once the execution goes through, I think it will be a relief for a lot of Iraqis." — Sgt. Stuart Fowler, Company A, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.

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"I think personally that things might get heated up around here then. There's still a lot of people who support him." — Pfc. Michael Petersen, Company A, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.

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"We are against the death penalty. However, what I think is important about this is to recognize that this trial of Saddam has been handled by the Iraqis themselves. ... It does give us a very clear reminder of the total and barbaric brutality of that regime." — British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

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"All sections of Iraqi society, as well as the wider international community, have an interest in ensuring that a death sentence provided for in Iraqi law is only imposed following a trial and appeal process that is, and is legitimately seen as, fair, credible and impartial." — Louise Arbour, U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

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"It will not increase our moral authority in the world. ... Saddam's heinous crimes against humanity can never be diminished, but he was our ally while he was doing it. ... Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth will make us blind and disfigured. ... Saddam as a war trophy only deepens the catastrophe to which we are indelibly linked." — the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

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"Putting into action such an inhumane sentence casts aside the aspirations of the Iraqi people for the transformation of their country." — Ravil Gainutdin, head of the Russian Council of Muftis, to the RIA-Novosti news agency.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/...am_quote_box_4



Bush: Execution will not halt violence
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
6 minutes ago

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush said Friday that Saddam Hussein's execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that his death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Yet, Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas, "it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/..._pe/us_iraq_16

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

SPARE THOUGHTS ON SADDAM
Fri Dec 29, 8:04 PM ET

Many data, historical and analytical, are being thrust at us, following the pronouncement of the death sentence on Saddam Hussein. What one might loosely call "the prosecution," anxious to defend this mite of justice handed down by the Iraqi court, reminds the world that it is incorrect to assume that the execution of Saddam can measure up to what Saddam did.

Remember, we are told, the court ruled on only a single barbarity, namely the Dujail massacre.

That involved murdering about 150 Shiites. They were being punished for conspiring against Saddam. Most of them were, simply, shot. But not all. Some, we learned, were inserted into meat grinders. If the trial revealed what were Saddam's motives in this alternative means of execution, word of what they were has not got out. Most would think it naive even to ask. The idea -- alternative means of execution -- wasn't a scientific experiment: Execution by bullet, or by giant blades that tear bone and flesh apart -- which is better? The idea, manifestly, was to exhibit the lengths to which Saddam was routinely prepared to go in order to discourage dissent.

We are reminded that there is no mathematically satisfying way to measure the life of Saddam up against all the lives he destroyed. As well suggest that an execution of Hitler or Stalin or Mao could ever have balanced the scales on what they had done. Capital punishment is exacted, in modern law, as punishment for taking a single life. Taking hundreds, thousands, millions of lives mocks the very idea of executable justice. But the symbol of Saddam on the gallows is a symbol of justice pursued, even if plenary satisfaction is not possible.

The date is not set, but we are advised that under Iraqi law, execution is required to take place not more than 30 days after the affirmation of the sentence. And so we pause to anticipate the cries against capital punishment. Thoughtful citizens, especially those dutifully inclined to listen to the teachings of the Christian church, acknowledge that to endorse the sentence on Saddam is to endorse the capital punishment decried by a very large school of ethicists and, indeed, by the pope himself.

Let's go ahead and acknowledge that taking a life, even under civil sanction, asserts an authority over human life not lightly assumed. In the arguments of the abolitionists -- and that includes most Western governments and 110 percent of the world's professional ethicists -- this is never justifiably done in cold blood.

A formal philosophical-moral manifesto, seeking to annul the authority of the Iraqi court, has not yet been enunciated, but it will be. So far we have only the meanderings of Ramsey Clark, routinely dismissed. In plain fact, only the U.S. Army could exercise the power to freeze Saddam's trap door, and this isn't going to happen.

What IS going to happen is an outcry against capital punishment, and we are obliged to listen to what will be said and to weigh the arguments, even if we have wrestled with the dilemma before. But we are entitled, also, to satisfaction from what is about to happen.

For all that the Arab world seems crowded with young men who are prepared to blow themselves up provided they can simultaneously blow up other people, the indications are pretty clear that Saddam Hussein himself has no appetite to go to the gallows. His aggressive, contemptuous conduct during the trial, the scorn he has shown for the very idea of a tribunal that presumes to question his sacrosanct judgments, balances ironically with his claims to innocence. I didn't do it, and if I did I was entitled to do it. Saddam Hussein does not want to die on the gallows any more than the Nuremberg gang did.

But this is the point at which we are entitled to a measure of satisfaction precisely over what Saddam is going to experience. Even if it is prideful to take his life, it is something other than sinful to take satisfaction -- pleasure, even -- at its forfeit.

It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucwb/2006123...oughtsonsaddam

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?