The Dictator is Hanged...
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I completely agree; law is not justice. This is what I was trying to drive home, but I see that I did not make my point completely. You're picking semantics with what was meant to be an ironic comment. Of course Saddam was an administrator of law, and of course "true" justice suffered for it. That doesn't change the fact that some called it justice because it was grounded in law. Yet we all agree that this "administration of justice" was murder.mathias wrote:Saddam was an administrator of law, not everyone agrees that that's synonymous with justice.
Yet, when the administration of law gives Saddam the death penalty and someone suggests that this was tantamount to murder, how is it that this exercise of law is suddenly unquestionably just and beyond question?
I disagreed with Bluefront's comment because it illustrated exactly the flaw that you and Bluefront have pointed out in response to my own post: It confuses a decision of law for a decision of justice. Whoever suggested that killing Saddam was murder probably does not agree that the killing was "the administration of justice"! To refine Bluefront's words a bit, murder and justice are mutually exclusive. When Bluefront called the murder comment insane, he was (deliberately?) misunderstanding the original sentiment, which called the administration of law murder.
I disagree. Justice does not derive from law, law is an attempt to formalize and standardise justice, or at least that's what it's supposed to be in theory. Our sense of justice derives from instincts, religion, and so on. Even if it was against the law, most people would still classify punishing saddam, by whichever means possible, as justice.
Justice is not about revenge. Killing Saddam is dinosaur behavior. Capital punishment have no place in a democratic state at all. Furthermore does article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other UN articles affirm the right of everyone (incl. even killers like Saddam and Bush) to life.
Capital punishment on TV (many have broadcasted it) is perverse at best and makes me think about Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers with the infomercial saying: "Execution tonight at eight.. All nets.. All channels.. Would you like to know more?"
As long as there is oil in the middle east there will be no peace. If not local tyrants do the killing, greedy foreign powers are lined up to give a "helping" hand. We will see many oil wars in the next 10 years or so before it runs out. Meantime people in these nations will keep on paying for our greed, lusts and mistakes.
Capital punishment on TV (many have broadcasted it) is perverse at best and makes me think about Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers with the infomercial saying: "Execution tonight at eight.. All nets.. All channels.. Would you like to know more?"
As long as there is oil in the middle east there will be no peace. If not local tyrants do the killing, greedy foreign powers are lined up to give a "helping" hand. We will see many oil wars in the next 10 years or so before it runs out. Meantime people in these nations will keep on paying for our greed, lusts and mistakes.
Last edited by Poodle on Wed Jan 03, 2007 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
If you dare, I would like to see you charging for glory on a battlefield in N. Korea which have both a murdering dictator and real WMDs. But yes no oil interests... That s why you haven't invaded that country, and even more becuase you would get your buts kicked really hard trying. It's sad to see how fooled you are by the media.Bluefront wrote: And guess what......we finally found those elusive WMDs. The weapon of mass destruction was the administration of justice by Saddam. So in the end, our reason for invading Iraq, was correct after all. The weapon, now hanged, was Saddam himself.
Did you know btw that Saddam got the plans to the Chemical wheapons factories from an AMERICAN company via Dick Cheney? It was wheapons from these factories that were used on the Kurds. You won't see reports like that on Fox or CNN.
It's easy to sit home in your sofa applauding war and death. You should lend some thoughts from 9/11 to the Vietnam vets and worry about real dangers to the people in your country, like the environment, unemployment, bad health and fascist laws like the "patriotic act" instead of terrorists. That is what a real patriot would do.
Fat from diery products and meat is the biggest killer in the US. So start worrying... You are good at that.
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Humm....chomping on a small salad and sipping a cup of tea. Sorry... who would have thought..... The execution of a real mass murderer by the relatives of his victims, would elicit so many expressions of sorrow. So society becomes the tyrant when it rids itself of a cancer.
Poor Saddam.....maybe some wag at the UN will nominate him for a Nobel peace prize, maybe pay his relatives reparations for the grave injustice done the man.
Rot in Hell Saddam.....you put yourself there.
Poor Saddam.....maybe some wag at the UN will nominate him for a Nobel peace prize, maybe pay his relatives reparations for the grave injustice done the man.
Rot in Hell Saddam.....you put yourself there.
sigh... are you ever going to take this on board:Bluefront wrote:The execution of a real mass murderer by the relatives of his victims, would elicit so many expressions of sorrow. So society becomes the tyrant when it rids itself of a cancer.
Poor Saddam.....maybe some wag at the UN will nominate him for a Nobel peace prize, maybe pay his relatives reparations for the grave injustice done the man.
Rot in Hell Saddam.....you put yourself there.
opposition to judicial killing != sympathy for murderers
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Re: The Dictator is Hanged...
I guess the speech writer on vacation? Maybe at the undisclosed location?aristide1 wrote:And for the real question who has killed more innocents in Iraq? Saddam or GWB??? Please gives us now one of two speeches. The "ends justify the means" speech or the "two wrongs make a right" speech.
Which is it BF?
But why concern yourself so much about saddam's execution and not about all the other executions currently scheduled? Because other people welcome the executions?
Has everyone here even heard of the planned execution of five bulgarian nurses and one palestinian doctor to make them scapegoats for poor hospital hygiene?
Has everyone here even heard of the planned execution of five bulgarian nurses and one palestinian doctor to make them scapegoats for poor hospital hygiene?
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No, we agree. I didn't say justice derives from law. I said "some called it justice because it was grounded in law. More specifically, Bluefront called this lawful execution justice, and then got upset when others called it murder, not justice. Saddam's execution was an exercise of law — this is beyond question. What's at question is whether it was just. That's far from uncontroversial, but it's not relevant to my point, because all I'm doing is pointing out that Bluefront is making a mistake by assuming that the execution was unquestionably just.mathias wrote:I disagree. Justice does not derive from law, law is an attempt to formalize and standardise justice, or at least that's what it's supposed to be in theory. Our sense of justice derives from instincts, religion, and so on. Even if it was against the law, most people would still classify punishing saddam, by whichever means possible, as justice.
You're ignoring the irony that is inherent to my argument (the irony that nobody who's thinking straight should make the mistakes you're accusing me of), so you're missing the fact that I'm saying exactly what you're saying. I just want you to accept that the flaw that you see in "my" argument is in fact a flaw in Bluefront's argument.
Because this particular thread is on the topic of Saddam's execution, not execution in general. We've had that discussion already.But why concern yourself so much about saddam's execution and not about all the other executions currently scheduled?
No, bluefront didn't say why he considered killing saddam justice. Just that it was just and lawful. I would consider it more likely that it was just and unlawful than that it was lawful but unjust. If you want to call it barbaric, fine, even barbarians would have considered saddam a monster. If anything was unjust, it's that all the assasination attempts on him had failed.
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I don't think it matters why Bluefront considers the killing just. What matters is that he assumed that the person who called the killing murder would agree with him on that point. His comment essentially boils down to yelling at someone because that person doesn't agree that the execution was just, suggesting that whoever doesn't agree that it was just must be insane. The comment basically says that he's not willing to consider the possibility that the execution was unjust. Before I got sidetracked by you, Mathias, I was just attempting to point out that it was that exact attitude that allowed Saddam to engineer his killings in the first place.
PS: I have said nothing whatsoever about whether *I* think the execution was just or barbaric. Please don't assume that my position is the opposite of yours just because I am arguing with you. So far, all I have been trying to do is point out that Bluefront is arguing unfairly. I am still a long way from making my mind up about whether the execution was just.
PS: I have said nothing whatsoever about whether *I* think the execution was just or barbaric. Please don't assume that my position is the opposite of yours just because I am arguing with you. So far, all I have been trying to do is point out that Bluefront is arguing unfairly. I am still a long way from making my mind up about whether the execution was just.
Changing the subject a little.
Exactly how was a guard present at Saddams hanging allowed to take a mobile phone into the execution room, and why were the guards taunting and verbally abusing him moments prior to his death.???
A guard is now being questioned. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 229097.stm
The video that the guard took was executed very poorly (pune intended), and you dont actually get to see him hang, but seeing him drop and the rope going taught when he dissapears from view both sends a shiver down my spine and makes me happy to know that he really is dead, and he got what he deserved.
As far as "just" is concerned, the entire Iraq war was unjust, but whether the trial was just or not is a moot point as he was guilty regardless of how the trial was conducted.
And again I will say that he deserved death, but that he should not have been killed as this will lead to even more Iraqi's dying needlesly.
Andy
Exactly how was a guard present at Saddams hanging allowed to take a mobile phone into the execution room, and why were the guards taunting and verbally abusing him moments prior to his death.???
A guard is now being questioned. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 229097.stm
The video that the guard took was executed very poorly (pune intended), and you dont actually get to see him hang, but seeing him drop and the rope going taught when he dissapears from view both sends a shiver down my spine and makes me happy to know that he really is dead, and he got what he deserved.
As far as "just" is concerned, the entire Iraq war was unjust, but whether the trial was just or not is a moot point as he was guilty regardless of how the trial was conducted.
And again I will say that he deserved death, but that he should not have been killed as this will lead to even more Iraqi's dying needlesly.
Andy
Last edited by andyb on Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:55 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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And also Sudan and their genocide. It appears people without control of oil have no human rights.Poodle wrote:
If you dare, I would like to see you charging for glory on a battlefield in N. Korea which have both a murdering dictator and real WMDs. But yes no oil interests... That s why you haven't invaded that country, and even more becuase you would get your buts kicked really hard trying. It's sad to see how fooled you are by the media.
Fox publish that? You've got to be joking.Did you know btw that Saddam got the plans to the Chemical wheapons factories from an AMERICAN company via Dick Cheney? It was wheapons from these factories that were used on the Kurds. You won't see reports like that on Fox or CNN.
For some party loyality and corporate profits are the end all of patriotism.It's easy to sit home in your sofa applauding war and death. You should lend some thoughts from 9/11 to the Vietnam vets and worry about real dangers to the people in your country, like the environment, unemployment, bad health and fascist laws like the "patriotic act" instead of terrorists. That is what a real patriot would do.
Guess who I am referring to?
But we have corporate profits here so that killing doesn't count.Fat from diery products and meat is the biggest killer in the US. So start worrying... You are good at that.
Any facts you would like to add BF?
There are a lot of politicians of the past that have a lot of blame for the rise of Saddam and Osama Bin Liner. Funding and arming a leader of a country/group/faction that you have no real control over can bite you in the arse many years later. America, Britain, France, Russia, and many other countries should not stay blameless for their past actions. They should not of course be blamed entirely as no-one could have predicted what the consequences would be years later, but they should accept some responsibility and stop passing the blame on in full.
What happened with Sadam and Osama will almost certainly happen again in the future, when some dumb twat of a politician pulls some strings and gets a country involved in something they shouldnt, or in a way that they shouldnt.
Saddam was always a monster, we just gave him money and guns and ignored everything he did that was bad, and we have now let the Iraqi government hang him years after helping him fight a war against Iran.
Osama is the western worlds pet hate at the moment (apart from Muslims, the USA and the UK), years after funding and arming him to fight the Russians during the cold war, and it is claimed that he is the instigator behind the World Trade Center attacks. But how can I believe that to be true as its coming from the same people who said that we should go to war with Iraq, that there are WMD's, and that its not about the oil.
Andy
What happened with Sadam and Osama will almost certainly happen again in the future, when some dumb twat of a politician pulls some strings and gets a country involved in something they shouldnt, or in a way that they shouldnt.
Saddam was always a monster, we just gave him money and guns and ignored everything he did that was bad, and we have now let the Iraqi government hang him years after helping him fight a war against Iran.
Osama is the western worlds pet hate at the moment (apart from Muslims, the USA and the UK), years after funding and arming him to fight the Russians during the cold war, and it is claimed that he is the instigator behind the World Trade Center attacks. But how can I believe that to be true as its coming from the same people who said that we should go to war with Iraq, that there are WMD's, and that its not about the oil.
Andy
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http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2 ... o-911.htmland it is claimed that he is the instigator behind the World Trade Center attacks. But how can I believe that to be true as its coming from the same people who said that we should go to war with Iraq, that there are WMD's, and that its not about the oil.
Did I hear an independent thought alarm go off? Careful there Andy. You’re in violation of the Patriot Act.
I consider the capital punishment Saddam Hussein received justice. Nothing less would not have been true justice. Except maybe some sharp objects under fingernails but I bet UN's Human Rights would have something to object to that as well.
Saddam was tried, sentenced and executed in Iraq by the Iraqi. If what happened was not justice, then what would have been? International justice? Like justice Augusto Pinochet received? Or what Slobodan Milosevic received?
People have been killed due to religion, race, etc. yet we object on death sentence of a mass murderer? Why are we so conserned about "unjustified murder" (=death sentence) of people who commit genocide, but not interested of the genocide itself? Did they receive a fair trial? Even an unfair one? AFAIK, some people got shot on sight.
Saddam was tried, sentenced and executed in Iraq by the Iraqi. If what happened was not justice, then what would have been? International justice? Like justice Augusto Pinochet received? Or what Slobodan Milosevic received?
People have been killed due to religion, race, etc. yet we object on death sentence of a mass murderer? Why are we so conserned about "unjustified murder" (=death sentence) of people who commit genocide, but not interested of the genocide itself? Did they receive a fair trial? Even an unfair one? AFAIK, some people got shot on sight.
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Wiretapping without a warrant, etc. We lost more civil rights than the Iraqi's gained. That's the administrations way of spreading democracy.andyb wrote:Patriot act......... I have no idea what that is, and I really dont care anyway.
If that remark doesn't sum up the US for the last 6 years I don't know what does.Did I hear an independent thought alarm go off? Careful there Andy. You’re in violation of the Patriot Act.
It’s amazing how many people do not seem to understand that it is entirely possible to simultaneously hold the belief that a person deserves to die with the belief that executing him is wrong. The question of what punishment a person deserves on the basis of his actions is entirely separate from the question of how I should act with regard to him – his actions do not automatically justify mine. For the record, I believe that the contempt for human life that the death penalty represents demeans and diminishes the society that allows it, and actually damages the people who practise it. That doesn’t mean that I believe that there is no-one in this world who deserves to die – there are, and Saddam was definitely one of them.nick705 wrote:sigh... are you ever going to take this on board:Bluefront wrote:The execution of a real mass murderer by the relatives of his victims, would elicit so many expressions of sorrow. So society becomes the tyrant when it rids itself of a cancer.
Poor Saddam.....maybe some wag at the UN will nominate him for a Nobel peace prize, maybe pay his relatives reparations for the grave injustice done the man.
Rot in Hell Saddam.....you put yourself there.
opposition to judicial killing != sympathy for murderers
The distinction between what is just and what is moral is the entire basis of the New Testament – the idea that forgiveness and mercy are more important than justice is the most revolutionary part of Christ’s message, IMHO. Now, I’m not a Christian, so I don’t entirely believe that, but it does provide a very old precedent for the idea that it can be morally wrong to inflict a punishment that is actually regarded as just.