ASU2003

Saddam thought it is a propaganda move by the US to hand down the verdict that day. At least that is what CNN said this morning.

It will make the news, maybe even the front page on Sunday and Monday right before the election.

So, will hearing the fate of the former dictator change your mind on Iraq or make you reconsider who you will vote for?

hiredgun

Of course not. And as much as I'd like to be cynical that this is an election ploy, I really have to wonder what kind of person would determine his vote based on this one event two days before the election. I think most people have their minds made up by now.

Lady Sage

My mind is already made up. Wild horses or a pick-up truck couldnt drag me far enough to change my mind. Then again I am just stubborn that way.

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Seaver

Yes, because the verdict is up in the air. No one in their right mind honestly thinks that Saddam will be aquitted.

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Willravel

He's not going to be the next American Idol. I'm sorry.

florida0214

YEah his capture his old news and I am pretty sure that everybody knows what his entence will be anyway. DOubt it will sway voteers one way or another. This story is simply played out and the fact that is falls on election day is a simple coincidence.

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roachboy

given what a sham the trial has been--it has not even been a well-run show trial and its outcomes will make that of, say, the bukarin trial look legitimate in comparison---i cant see this working to anyone's advantage anywhere at all.

it has been, and will continue to be, a shabby, grotesque little spectacle at the center of the larger grotesque spectacle that has been the neocon's war in iraq.

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roadkill

It's sad that they ignore Saddams protests the longer that this trial goes on and the more convient the dates for things become. The more we have to question the legimitiacy of it. Which it seems has allready been done.

stevo

yeah, poor saddam

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Toaster126

What was the point of this "trial" anyway?

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pig

No, not at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the incumbents in the American government, both Executive and Congress, had some influence in helping to suggest a decent range of dates in the matter. The next public release of the results of the 9/11 commision come out after the election, Saddam gets sentenced before.

I wouldn't be surprised if it affected some people, given the headlines it will generate.

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ASU2003

Well, I'm watching Fox News right now ( ), and the tag on the bottom of the screen is "GUILTY VERDICT HAS POTENTIAL TO IMPACT ELECTIONS". And they have the Republican and Democratic strategists on trying to debate if it will have an effect.

And the President gets to make a national address to remark on the verdict. I bet he won't say that we removed one dictator and replaced it with chaos and sectarian violence that we are stuck in the middle of.

hiredgun

The verdict is death, for Saddam as well as two of his co-defendants. More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/wo...rssnyt&emc=rss

And now to return to the problem at hand.

pig

ASU2003,

What's the over/under on the number of times W uses the term "911?" It occurs to me that this would be an ideal time for a game of bullshit bingo.

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ratbastid

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...how/327987.cms

Two things: One, the timing.

WHY aren't Democrats screaming about the timing of this?

Republicans have been crying foul for weeks over Foley, Ney, Haggard, and other news of scandal and misbehavior among their ranks. Oh, no! That news was timed to coincide with the election! We're the poor little victims of the big bad Democrat politics machine.

The timing of this verdict is transparently political. I don't see how any rational person could not conclude that this was timed deliberately to coincide with the elections. Why aren't the Democrats on the offensive about that the way the Republicans would be?

Thing two: the verdict itself.

This is yet another disaster being spun as victory. Saddam should be kept to rot in a cell for the rest of his life. Instead he's being formally martyred by the Iraqi puppet government. The US will be blamed by the Saddam-loyalists, and they'll take it out on our troops. Prepare for massive insurgency activity, on a scale we've never seen before. Hanging Saddam may very well be the thing that breaks Iraq into full-scale civil war.

Willravel

The same reason that the GOP controls the House, the Senate and the oval office: the Democrats have no balls. The Dems got raped after Clinton left, and they have no idea what they're doing as a party. It's like most of them have given up or have no idea how to fight back.

Infinite_Loser

Saddam was going to get a guilty verdict even before the trial began, so it's no big surprise. His only crime was that he didn't ally himself with the United States.

Edit: You know, I can't help but laugh at the fact that Saddam is being hung over the death of 128 Shi'ite men, yet no one holds any of the western leaders accountable for the thousands upon thousands of death they've caused since invading Iraq. The country was better under Hussein's rule than it is now.

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ASU2003

I'm still confused as to why George Bush #1 didn't capture or overthrow Saddam in 1991 and put him on trial? Was there some threat from Russia against going any further? Were they worried about Iran going to war with Iraq again?

ratbastid

Oh, but he did! We were on Saddam's side on the war against Iran. We supplied weapons and funded the training of his army. Then when he turned out to be an unsavory guy, he became Public Enemy #1. Very convenient.

We followed that same pattern with Osama Bin Laden, incidentally. He was a US operative in Afghanistan when Russia invaded. He led anti-Russian guerilla fighting, funded, supplied and supported by the US.

NCB

It may have to do with the fact that it was the defining moment in his presidency as well as the most significant attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. I dunno, just a guess

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ratbastid

Bush Pere didn't go for regime change in Iraq because his advisers were against it:

"The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad, and uh, somehow take control of the country strikes me as, as, and extremely, uh, serious one, in terms of what we'd have to do when we got there. You'd probably have to put some new government in place. It's not clear what kind of government that would be --how long you'd have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily, in determining the outcome of, uh, the struggle over whose going to govern in Iraq, strikes me as the classic definition of a quagmire."
--Dick Cheney, 1991

(mp3 <a href="http://movies.crooksandliars.com/cheney-quagmire-Iraq.mov">here</a>)

pig

Yeah, its irrelevant too. I mean, one of the defining moments of my life was when I lost my virginity in high school. I didn't bring it up when I was winning awards for athletics.

As far as the Democrats go, I'd guess many of the incumbents aren't up in arms over the timing of this because they are heavily implicated in the Iraq War as well, for the most part. The administration has plausible deniability as to the timing of this announcement, and the Dems are a bunch of pussies.

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NCB

Why would the Dems be against this, unless of course they know that theyre weak on defense policy and something like this exposes their inate pussification

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ASU2003

I don't really think anyone is against this, or thought it would turn out differently. But the trial has been going on since Oct 19 of last year. They could have handed down the same verdict 3 months ago or next Sunday and not had the timing questioned. But it's just an odd coincidence that this long trial finished the first week in November and is making front page news right now.

dc_dux

NCB.....Im not sure what your obsession with pussies and the bullshit notion that dems are weak on defense (which you would know is bullshit if you bothered to take the time to look at voting records) has to do with Saddam.

ASU....The reason Bush Sr. didnt capture or overthrow Saddam in 1991 was that he, Scowcroft (national security advisor) and Powell (chairman, joint chiefs) understood that such an invasion would require more forces then they had in the region and would still likely lead to a bloodbath and sectarian chaos in Iraq as is evident by what has happened in the last two years.

After 9/11, Scowcroft later cautioned that invading Iraq would be a diversion from the real war on terrorism.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110002133

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pig

I don't really want to get into some one-on-one bandying about with one-liners NCB, and I'm looking at a beautiful day outside - long story short, I'll probably be logged out pretty soon, etc. However, I don't really see how the Dems are any weaker on defense than the Repubs. That's a complicated discussion that's been covered, and is only tangentially related to this topic. I see this as less motivated by party affiliation, and more by incumbancy. Most people agree with the soundbite that "Saddam was a ruthless dictator," such that coming out in a strong way saying that his virtually assured guilty verdict is in any ways a bad thing runs the risk of some pretty bad publicity. As we don't typically engage in complex political discussions, but only in one-liners and tag shots, its just too open to being branded as an America-hating, freedom-fucking, pinko Islamofascist terrorist sympathizer to question this development. This is doubly so if you were a Repub or Dem in office for the past 4-6 years, and thus for many its part of their own record they would be pointing to.

For the non-incumbents, particulary Dems right now, with only one real "news day" prior to the election on Tuesday, I think they will have to decide which issues to hammer on. They've been building a consistent message about the corruption of the incumbent administration and the problematic position of having a legislative and executive branch bonded by party affiliation - to go off message now is inconsisent with the simplicity we like as American consumers of information. I'd expect some minor mention of this announcement in the context of criticisms about the Iraqi situation (I really don't like calling it a "war," since its not) - but I'd doubt that there will be singular focus on it. It's much more of a non-issue in context of all the crap that's been happening in the past several years.

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Paq

bingo about the democrats...i have NO idea why they aren't saying anything about the timing of this.

and 2, BINGO about how this is being spun as a victory. I think anyone with half a brain cell left can see exactly what this is going to do to the whole Iraq situation.

mark my words...they say OCT was the bloodiest month for our troops...they haven't seen anything yet.

how sad is that.

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feelgood

Because its his human right to have a trial

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ratbastid

Right. They might as well have just waterboarded a confession out of him and left him to drown.

roachboy

the "trial" was as shabby an affair as i have ever seen. the verdict was such that the americans might as well have shot hussein when they found him and declared it an accident. it was a political ritual handled with a degree of incompetence that really boggles the mind. and i can say this without having any sympathy for saddam hussein. the trial was a joke. a complete, end-to-end joke. it was not about hussein's human rights or legal rights--it was about the verdict, and the verdict is about the elections in the united states and that's all there is to it.

and if you look at the reactions to it, there is a truly bizarre split between the american responses and those of the rest of the planet.
the coverage in the states has been as spotty and shabby as the trial has been--maybe folk use the many cop shows on tv that function to make you wonder why there is any need for legal defense given the Rightness of the Intuitions of Authority to fill in the blanks (you know, to make up a trial)
anyway, in the states, you get this vague cheering.
on the rest of the planet, you get: this trial is a farce.

go figure.

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it make you sick.

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filtherton

I bet we (america) would have paid more attention if wapner was the judge. It would have been interesting to hear what hussein had to say to doug lewelyn on the way out of the courtroom.

Bill O'Rights

I was actually thinking Judge Judy...but, ok.

Seriously...why pay attention? We knew. Didn't we?

Well...it would've been a lot cheaper.

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hiredgun

This Iraqi doctor brings helpful perspective to the table in his blog entry on the verdict.

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/arch...79316895846739

filtherton

Typical liberals, always focusing on how bad things actually are.

Bill O'Rights

Jee...zus Christ!

Did you even read the damn memo, this morning?
It's "Focusing On The Negative".

Verbatim.





You know that I'm playing...right? Right?

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

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It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

Moskie

I don't have anything really new to add the discussion, but I just really want to scream my head off about how much this was an election ploy. And an unsuccessful one at that. I don't think this verdict is rallying anyone to the polls or swaying voters significantly... but I still find it to be a disgusting and insulting ploy.

I'm not one to buy into conspiracy theories, but it is 100% too much of a coincidence for this verdict to come down when it did. This trial has spun its wheels, gone in circles, and had its head up its ass since day 1. The verdict is what everyone knew it would be, so it could have happened Sunday, a year ago, or a year in the future, and it would not have made a difference. So someone who probably has the Bush administration's and the Republican party's well-being at heart decides to pull some strings and get the verdict to come down two days before midterms.

So, in the end, it doesn't make a difference, much to the disappointment of Bush and co., I'm sure. I find it insulting that this was used to show some sort of "progress" is happening in Iraq. So many more vital and effective things could be used, if they were happening. But the situation is regressing, instead, so we have this desperate move presented to us. It disgusts me.

If (and this is a big "if") this was not an election ploy, the respectful thing for the administration to do would be to ask for the verdict to be delayed a week. It would not impact the trial, whatsoever, so why not suggest to the judge that this could seen as a transparent election ploy, both to Americans and to Iraqis. This would also help legitimize the ruling, so that the verdict makes bigger headlines instead of getting lost in the midst of the election furor. So in the end this actually hurts Iraq, since the cathartic event of Saddam being convicted is not as big of an event as it should be.

It’s just a big, stupid mistake.

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Ch'i

Interesting timing...