Saddam Hanged

[sHiZo963]

Saddam tended birds and plants in jail, nurse says

Associated Press
Monday January 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A military nurse who cared for Saddam Hussein said the former dictator saved bread crusts to feed birds and tended a small plot of weeds while in jail.

Master Sergeant Robert Ellis was under orders to prevent the former Iraqi dictator from dying in US custody.

"That was my job: to keep him alive and healthy, so they could kill him at a later date," he told the St Louis Post-Dispatch after Saddam's execution on Saturday.

"I knew all along what they were going to do. This went against my grain as a nurse, but as a soldier - well, that was my job," Sgt Ellis said.

When he was allowed short visits outside, Saddam would feed the birds crusts of bread saved from his meals. He also watered a dusty plot of weeds, Sgt Ellis said.

"He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from." The nurse, who cared for Saddam from January 2004 until August 2005, checked on him twice a day and wrote a daily report on his physical and emotional condition.

Saddam insisted on smoking cigars and drinking coffee to keep his blood pressure down, Sgt Ellis told the paper. "He had very good coping skills."

But he also revealed that Saddam came close to being killed when he was being transported. He was apparently shot at and once escaped a roadside bomb.

Saddam shared with his nurse memories of when his children were young, and how he would tell them bedtime stories.

When Sgt Ellis told Saddam he had to leave for America because his brother was dying, Saddam hugged him and said he would be Sgt Ellis's brother.

"I was there to help him, and he respected that," Sgt Ellis said.

Saddam never discussed dying and expressed no regrets about his rule.

"He said everything he did was for Iraq," Sgt Ellis said. "One day when I went to see him, he asked why we invaded. Well, he made gestures like shooting a machine gun and asked why soldiers came and shot up the place."

He told the nurse that the laws in Iraq were fair and the weapons inspectors didn't find anything.

http://www(dot)guardian(dot)co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980988,00.html

Possible evidence of a double? Hard to say ... but this story is pretty "popular" in non-US newspapers, it seems.

 

[Laura]

Dunno. One thing I do think at this point is that we have never had the real scoop on any of it.

After our own experiences being smeared and defamed, after all we have learned about psychopathy and ponerology, one really stops and thinks when hearing horrible things about someone else and wonders if it is true or not? That is, is the person telling the stuff someone who has really been harmed by this person and is telling the truth, or is this someone like Vincent Bridges who just tells outrageous lies that have no foundation in fact?

What if, all along, Saddam was being set up and he didn't do any of the terrible things he was accused of doing? (I don't really believe that, I'm just tossing it out there.) Or, what if he did some things, but not others? Or what if he did things for reasons that were clear to him, but would not be so clear to others? After all, if you are in charge of a country and you have a vague understanding of such things as pathological people who can really mess things up and there is no other way to deal with them than the ways that the people understand, maybe that's all you can do?

One thing that IS clear is that, back when Bush and Saddam were exchanging challenges over the WMD issue, Saddam was far more intelligent, forthcoming and sincere in his responses and he actually made Bush look and sound like a village idiot. Then, of course, in the end, it was seen that Saddam HAD been telling the truth... So, what does that say?

And then, if any of you have watched that video of Saddam being hanged, or have read the accounts of it, the people who were so anxious to hang him certainly showed what THEY were: pathological deviants. So, if deviants want to hang a person, we might even assume that the person is normal and has some decent qualities.

Finally, the very fact that Bush went after Saddam the way he did, and we KNOW that Bush and Co. are pathological deviants, also suggests that there was something normal in Saddam and he was not controllable by Bush and the gang.

All of the above is, of course, predicated on the idea that Saddam isn't just a game playing psychopath who is secreted away in some island resort laughing his head off with Bush and Blair for the big farce they have played for the peoples of the world.

It wouldn't be too hard to get a lookalike person who has some secret that enables them to be somewhat controlled, to play the role, even to being hanged, if they are assured of the safety and well-being of their family.

One thing I can say, whoever it was they hanged was a human being who went to his death like a man being tormented by a gang of apes. Heck, even apes are more civilized than those animals who acted that way while killing another human being.

It was totally disgusting.

 

[Laura]

Found this:

http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/Archives/CN123006.htm

Texas Justice by Rope: The Assassination of Saddam
by Pierre Tristam


One day from year’s end, it is the non-story of the year capping a dozen imagined “turning points� in Iraq ’s dismal disintegration. The only kind of turning has been in the shape of a spiral drilling ever downward, toward a Mesopotamian heart of darkness: The assassination of Saddam Hussein by hanging had about it the very same haste and furtiveness, the very same pretense of legitimacy and crack-of-dawn obscurity as—remember that one?—the secret U.S. transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, like thieving shadows in the night two days before it was scheduled, on June 28, 2004. There was then no “sovereignty� to transfer as the United States had neither earned nor managed to conquer the right to Iraqi sovereignty. It had embezzled it, and poorly at that, in the amateurish heist known to this day as Operation Iraqi Freedom. There was, at dawn on Saturday, no “justice� meted out in the assassination of Saddam. It couldn't even have that Mussolini feel about it: a popular execution in broad daylight, unafraid and unquestioning, because in this case the executioners themselves have too little to distinguish them from the executed. It isn't just their faces that are masked, but their motives and future plans. Meanwhile the hanging has been merely the enactment of a scene written in American stage directives almost two years ago, to fulfill another one of those sensational benchmarks the Bush administration invented as substitutes for real strategy, for policies that could make a workable difference for Iraq.

From the very first day of the war on March 21, 2003, the American adventure in Iraq has been one of forseeable defeat, of rank cluelessness, of corruption and corporate-greased crime organized at the highest levels of an administration rich in the tenor of Texan sopranos. How else to cobble a façade of success but through the fingerpaint of fictions? It started with the fabricated rescue of Jessica Lynch and the equally fabricated toppling of Saddam’s Statue at Fidros Square weeks into the war. Then came the Lord and Savior President’s stud-packaged “Mission Accomplished� performance on the USS Abraham Lincoln, his tumescent hubris swelled as stuffily as the the push-up jock-strap Karl Rove had implanted in the presidential crotch. Then came the assassination and parading of Qusai and Odai Hussein, the tyrant’s sons, whose deaths were supposed to be the fatal blow to the insurgency. After that, as the insurgency was proving Viagra-proof to the American military’s impotence, the turning points took on the trappings of political theater: the night-owl transfers of power, the purple-fingered elections, the Philadelphian chatter over the writing of an Iraqi constitution, all of it interspersed with other “fatal blows� to the insurgency—the capture and cavity-search of Saddam, the reconquest of Fallujah, Saddam’s trial, the killing of Zarqawi, the “securing� of Baghdad, all of it paralleling an incessant surge in violent incidents, to about 1,000 per day, a surge in the slaughter, to about 150 Iraqis a day, and a surge in presidential ignorance to it all, to about 1,000 counts of dereliction a day disguised, as always, in the strutting language of decisive, unbending arrogance.

Iraq is in a state of Hobbesian civil war and all the American president can do is point to the latest episode of Iraqi “Law & Order� —Saddam’s assassination—and call it “justice. The hanging, of course, is an irrelevance. A moot point. An entertainment. It won’t make a difference to anyone in Iraq no matter how fattish the headlines in the United States. The trial was a sham, the hanging an act of revenge, the barbarism of a hanging alone, of capital punishment in any form, one more symbol of the immorality of this whole production under American aegis. (It would have been nice to see Saddam, like any criminal, any terrorist, any “evildoer� from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden rot in a dank prison the rest of his days, days elongated as much as possible to enable him to mull over his defeat and diminishment, and to enable the rest of us to know that justice needn’t be retributive to be effective and, most of all—what it has never been in Iraq and never could be given the American compulsion for revenge—just.)

Saddam became irrelevant in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, in the same way that Castro would have been irrelevant for decades had it not been one president after another’s fixation on granting him a legitimacy he doesn’t deserve, by granting him an enmity he could only welcome. Saddam became that fixation after 1991, marginal and idiotic though his shows of shelled-out power had become. The invasion gave him a brief grasp at the old relevance, but it couldn’t last.

What the Bush administration never realized, what it refused to hear as it was launching its blitzkrieg on Iraq, was that Saddam was the only thing standing between Iraq and disintegration into the kind of sectarian madness that now makes the Saddam reign look, for all its brutality, almost benign in comparison. Its reality-show components aside, its playing into year-end festivities to go along with New Year celebrations and Islam's Eid el-Adha, Saddam's death is as irrelevant now as his reign through the 1990s had been, as his capture and trial had been to the Iraqis in the streets. They’re past the Saddam reign. They have other accounts to settle, and they’re settling them. The war will continue to rage in Iraq, indifferent to a single man’s hanging (when hundreds of men, women and children are slaughtered without so much as notice in neighborhood gossip).

The embarrassment is in the United States, where the assassination is triggering its run of celebrants and false analysts (the false prophets of today), of frigged up hopes and unpresidential boasting. The dancing the in the street, the official boasting, the pompous Sunday-morning chat-show preachers--it all has the same feel as the morbid festivities that surrounded the execution of Timothy McVeigh in Terre Haute, Indiana, in May 2001. It's as infantile, and shameless, as scabrous in its glee for vengefulness. In this case it's entirely in keeping with the proud misreadings not only of the war in Iraq, but of America’s role in a Middle East that never forgives stupidity, and in a world that no longer believes in an America as a beacon for human rights, law and due process. The worst, in other words, may yet be to come.

Copyright 2006 Pierre Tristam/Candide’s Notebooks

It used to baffle me that people who can command literally billions and trillions of dollars can be so stupid. Surely they should know that Saddam, dead, executed by them, is a far more potent mythical symbol for focusing their resistance than he ever was alive.

It's kind of like the stupidity of the Shoutwire crowd who acted the same way.

I mean, how stupid can people get?

Well, there IS a reason for it. Lobaczewski refers to it as "negative selection". In the following passage where he talks about Kaiser Wilhelm, note how similar George Bush's behavior is to the Kaiser.

Characteropathies reveal a certain similar quality, if the clinical picture is not dimmed by the coexistence of other mental anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species' natural psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinctive and affective responses, which are natural albeit often insufficiently controlled. The experience of people with such anomalies grows out of the normal human world to which they belong by nature. Thus their different way of thinking, their emotional violence, and their egotism find relatively easy entry into other people's minds and are perceived within the categories of the natural world-view. Such behavior on the part of persons with such character disorders traumatizes the minds and feelings of normal people, gradually diminishing their ability to use their common sense. In spite of their resistance, people become used to the rigid habits of pathological thinking and experiencing. In young people, as a result, the personality suffers abnormal development leading to its malformation. They thus represent pathological ponerogenic factors which, by their covert activity, easily engenders new phases in the eternal genesis of evil, opening the door to a later activation of other factors which thereupon take over the main role.

A relatively well-documented example of such an influence of a characteropathic personality on a macro social scale is the last German emperor, Wilhelm II. He was subjected to brain trauma at birth. During and after his entire reign, his physical and psychological handicap was hidden from public knowledge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body were handicapped. As a boy, he had difficulty learning grammar, geometry, and drawing, which constitutes the typical triad of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He developed a personality with infantilistic features and insufficient control over his emotions, and also a somewhat paranoid way of thinking which easily sidestepped the heart of some important issues in the process of dodging problems.

Militaristic poses and a general's uniform overcompensated for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his shortcomings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chancellor had to go, that cunning and ruthless politician who had been loyal to the monarchy and built up Prussian power. After all, he was too knowledgeable about the prince's defects and had worked against his coronation. A similar fate met other overly critical people, who were replaced by persons with lesser brains, more subservience, and sometimes, discreet psychological deviations. Negative selection took place.

That is exactly what Bush has done: negative selection. He has surrounded himself with persons with lesser brains, more subservience (or greed), and most definitely pathologies. And these are the people who he "trusts." He's got access to billions - trillions - of bux, and he listens to Cheney and Condi!!!

Lobaczewski described the outcome precisely:

The following questions thus suggests itself: what happens if the network of understandings among psychopaths achieves power in leadership positions with international exposure? This can happen, especially during the later phases of the phenomenon.

Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest, but they are removed by the less pathological, more logical wing of the ruling apparatus. They do not understand that a catastrophe would otherwise ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

If such and many managerial positions are assumed by individuals deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand most other people, and who also betray deficiences as regards technical imagination and practical skills--faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters--this must result in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations.

Within, the situation shall become unbearable even for those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a relatively comfortable "modus vivendi".

Outside, other societies start to feel the pathological quality of the phenomenon quite distinctly.

Such a state of affairs cannot last long. One must than be prepared for ever more rapid changes, and also behave with great circumspection.

And so it is: such a state of affairs cannot last long...

 

[Russ]

OK I don't know many Arabians but every one I've ever spoken to didn't really mind Saddam that much. A lot of them even really liked him. I don't doubt he had his enemys but I don't recall Iraqis ever screaming for help from overseas armys. I think its all about money and greed, I mean, that always seems to be the end goal - a handful of people who want a comfortable life no matter the expense to others. It gets perverted and petty though, its like the rich and powerful are competing with each other in some kind of game of "who can be the richest and most powerful". It seems to me that Saddam was a pawn in a very complex plan which is of course still in operation, to channel resources and money to certain people, and at the same time lock down the freedom of the public, all in the name of security and power for a handful of people. And in the end what becomes of it could be very efficient machine which produces a lot of "food" for you-know-who.

The sickening thing is, when you look at the reasons why people are doing such things, it seems to pretty much amount to childish insecurity, competition, ego, selfishness... nothing noble or honourable, nothing reasonable. Just pure psychopathy. And they probably don't even realise the big picture, I guess its like Cypher in the Matrix - willing to betray his people because he is promised that he'll be ok.

 

[Ruth]

The sickening thing is, when you look at the reasons why people are doing such things, it seems to pretty much amount to childish insecurity, competition, ego, selfishness... nothing noble or honourable, nothing reasonable. Just pure psychopathy. And they probably don't even realise the big picture, I guess its like Cypher in the Matrix - willing to betray his people because he is promised that he'll be ok.

I guess I must be getting extra cynical, but isn't this just normal type human behaviour? Take a look around you and see if you can find someone who doesn't behave in the above manner. I've tried and that's all I see.

 

[jax]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070101/wl_mideast_afp/iraqjusticesaddam_070101144532

Former Saddam judge says execution violates Iraqi law

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) - The first chief judge who presided over Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity has said that the late dictator's execution by the Iraqi government was illegal.


Rizkar Mohammed Amin, who later resigned as the trial's chief judge, said Iraqi law banned executions during the Eid al-Adha festival period that marks the end of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

The four-day Feast of the Sacrifice began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday -- the day Saddam was hanged in Baghdad -- and on Sunday for Shiites.

Amin also claimed that Iraqi law stipulates an execution must be carried out 30 days after the appeal court's decision on the sentencing, which in this case upheld the death sentence of Saddam.

But in ratifying the death sentence on December 26, the appeals chamber insisted that the law stipulated the sentence be implemented within 30 days.

Amin resigned as chief judge of the Dujail trial following political pressure amid accusations that he was lenient with Saddam and occasionally allowed the late dictator to carry out outbursts in court.

Saddam was hanged on Saturday in a Shiite district of Baghdad after he was found guilty of executing 148 Shiite villagers from Dujail in the 1980s where he escaped an assassination bid.

He was buried on Sunday in his home village of Awja.

Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie denied that Saddam was executed on Eid al-Adha, in an interview with CNN just hours after the hanging.

"Eid starts from daylight -- we had managed to execute him well before the sunrise," Rubaie said Monday.

hmmm. Does point to bit of a rush doesn't it? But I feel very reaassured by al-Rubaie's quote - NOT. Spoken like a true pathocrat.

 

[sHiZo963]

Iraqi official: US sought to delay Saddam execution
Reuters
Published: 01.01.07, 22:33

The US ambassador in Baghdad urged Iraq’s prime minister to delay the execution of Saddam Hussein by two weeks but relented in the face of concerted pressure, a senior Iraqi official told Reuters on Monday.

Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs held angry public mourning rituals following Saturday’s hanging and the government is investigating how Shiite guards taunted and filmed the former president on the gallows.

A no-holds-barred Internet video of the execution has inflamed already fiery sectarian passions.

“The Americans wanted to delay the execution by 15 days because they weren’t keen on having him executed straight away,� said the senior Iraqi official, who was involved in the events leading to Saddam’s death and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“But during the day (on Friday) the prime minister’s office provided all the documents they asked for and the Americans changed their minds when they saw the prime minister was very insistent. Then it was just a case of finalizing the details.�

A US Embassy spokesman declined immediate comment.

US Forces handed over Saddam only at the last moment before he was hanged at dawn, following late-night negotiations between Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and senior US officials, several Iraqi government sources have said.

US Officials, whose troops had physical custody of Saddam for three years, have declined comment on their role in the execution. It was rushed through only four days after an appeal court upheld Saddam’s conviction for crimes against humanity.

Officials only confirmed the hanging would go ahead just four hours before Saddam went to the gallows shortly after 6 a.m. Two aides convicted with him will not be hanged till later.

'They have damaged the image of the Sadrists'

The senior Iraqi official said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told Maliki on Friday he would not hand over the 69- year-old ousted strongman unless Maliki produced key documents, including a signed authorization from President Jalal Talabani and a death warrant signed by the prime minister.

Two Iraqi cabinet ministers said on Friday two legal issues were holding up any hanging—first whether a presidential decree was required and second whether the start of the Eid al- Adha Muslim holiday on Saturday should stay the execution, a provision of the Saddam-era Iraqi Penal Code.

Talabani has been reluctant to sign death warrants for personal reasons but the constitution gives him no power of pardon for war crimes. Many of his fellow Kurds were also keen to see Saddam convicted of genocide against them.

In the end, officials said, presidency advisers provided a letter simply stating that no presidential decree was needed and that senior clerics told Maliki the holiday provided no grace.

Maliki was shown on state television signing the death warrant in red ink in images released by his office along with film of the hangman placing the noose around Saddam’s neck.

The rapid execution has boosted Maliki’s fragile authority among his fractious Shiite supporters but angered many Sunnis.

The United States has been keen to stem a Sunni insurgency that has caused most of the 3,000 American deaths in Iraq and to persuade the dominant Shiites not alienate Saddam’s minority but to bring them into power to avert an all-out civil war.

That has irritated some leading Shiites who accused the Afghan-born Khalilzad of sympathising with fellow Sunni Muslims.

Some US officials have privately expressed frustration with the sway held over Maliki’s government by radical Shiites like cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia has been blamed for many sectarian death squad attacks on Sunnis.

US officials may also be embarrassed by the revelation of rowdy conduct by Shiite guards in the execution chamber where Saddam’s own enemies were once frequently put to death.

Grainy video apparently shot on a mobile phone surfaced on the Internet after the official footage, showing observers exchanging taunts with Saddam that including chanting “Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!�

“There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that’s now the subject of a government investigation,� Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Maliki and one of the official observers, told Reuters on Monday.

“They have damaged the image of the Sadrists. That should not have happened. Before we went into the room we had an agreement that no one should bring a mobile phone.�

No Americans were present in the chamber itself, he said.

There was further US involvement afterwards, however, when the government agreed to hand Saddam’s body over to his tribe for burial in his native village.

Some officials had proposed burying him next to the co-founder of his Baath party, Michel Aflaq, who lies inside the Green Zone government compound.

In the end, a US Military helicopter flew the body to Tikrit.

http://www(dot)ynetnews(dot)com/articles/0,7340,L-3347208,00.html

Notice that the U.S. held Saddam UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT before execution and then quickly scooped the body up in a helicopter. Gee - they're being awfully possessive! Maybe this was done so as to MINIMIZE the risk of anyone recognizing and conducting any tests on the body and finding out it's NOT Saddam i.e. a double? Interesting.

And then, there is mention of Iraqi government-sanctioned death squads.

Finally, there's this:

The rapid execution has boosted Maliki’s fragile authority among his fractious Shiite supporters but angered many Sunnis.

More division among Iraqi people => more violence => bloodier civil war ... in other words, everything's going according to plan; see SOTT's editorial The Civil War Industry.

 

[Russ]

The sickening thing is, when you look at the reasons why people are doing such things, it seems to pretty much amount to childish insecurity, competition, ego, selfishness... nothing noble or honourable, nothing reasonable. Just pure psychopathy. And they probably don't even realise the big picture, I guess its like Cypher in the Matrix - willing to betray his people because he is promised that he'll be ok.

I guess I must be getting extra cynical, but isn't this just normal type human behaviour? Take a look around you and see if you can find someone who doesn't behave in the above manner. I've tried and that's all I see.

I agree thats true to a certain extent. But as far as I can tell most people wouldn't sacrifice thousands of innocent people in order to do it. Bush etc give "noble" reasons to do what they do, which people believe to be in everyone's best interest. I'm sure a lot of parents don't want to see their children going to war but they do, because they believe in the reasons given. So there you have someone who is putting their well being on the line to do something they believe will help others... never mind that its not actually true, I think if a lot of them were like the pathocracy they wouldn't be out there, but they would be looking after number one (thats not to say thats true for everyone though).

I think its kind of human nature to be a bit egotistical, selfish and competetive - but a lot of people draw the line when things become too immoral - they just can't cope with it. People who are brainwashed/lead to do things by psychopaths who sell them on the illusion that they're doing immoral things for the "greater good", are having their morality abused, but that doesn't mean to say they don't have any imo.

 

[Azur]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6222975.stm

Saddam's supporters vow revenge
Hundreds of supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have been protesting in the cities of Baghdad, Tikrit and Samarra against his hanging.

Many of the protesters vowed revenge for Saturday's execution, describing it as a criminal act of cowardice orchestrated by American overlords.

The Sunni Arab demonstrations came a day after celebrations in Shia areas.

Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter, Raghad, joined hundreds of people in a protest in Jordan's capital Amman.

"God bless you! I thank your for honouring Saddam the martyr," she told the demonstrators, in a surprise public appearance.

The former president's two older daughters sought refuge in Jordan four months after the US-led invasion in April 2003.

Further protests were reported around the Muslim world, including in the Palestinian territories and Indian-administered Kashmir.

Deep divide

Iraqi Sunnis protested in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad, in their Samarra stronghold and Saddam Hussein's home town, Tikrit, where he has been buried in his family's plot.

In Tikrit, mourning tents were erected as security forces sealed off the town for the third day in a row.

Correspondents say that while the demonstrations were not huge they underscore the deep sectarian divide that threatens to tear Iraq apart.

His past caught up with him and he got what he deserved
Munawar, Tehran

Among the chants were slogans such as "Saddam is the pride of the nation" and "We sacrifice our soul and blood for you Saddam".

One protester carried a banner that read: "The martyrdom of the father of two martyrs inspires the resistance to victory," a reference to Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, who were gunned down in a battle with US troops in 2003.

The BBC's Peter Greste in Baghdad says Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had hoped Saddam Hussein's execution would encourage some of his Sunni supporters to give up their weapons and join the political process now dominated by the majority Shias, but instead it seems to have widened the cracks.

The former president, 69, was hanged early on Saturday morning after being sentenced to death over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6222975.stm

Published: 2007/01/01 17:12:12 GMT

© BBC MMVII

 

[Azur]

http://www(dot)nytimes(dot)com/2007/01/01/world/middleeast/01iraq.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=7f4ebe62241f2712&hp=&ex=1167627600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin


I found this line most interesting:

The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end.

This seems to indicate this article is a prop up job. A new "Devil" in the making.


Full article here:

January 1, 2007
Rush to Hang Hussein Was Questioned
By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 — With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.

Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein. [Page A7.]

The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Hussein’s body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth.

The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end.

The Americans’ concerns seem certain to have been heightened by what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in video recordings made just before Mr. Hussein fell through the gallows trapdoor at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday. A new video that appeared on the Internet late Saturday, apparently made by a witness with a camera cellphone, underscored the unruly, mocking atmosphere in the execution chamber.

This continued, on the video, through the actual hanging itself, with a shout of “The tyrant has fallen! May God curse him!� as Mr. Hussein hung lifeless, his neck snapped back and his glassy eyes open.

The cacophony from those gathered before the gallows included a shout of “Go to hell!� as the former ruler stood with the noose around his neck in the final moments, and his riposte, barely audible above the bedlam, which included the words “gallows of shame.� It continued despite appeals from an official-sounding voice, possibly Munir Haddad, the judge who presided at the hanging, saying, “Please no! The man is about to die.�

The Shiites who predominated at the hanging began a refrain at one point of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!� — the name of a volatile cleric whose private militia has spawned death squads that have made an indiscriminate industry of killing Sunnis — appending it to a Muslim imprecation for blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. “Moktada,� Mr. Hussein replied, smiling contemptuously. “Is this how real men behave?�

American officials in Iraq have been reluctant to say much publicly about the pell-mell nature of the hanging, apparently fearful of provoking recriminations in Washington, where the Bush administration adopted a hands-off posture, saying the timing of the execution was Iraq’s to decide.

While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government — frustrated at what they call the government’s failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.

But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.

A senior Iraqi official said the Americans staked out their ground at a meeting on Thursday, 48 hours after an appeals court had upheld the death sentence passed on Mr. Hussein and two associates. They were convicted in November of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Shiite townspeople of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982. Mr. Hussein, as president, signed a decree to hang 148 men and teenage boys.

Told that Mr. Maliki wanted to carry out the death sentence on Mr. Hussein almost immediately, and not wait further into the 30-day deadline set by the appeals court, American officers at the Thursday meeting said that they would accept any decision but needed assurance that due process had been followed before relinquishing physical custody of Mr. Hussein.

“The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law,� the Iraqi official said. “We do not want to break the law.�

The American pressure sent Mr. Maliki and his aides into a frantic quest for legal workarounds, the Iraqi official said. The Americans told them they needed a decree from President Jalal Talabani, signed jointly by his two vice presidents, upholding the death sentence, and a letter from the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein, certifying the verdict. But Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, made it known that he objected to the death penalty on principle.

The Maliki government spent much of Friday working on legal mechanisms to meet the American demands. From Mr. Talabani, they obtained a letter saying that while he would not sign a decree approving the hanging, he had no objections. The Iraqi official said Mr. Talabani first asked the tribunal’s judges for an opinion on whether the constitutional requirement for presidential approval applied to a death sentence handed down by the tribunal, a special court operating outside Iraq’s main judicial system. The judges said the requirement was void.

Mr. Maliki had one major obstacle: the Hussein-era law proscribing executions during the Id holiday. This remained unresolved until late Friday, the Iraqi official said. He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime minister’s office at which American officers and Mr. Maliki’s officials debated the issue.

One participant described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.’ �

To this, the Iraqis added what has often been their trump card in tricky political situations: they telephoned officials of the marjaiya, the supreme religious body in Iraqi Shiism, composed of ayatollahs in the holy city of Najaf. The ayatollahs approved. Mr. Maliki, at a few minutes before midnight on Friday, then signed a letter to the justice minister, “to carry out the hanging until death.�

The Maliki letter sent Iraqi and American officials into a frenzy of activity. Fourteen Iraqi officials, including senior members of the Maliki government, were called at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday and told to gather at the prime minister’s office. At. 3:30 a.m., they were driven to the helicopter pad beside Mr. Hussein’s old Republican Palace, and taken to the prison in the northern suburb of Khadimiya where the hanging took place.

At about the same time, American and Iraqi officials said, Mr. Hussein was roused at his Camp Cropper cell 10 miles away, and taken to a Black Hawk helicopter for his journey to Khadimiya.

None of the Iraqi officials were able to explain why Mr. Maliki had been unwilling to allow the execution to wait. Nor would any explain why those who conducted it had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.

But the explanation may have lain in something that Bassam al-Husseini, a Maliki aide closely involved in arrangements for the hanging, said to the BBC later. Mr. Husseini, who has American citizenship, described the hanging as “an Id gift to the Iraqi people.�

The weekend’s final disorderly chapter came with the tensions over Mr. Hussein’s body. For nearly 18 hours on Saturday, Mr. Maliki’s officials insisted that his corpse would be kept in secret government custody until circumstances allowed interment without his grave becoming a shrine or a target. Once again, the Americans intervened.

The leader of Mr. Hussein’s Albu-Nasir tribe, Sheik Ali al-Nida, said that before flying to Baghdad on an American helicopter, he had been so fearful for his safety that he had written a will. Bizarrely, Sheik Nida and others were shown on Iraqi television collecting the coffin from the courtyard in front of Mr. Maliki’s office, where it sat unceremoniously in a police pickup.

After the helicopter trip to Camp Speicher, the American base outside Tikrit, the coffin was taken in an Iraqi convoy to Awja, and laid to rest in the ornate visitors’ center that Mr. Hussein ordered built for the townspeople in the 1990s. Local officials and members of Mr. Hussein’s tribe had broken open the marbled floor in the main reception hall, and cleared what they said would be a temporary burial place until he could be moved to a permanent grave outside Awja where his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried.

At the burial, several mourners threw themselves on the closed casket. One, a young man convulsed with sobs, cried: “He has not died. I can hear him speaking to me.� Another shouted, “Saddam is dead! Instead of weeping for him, think of ways we can take revenge on the Iranian enemy,� Sunni parlance for the Shiites now in power.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Khalid W. Hassan from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Tikrit.

 

[Laura]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070101/ts_nm/iraq_dc

Iraq to probe filming of Saddam hanging

By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Alastair Macdonald Mon Jan 1, 5:43 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government launched an inquiry on Monday into how guards filmed and taunted Saddam Hussein on the gallows, turning his execution into a televised spectacle that has inflamed sectarian anger.

A senior Iraqi official told Reuters the U.S. ambassador tried to persuade Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to rush into hanging the former president just four days after his appeal was turned down, urging the government to wait another two weeks.

News of the ousted strongman's death on Saturday and of his treatment by officials of the Shi'ite-led government was blamed by one witness for sparking a prison riot among mainly Sunni Arab inmates at a jail near the northern city of Mosul.

An adviser to Maliki, Sami al-Askari, told Reuters: "There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation."

The government released video showing the hangman talking to a composed Saddam as he placed the noose round his neck.

But mobile phone footage on the Web showed guards shouting "Go to hell!," chanting the name of a Shi'ite militia leader and exchanging insults with Saddam before he fell through the trap in mid-prayer and his body swung, broken-necked, on the rope.

Saddam's exiled eldest daughter and even some residents of Dujail, the Shi'ite town whose sufferings led to his conviction for crimes against humanity, joined mourning rituals for him, most of these concentrated among Sunni Arabs in Saddam's home region north of Baghdad where he was buried on Sunday.

Mourners continued to arrive at his native village of Awja, near Tikrit. His daughter Raghd, who helped finance his defense from her strictly supervised exile in Jordan, joined several hundred people in the capital Amman in a show of solidarity.

Iraqi troops and police rushed to Mosul's Padush prison to put down a riot after visitors broke news of Saddam's treatment. The governor said seven guards and three prisoners were injured although a visitor reported gunfire and the death of an inmate.

There has been no significant repeat of the series of car bombings that killed over 70 people in Shi'ite neighborhoods on Saturday within hours of the dawn execution, but the government and U.S. forces are on alert for the kind of sectarian violence that has pitched
Iraq toward civil war since Saddam's overthrow.

Interior ministry data showed the number of Iraqi civilians killed in political violence hit a new record high in December after a big leap the previous month. The statistics, almost certain to be an underestimate, showed 12,320 civilians were killed in 2006 in what officials termed "terrorist" violence.

The Interior Ministry ordered the closure of another Iraqi television channel, Sharkiya, accusing it of fomenting hatred. The channel, owned by a London-based businessman who was once an official under Saddam, continued broadcasting from Dubai.

The government has taken similar measures against several channels, all with perceived Sunni leanings.

This part

A senior Iraqi official told Reuters the U.S. ambassador tried to persuade Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to rush into hanging the former president just four days after his appeal was turned down, urging the government to wait another two weeks.

... is certainly disingenuous since the U.S. participated in the transporting of Saddam to the place of execution and then snatched the body.

The sickening thing is, when you look at the reasons why people are doing such things, it seems to pretty much amount to childish insecurity, competition, ego, selfishness... nothing noble or honourable, nothing reasonable. Just pure psychopathy. And they probably don't even realise the big picture, I guess its like Cypher in the Matrix - willing to betray his people because he is promised that he'll be ok.

I guess I must be getting extra cynical, but isn't this just normal type human behaviour? Take a look around you and see if you can find someone who doesn't behave in the above manner. I've tried and that's all I see.

Yes, to a certain extent, uncaring, unfeeling, pathological behavior has become somewhat normal in human society; in some places, more dominant than others.

The passage that follows what Lobaczewski said about "negative selection", already quoted, actually addresses this issue. He points out how the behavior of the leader and his gang can influence the behavior of the people by describing what had occurred in Germany under the pathological Kaiser Wilhelm.

Many Germans were progressively deprived of their ability to use their common sense because of the impingement of psychological material of the characteropathic type, as the common people are prone to identify with the emperor, and by such a system of government.

This remark even seems to suggest that the masses are quite EASILY led this way; that may have something to do with their childish natures. Certainly, if they were led by an individual who was decent and noble, they could as easily be led to decent behavior and inspired to grow character. Understanding the nature of the masses is the responsibility of leaders and so many people seem to assume automatically that the masses ought to be better than they are and blame them for everything. People tend to forget that the majority of people function at the emotional age of 6 and the mental age of 12. That is what advertising is geared for.

A new generation grew up with deformities as regards feeling and understanding moral, psychological, social and political realities. ... Large portions of society ingested psychopathological material, together with that unrealistic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selection.

This occurred during a time when a wave of hysteria was growing throughout Europe, including a tendency for emotions to dominate and for human behavior to contain an element of histrionics. How individual sober thought can be terrorized by a behavior colored with such material was evidenced particularly by women. This progressively took over three empires and other countries on the mainland.

It seems obvious that this process has been going on for some time in the U.S. because it is certainly well-advanced and has spread, to some extent, to other countries. Again, more in some places than others. Either that, or they have figured out a way to accelerate it. OR... they have misjudged and the whole thing is going to backfire in their faces.

To what extent did Wilhelm II contribute to this, along with two other emperors whose minds also did not take in the actual facts of history and government? To what extent were they themselves influenced by an intensification of hysteria during their reigns? That would make an interesting topic of discussion among historians and ponerologists.

Yup. And I think it all started with the assassination of JFK. That's when the pathocrats took over and the process of characteropathic influencing of the American public began.

Russ was saying pretty much the same thing here:

... most people wouldn't sacrifice thousands of innocent people in order to do it. Bush etc give "noble" reasons to do what they do, which people believe to be in everyone's best interest. I'm sure a lot of parents don't want to see their children going to war but they do, because they believe in the reasons given. So there you have someone who is putting their well being on the line to do something they believe will help others... never mind that its not actually true, I think if a lot of them were like the pathocracy they wouldn't be out there, but they would be looking after number one (thats not to say thats true for everyone though).

I think its kind of human nature to be a bit egotistical, selfish and competetive - but a lot of people draw the line when things become too immoral - they just can't cope with it. People who are brainwashed/lead to do things by psychopaths who sell them on the illusion that they're doing immoral things for the "greater good", are having their morality abused, but that doesn't mean to say they don't have any imo.

And I think Russ is onto something in this last part: there is a line that the Bush gang ought not to cross and I find it fascinating to observe that they don't seem to have the ability to NOT cross that line because of the "negative selection" process. Since pathologically deviant people simply can NOT comprehend what is actually inside normal humans (even if those normal humans have been influenced from childhood to "follow the leader"), they will always and ever go too far.

The pathological authorities are convinced that the appropriate pedagogical, indoctrinational, propaganda, and terrorist means can teach a person with a normal instinctive substratum, range of feelings, and basic intelligence to think and feel according to their own different fashion. This conviction is only slightly less unrealistic, psychologically speaking, than the belief that people able to see colors normally can be broken of this habit.

Actually, normal people cannot get rid of their characteristics, with which the Homo sapiens species was endowed by its phylogenetic past. Such people will thus never stop feeling and perceiving psychological and socio-moral phenomena in much the same way their ancestors had been doing for hundreds of generations.

Any attempt to make a society subjugated to the above phenomenon "learn" this different experiential manner imposed by pathological egotism is, in principle, fated for failure regardless of how many generations it might last. It does, however, call forth a series of improper psychological results which may give the pathocrats the appearance of success. However, it also provokes society to pinpointed, well-thought-out self-defense measures based on its cognitive and creative efforts.

Pathocratic leadership believes that it can achieve a state wherein those "other" people's minds become dependent by means of the effects of their personality, perfidious pedagogical means, the means of mass-information, and psychological terror; such faith has a basic meaning for them. In their conceptual world, pathocrats consider it virtually self-evident that the "others" should accept their obvious, realistic, and simple way of apprehending reality. For some mysterious reason, though, the "others" wriggle out, slither away, and tell each other jokes. Someone must be responsible for this- -pre-revolutionary oldsters, or some radio-stations abroad. It thus becomes necessary to improve the methodology of action, find better "soul engineers" with a certain literary talent, and isolate society from improper literature and any foreign influence. Those experiences and intuitions whispering that this is a Sisyphian labor must be repressed from the field of consciousness.

The conflict is thus dramatic for both sides. The first feels insulted in its humanity, rendered obtuse, and forced to think a manner contrary to healthy common sense. The other stifles the premonition that if this goal cannot be reached, sooner or later things will revert to normal man's rule, including their vengeful lack of understanding of the pathocrats' personalities. So if it does not work, it is best not to think about the future, just prolong the status quo by means of the above mentioned efforts. ...

However, such a pedagogical system, rife with pathological egotisation and limitations, produce serious negative results, especially in those generations unfamiliar with any other conditions of life. Personality development is impoverished, particularly as regards the more subtle values widely accepted in societies.

We observe the characteristic lack of respect for one's own organism and the voice of nature and instinct, accompanied by brutalization of feelings and customs, to be explained away by a sense of injustice. The tendency to be morally judgmental in interpreting the behavior of those who caused one's suffering sometimes leads close to a demonological world-view. At the same time, adaptation and resourcefulness within these different conditions become the object of recognition.

A person who has been the object of the effects of the egotistic behavior of pathological individuals for a long time becomes saturated with their characteristic psychological material to such an extent that we can thereupon frequently discern the kind of psychological anomalies which affected him. The personalities of former concentration-camps inmates have become saturated with generally psychopathic material ingested from camp commanders and tormentors, creating a phenomenon so widespread that it later becomes a primary motive of psychotherapy. Becoming aware of this makes it easier for them to throw off this burden and re-establish contact with the normal human world. In particular, being shown appropriate statistical data concerning the appearance of the psychopathy in given a population facilitates their search for a calmer view of their nightmare years and rebuilt trust in their fellow man. ...

The pathocratic world--the world of pathological egotism and terror--is so difficult to understand for people raised outside the scope of this phenomenon that they often manifest childlike naivete, even if they studied psychopathology and are psychologists by profession. There are no real data in their behavior, advice, rebukes, and psychotherapy. That explains why their efforts are boring and hurtful and frequently come to naught. Their egotism transforms their good will into ill results.

If someone has personally experienced that reality, he considers people who have not progressed in understanding it within the same time frame to be simply presumptuous, sometimes even malicious. In the course of his experience and contact with this macrosocial phenomenon, he has collected a certain amount of practical knowledge about the phenomenon and its psychology and learned to protect his own personality.

This experience, unceremoniously rejected by "people who don't under-stand anything", becomes a psychological burden for him, forcing him to live within a narrow circle of persons whose experiences have been similar. Such a person should rather be treated as the bearer of valuable scientific data; understanding would constitute at least partial psychotherapy for him, and would simultaneously open the door to a comprehension of reality.

 

[Laura]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1981174,00.html

These shameful events have humiliated the Arab world

Saddam's trial and mob execution reeked of western double standards. Yet Iraq's neighbouring states failed to speak out

Ghada Karmi
Tuesday January 2, 2007
The Guardian

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. The vengeful Shia mob that was allowed to taunt the man's last moments, and the vicious executioners who released the trapdoor while he was saying his prayers, turned this scene of so-called Iraqi justice into a public lynching. One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathiser to be horrified that he should have been executed - and, so obscenely, on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world.

What was the executioners' hurry? Why was Saddam condemned for one of his lesser crimes, ignoring the far larger ones for which many of his victims had sought retribution? In their unseemly haste to kill him, the judges ended up looking mean-minded, bloodthirsty and vengeful, while Saddam retained a dignity to the end that drew the reluctant admiration of many of his enemies.

It was always clear that Saddam's fate was sealed from the moment US forces "got 'im", in Paul Bremer's tasteless phrase. He was to be used as a trophy of a mindless and catastrophic war, to redeem America's dented image. But it was also essential to stop him revealing secrets about the west's past enthusiasm in supporting and arming his regime. Hence he was tried on the relatively minor charge of killing 148 people in the village of Dujail, after a plot to assassinate him. Far better to put him away safely for that rather than risk his exposing western hypocrisy, treachery and double-dealing.

For the Arab world, this has been a shameful, humiliating event that underlines its total surrender to western diktat. The execution was carried out under the auspices of a foreign occupying power, and with a clear western message: we give ourselves the right to invade a sovereign Arab state and remove its leader because he offends us; we think you Arabs are incapable of sorting out your own affairs in accordance with our interests, so we will do it for you.

Saddam was held in US custody right up to the end and only handed over to the Iraqis for the distasteful deed, his body whisked away immediately afterwards by a US helicopter for a hasty burial. Yet this was billed as an independent decision of a "sovereign state", as if any such thing were possible under occupation. The fact that this was the act of an Iraqi government dominated by Saddam's Shia enemies made the final outcome a foregone conclusion. Yet the Arab states stood by, swallowing their humiliation in silence and letting US/Iraqi "justice" take its course, hoping no one would notice how some of them had supported Saddam's war on Iran in the 80s, fought to a large extent on their behalf.

But the west should also be ashamed of what was a clear miscarriage of justice, carried out in the face of its strident demands of the Arabs for democracy and the rule of law. The trial judgment was not finished when sentence was pronounced. Saddam's defence lawyers were given less than two weeks to file their appeals against a 300-page court decision. Important evidence was not disclosed to them during the trial, and Saddam was prevented from questioning witnesses testifying against him. Several of his lawyers were threatened or actually assassinated, and the trial was subjected to continuous political interference.

Any pretence that this was an exercise of due process is farcical. Of course Saddam himself was a brutal tyrant, but the kangaroo court that tried him lacked any serious legal credibility. Yet no western leader (or Arab one for that matter) was prepared to say so, or exert any pressure to have the defendant tried by an international court. Whatever else Saddam was, he was the constitutionally recognised Iraqi president. Yet he was left to the mercies of a campaign of revenge masquerading as legal process.

Britain, which does not support the death penalty, did not strive hard to prevent it. No western leader has been treated in this way, and Arabs should ask themselves why this exception was made. Was it because there is one rule for them, and another for western "civilised" people?

For everyone concerned, this was a lost opportunity: for the Arabs, to have protested against this western humiliation and regained some dignity; for the Islamic world, to speak out against a sacrilegious act; and for Britain and America, to have made up, however belatedly, for their arrogance and aggression against an Arab nation that had never harmed them. Most of all, it was a chance for the "new" Iraq to have shown that it would not conform to the western stereotype that led to the country being invaded in the first place - of an unruly, despotic people who thrive on bloodshed and revenge.

· Ghada Karmi is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

 

[knowledge_of_self]

On the day Saddam was executed, I sat down and watched the news with my father in-law. He is from Iran, and remembers much of the Gulf War. He and his wife both HATE Saddam. They and many Persians like them also. They both praised America for bringing justice to the Arab world and finally putting an end to a miserable existence which was Saddam. My father in-law was so happy about this, and began to say out loud how he wished that the same fate would come to the Mullah’s running Iran.

I thought I was going to be ill right there when I heard him say that. This was one of the most despicable acts of political justice I have ever seen, and they found it as JUST. They thought it was justice. I really don’t know what to think, or what to say to people with that line of thought. It is as if we are all in the Land of OZ, and the Wizard is putting on a damn good show for everyone!

Anyway, just wanted to share this as I think it to be an interesting line of thought brought about clearly through ponerized thinking.

I also have a REALLY bad feeling about all this. I was talking to my mom this morning, and she was saying hopefully 2007 will be the year of change for the good, and for peace. I told her I won’t hold my breath.

Nina

 

[Ruth]

I think its kind of human nature to be a bit egotistical, selfish and competetive - but a lot of people draw the line when things become too immoral - they just can't cope with it. People who are brainwashed/lead to do things by psychopaths who sell them on the illusion that they're doing immoral things for the "greater good", are having their morality abused, but that doesn't mean to say they don't have any imo.

I agree, most people have a conscience which means they have the ability not to use it - occassionally or whenever they want to... And to cover up those conscienceless times - by themselves or by others; they just chose not to see (anything, such as the consequenses of their actions or the reality of their situation). Its almost like a mental disease of sorts. A disease that people seem to want to chose - occasional and stubborn blindness. I'm really sick and tired of seeing people chosing not to exercise their conscience.

At least psychopaths have an excuse for their behaviour! They simply don't have a conscience, so cannot chose to exercise it.

 

[Ruth]

People tend to forget that the majority of people function at the emotional age of 6 and the mental age of 12. That is what advertising is geared for.

I readily believe that most people operate at the emotional age of 6, but the mental age of 12? Gosh, people are in poor shape then. I expected that there would be more smarter people around than this, but the 6 thing, ah yes, that sounds about right!

The problem is, how do you lift everybodies IQ, since thinking should be like eyesight to humans, we're supposed to rely on it for many day to day activities. How do you 'cure' stupidity?!