Saddam Hussein has been Captured

[Poetic_Princess]

Saddam Hussein has been Captured,                              
TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. forces have captured Saddam HusseIn in a late night raid in his hometown, according to the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"Ladies and gentleman, we got him," L. Paul Bremer announced Sunday. The announcement was greeted with cheers from the audience.

Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez showed video of Saddam, who had graying hair and a long beard, undergoing a medical examination after his capture.

Several Iraqi journalists stood up and shouted "Death to Saddam" after the video was shown.

Sanchez said the former leader was not injured and has been "talkative and cooperative," after 4th Infantry Division and special operations forces nabbed him at a "rural farmhouse."

"Today is a great day for the Iraqi people and the coalition," Sanchez said.

Not a single shot was fired in "Operation Red Dawn," carried out based on intelligence gathered over several months, Sanchez said.

"This is very good news for the people of Iraq," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a statement Sunday. "It removes the shadow that has been hanging over them for too long of the nightmare of a return to the Saddam regime. This fear is now removed."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.irq.main/index.html

--This all mean a new Iraq and freedom for those people but who will really govern this new Iraq old great United States or as they claim and say a new Iraqi Government who will see to justice.As much as this is great joy to the Iraq People, how would those few great followers who still believe in Saddam how will they react to this.
Even though it is such great joy one must think is this just one more country which the US is trying to control?

[Rootsie]

How does this staged media event mean 'freedom' and a 'new Iraq'? What was ever relevant about capturing Saddam anyway except helping Bush in the polls due to the ignorance of an American people bamboozled into believing that Saddam had something to do with 9-11?

And how convenient that he is 'captured' (if he even was) a day or two after they set up a court in Iraq to try him.

Those pictures could be months old. They could be fabricated. This is the the aggravating thing.  Anything could be true and we would never know.
I don't know what's worse: having a completely controlled media, or a criminally miseducated population that believes everything it tells them. At least in the Soviet Union the people knew enough not to believe the news.

Every TV station and media outlet is spinning and spinning, telling us what a big deal this is. Well on the crudest level it's macho revenge or something--'our' big guy brought down 'their' big guy. But Saddam is not and never has been the issue, except in the minds of brainwashed Americans. Just as on 9-11, I find the American response disgusting. How dare we be so ignorant? At this point in history it is simply a crime.

I wrote this on 9-11.  

America America Does not love ideas  
O no America does not love ideas.  
America does not like to be sober. Not much.  
America loves to leap before America looks.  
America just cannot sit still.  
America hates history, hates to be reminded  
That causes have effects.  
America cannot abide those who observe that her chickens  
Have come home to roost.  
America will pay anything for the illusion of safety,  
Yet America is still afraid and can't figure out why  
But that's an idea and like I said  
America does not love ideas---  
America busy anyways fixin her makeup.  
She will sacrifice practically anything  
Not to reflect, not to think long.  
America is afraid of the dark.  
After all America is the City on a Hill  
The muscular might the brilliant thrusting light  
Of a distant Deity  
And America insists there is no downside to any of this  
Of this America.  
America don't need to play by anyone's rules,  
America is America after all.  
America says America loves freedom  
While giving away as much of it as possible  
As quick as possible. Freedom- but nobody feels free  
Because there is much, much America refuses to see.  
America is quick to anger, impatient, and unkind.  
America gives no consideration to the seventh generation.
America loves gas-gulping cars  
Dehumanized sex
and bling.  
America loves varaiation after variation  
Of the same old f*****g thing.  
America loves distractions and diversions of all kinds  
Cuz America can't stand her own mind.  

[Poetic_Princess]

Thanx so much for your insight Rootsie and great poem,
I see your point and agree with you, recently just heard  that now the US aint sure if it is Saddam since they now claims he had 5 to 6 doubles, no one seems to know why the US just decided to attack Saddam, they is no proof except for the excuse which they use as they are "freeing the people of the regime and from the hands of a dictator"

[Tyehimba]

"We Got Him" Give Me A Break!
By Ayinde, Trinicenter Staff
December 16, 2003

What is wrong with many supposedly critical writers on the Internet? Are they suffering from analytical paralysis?

Let me spell it out as simply as possible:

SADDAM HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ATTACK ON AMERICA.

SADDAM WAS NOT AN IMMANENT THREAT TO AMERICA, BRITAIN, AND AUSTRALIA.

THE INVASIONS OF AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ WERE ILLEGAL.

HAVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IS NOT A CRIME.

They have not found any WMD, and may find them only when they plant some.

If possessing weapons of mass destruction is a crime, we should be targeting America, Israel, Britain, and other countries whose misleaders have demonstrated they are a threat to us all.

Capturing Saddam is about America's internal elections.

All the brutal crimes committed by Saddam were sanctioned by America, and were done with arms and chemicals supplied by many nations including, most of all, the United States of America and Britain.

We got what?
Give me a break!

http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/161220032.html

[Ayinde]

Still no mass weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 12/17/2003
http://www.boston.com/

THE INVASION was still a lie. The capture of Saddam Hussein changes nothing about that. There were too many forked tongues in the road to his lair. The way we removed the dictator, we became a global dictatorship.

No major reason for the war has been proven. The deadly WMDs became weapons of mysterious disappearance. In August 2002, Vice President Cheney said: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

In the 48-hour warning to Saddam on March 17, 2003, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . The terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other."

On March 30, a week and a half after the start of the invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld boasted about the weapons of mass destruction, "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."

Nine months later, no chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction have been found.

There were the administration's attempts to tie Saddam to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. They worked so well that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam was "personally involved" in the attacks. On March 21, two days after announcing the invasion, Bush wrote a letter to congressional leaders in which he said: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001."

By the fall, after Cheney revived a discredited claim that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent prior to the attacks, Bush was forced to admit, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September the 11th."

Bush scared Americans with fears of an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons. In his State of the Union address last January, Bush said: "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That claim had been discredited months earlier by many US intelligence sources. Bush used it anyway.

Bush was so successful in putting mortal fear into Americans that there never was a pause to wonder if this was carnage without cause. We could not wait for United Nations weapons inspectors to finish their job. We could not wait for diplomats to try a last appeal. As with the environment and arms control, there was no attempt to listen to the world at all. There is a thin line between arrogance and shame. Because we are the preeminent power in the world, we assumed that our arrogance would not shame us.

Bush told the world we were going to secure America and liberate Iraqis at the same time. With no weapons of mass destruction, with no nuclear weapons, and with no tie to 9/11, Saddam's capture could not possibly have been worth the lives of 455 US and 80 European soldiers. With no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, and no tie to 9/11, it could not possibly been worth the lives of 7,600 to 45,000 Iraqi soldiers. With no rationale for the invasion, you could consider this a massacre.

As murderous as Saddam was, an invasion with no reason was not worth the killing of unknown thousands of Iraqi civilians. At the beginning of the war, Rumsfeld said: "To the Iraqi people, let me say that the day of your liberation will soon be at hand." Halliburton has been liberated to profit off Iraq, but I have yet to read a news report where a grieving Iraqi family clutches the body of an innocent loved one and hugs an American soldier in appreciation of their "liberation."

With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant. Civilian deaths constituted justifiable homicide. America was again above the law. We have taught the next generation that many wrongs equal a right. In arrogance, we boasted, "We got him!" The shame is that we feel none for how we got him. The capture of this dictator, driven by the poison of lies, turned America itself into a dictator.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Bantu_Kelani]

What reason would he have for being captured alive? And getting Osama would certainly fix any other war-torn country, would it??!

B.K

[Rootsie]

Well. That's the first sensible article I've seen from the U.S. press.
Good for the Boston Globe.
Somebody has bothered to remember some history.

[Ayinde]

I have a theory here:

One report mentioned that the US got tipped off about Saddam's hiding place. So it is logical to assume that they staged the raid with their imbedded journalists. (We know the political agenda here)

I believe that Bush would have preferred that Saddam resisted in front of their embedded journalists so they could have killed him with the 'journalists' as witnesses. Saddam surrendered and the presence of the imbedded journalists backfired, making it difficult to kill him in cold blood.

The article below gives some reasons.

Ayinde
____________________________________

Saddam's silence is golden for West

JIM SILLARS
http://www.news.scotsman.com

TO the Americans, the glory of capturing Saddam Hussein, to the Iraqis the job of dispatching him to the gallows and eternal silence ... a silence that will cover up those long cruel years of dictatorship when the United States, certain Western states, and especially Russia, were among his secret and not so secret supporters.

Pardon me for being so sceptical and so cynical about Jack Straw's shrug of the shoulders that, although the UK opposes the death penalty, if Iraq imposes it on Saddam, well we'll just have to accept it.

But for evidence supportive of my attitude, look to the Milosevic trial to see that while international politics is clothed in fine moral rhetoric, in reality when state interests are concerned, it is essentially amoral.

At the Milosevic trial, US General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, is to give evidence. But he will do so in closed session. That is the condition imposed by the United States government before it will allow him to testify.

Reason? It doesn't want aired in public the dirty dealings between the US and the Milosevic regime over many years.

In the case of Saddam, neither the US, Britain nor any other major western country wants him tried by an international tribunal for crimes of war of aggression (against Iran and Kuwait), or for what, only a year or so ago, were his alleged plans to unleash weapons of mass destruction upon us all - or, as Bush claimed, his complicity in al-Qaida attacks on the US. Iran, upon whom Saddam waged an eight-year war which included the indiscriminate use of chemical warfare, wants an international tribunal to deal with him. No chance.

An international tribunal would inevitably mean Saddam citing, in defence, evidence that his conduct in the Iraq-Iraq war was far from opposed by his Arab Gulf neighbours or the US.

His Arab neighbours were quite cynical. They fed him the money to keep the war machines turning, hoping that he would weaken Iran and that Iran, in turn, in fighting him off, would weaken him. He cannot be allowed to explain to the world that although the US knew of his use of chemical warfare, it continued to supply him with vital satellite military intelligence throughout that conflict.

It is not in US interests for Saddam to cite the visit of Senator Bob Dole and others, as emissaries of President George Bush Snr, pledging better relations, when all knew that he had gassed the Kurds.

Nor is it in US interests for Saddam to call witnesses to explain just what was said between him and April Glasgpi, the then US ambassador to Iraq, when she said, on the eve of his invasion of Kuwait, that the US had "no interest in an Arab to Arab conflict".

No, it's much safer to have him tried by the Iraqis for the crimes he committed inside Iraq, with only Iraqi victims called as witnesses, and no past western and Russian support, both political and material, cited as justification for his wider crimes against humanity.

There will be no lack of internal Iraqi evidence against him. He took office and power by murder, kept it by murder, ran a corrupt regime bolstered by torture and murder, and will have no defence against the charges the Iraqi courts will bring against him.

Iraqis believe in the death penalty and they will impose it. His then silence will be golden for all those diplomats, politicians, and military men in the Coalition and elsewhere who want their contribution to the maintenance of his regime, while he did what they wanted, kept secret.

As for the al-Qaida terrorists, they will gain through the manner of his hiding and above all of his capture. Saddam was never a hero to them. He ran a secular Iraq and was, therefore, in their eyes, a traitor to Islam.

For him to be captured with guns he was too cowardly to use is as much a propaganda coup for Osama bin Laden, whose people readily die for their cause, as it is for George Bush.

http://www.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1383732003

[Bantu_Kelani]

Ayinde you mean the Bush administration planned and timed the capture of Saddam Hussein for...political reasons? This shouldn't be too surprising!! The main question is: How can we be sure it's Saddam they caught and not one of his many doubles? Who's the doctor confirming the DNA match?? Obviously the doctor could lie. The government has done it before. What was a multi-billionaire still doing after 8 months in Iraq hiding out in a tiny hole?? Even a poverty stricken common criminal can give himself a new identity with a different appearance for a few hundred or a few thousand buck, depending how sophisticated you'd like to change your identity and how much money you have. If Saddam with all his Iraqi connections and all his billions of dollars couldn't get safely out of Iraq and into another country with a new identity. Then he's not that smart ...

Americans would not know the difference between the fake Saddam and the" real" Saddam. After all over 60% of the American people were led to believe that it was Saddam who did 9/11 and NOT Ossama bin Laden, so that Bush was able to start the Iraqi WAR FOR OIL. I think the phony video of Ossama admitting 9/11 was put out in the same circumstances. There are too many oddities, the pathetic defense of Saddam etc, you can't take anything at face value, especially these days.

Can we trust people who lied about his WMD and so many other issues?  Are we really getting the truth? That's NOT sure.

Bantu-Kelani.