Saddam Hussein to receive death penalty

Somehow I think Shias and Sunnis are too busy killing each other already to care about Saddam.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

These trials have about as much precedence as Nuremberg, so I don't think anybody's really going to care.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

We won enough to hold phony trials, and that's all that really matters in the end. Women. Am I right fellas?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Ulysses

There is no victory where massive military operations are still on going, where troops are still being murdered daily by the dissolved Iraqi army that hides amongst the population and uses guerilla tactics. Saddam was deposed and caught, but I see no military victory at all.

As long as you're done trying to sound insightful, you can still "win" without having victory. Hamlet won, for instance. So did Robert E. Lee, countless times.

How ya doing, buddy?

HUP DUP DURRR

The jury is still out, but that's not the point. The point is we've won enough to help the Iraqis assemble a kangaroo court, and there's not shit anybody can do about it.

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The rebuilding of a state including a complete political culture overhaul takes time, but as with the example of Japan, it can be worth the investment.

The key ingredient in the success of that investment, however, was cooperation. We invested in the Phillipines and that country is still in the shit.

Saying that it'll "take time" will not be enough for people that are monitoring these events, and understand how many losses of personnel and materiel are stacking up.

The Japanese weren't hiding in pits ready to strike the arming pin for an unexploded bomb as tanks rolled over them during the occupation.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I don't see why. It's a legitimate question and isn't too far off-topic. Other than your poor wording there's nothing inherently wrong with your post.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Any victory we get out of this will be meaningless if we can never create enough returns that will make up for the loss of lives and capital. Right now I can't see Iraq as anything other than a charybdis that consumes money and vomits debt.

FELIPE NO

Come to think of it, what dominoes do the terrorists have to fall in the first place? It's not like militant Wahabbi doesn't already have a stranglehold on Arab nations.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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But I don't get why it matters anyhow?

Because anthropology tells us that it isn't right to judge other cultures based on ethnocentric value judgements. Know what that makes you? A racist. Go burn crosses on your own time, honky.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

More honky jive. You gotta wise up, turkey. If you disapprove of the actions of a foreign culture, then you're negatively judging them based on your own perspective.

Incidentally, r you a women?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So your general view is that it's more acceptable to torture people than it is to execute them. Sounds like sadism. Tastes like butter.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Pain and Despair sound an awful lot like what you'd get from being tortured. If you're thinking of some kind of moral test like God's trial of Job it's foolish to think that he would do the same for anybody else.

Kim Jong Il is still in power, after all, and his father Kim Il Sung lived out his life of oppressive totalitarianism to a peaceful grave. If you think that somebody deserves pain and despair, then the reasonable conclusion is that you think it'd be ok if they were tortured.

Of course, the "Christian" argument is that it's not our place to punish people for their crimes in such a manner. It should be up to God to decide. Yet we punish people and judge them without God for their infractions on a secular daily basis. If someone is deserving of pain and despair, and not death, why shouldn't they be tortured? Barbarism? Please.

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It's not like Iraq is the only country using the death penalty. Sorry, I just don't see this as a cultural issue.

Because you're a product of a culture, and whether it's becuase you were influenced by a hippy liberal pacifist one or a pacifist Christian one, you're still making judgements about the death penalty based on a cultural perspective. Therefore, if you think it isn't right that Saddam was executed, then it automatically means that the Iraqis were wrong. The fact that you're a woman also calls your perspective into suspect, because women are categorically more likely to adopt pacifist or liberal views. Your inability to accept reason as an emotional woman could be used as an argument by myself if I was dumb as shit, but you see this whole thing is just a joke to me, including your opinion on the matter. I mean, for God's sake, I'm using racial slurs from the 70's and you're still taking my assertion that you're racist seriously?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Also, to be fair on my end, Crash. She never said anything about changing the way they do things in Iraq, she only said that she found the Death Penalty morally revolting.

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Vengeance for what? Saddam didn't have a cult of personality, his entire regime was based on a You-Scratch-My-Back I'll-Scratch-Yours... or else system. Without a power base, there's nobody who possesses any personal loyalties to Saddam that aren't already openly resisting occupation or shooting up mosques.

If you think solitary confinement is acceptable, then your perspective of pain and despair has gone beyond the metaphorical (if that's even possible?).

Solitary confinement is torture, because you're intentionally causing suffering to an individual via social neglect as an act of punishment.

Psychological means of torture are no less significant than the physical ones. At least with the rack, people were still possessed of sound mind.

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But I think death..doesn't belong with Justice personally, and neither does Torture, for I am against that too.

Yet you are also advocating solitary confinement, but I've already debunked that notion.

Why is there no justice in death? Is it because the convicted are not granted the opportunity to be punished for the crimes they've committed? Is it not justice that murderers should lose their life, the one thing they took from their victims that can never be given back? The only thing anybody can ever truly possess?

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To be truthful I wasn't sure if you were serious or not.

I'm serious in that I think it's important people think about why they are possessed of an opinion. Understanding the nature of perspective is an important part in understanding truth.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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The only distinction between murder and killing is the one we've made up for them.

Yeah, it's like we make up definitions for words or something. It's almost as if we've filled a whole language full of words we've made up to describe things.

How ya doing, buddy?

I can't help but notice the fact that you both jumped to the example of a soldier in combat. Jingoism rears its head in the funniest places, doesn't it?

The simple difference between killing and murder is that a murder is perceived to be an unjust killing. When people talk about acts of vengeance, they always use "and then he killed him" instead of "and then he murdered him." More than likely it's because the person telling the story views the subject as a hero figure, and that his victim was deserving of the (more than likely) frontier justice doled out to him.

There's a huge difference between the two, and if it honestly said "thou shalt not kill" in Hebrew (which we know it doesn't) the Jews would have had a significant moral conflict when it came to eradicating every man, woman, and child in Canaan.

The reason Christians launched wars and killed Jews was because they knew there was a difference. From a modern perspective, we think that the pogroms and atrocities perpetrated against Jews were heinous and constitute murder, but from a contemporary Christian perspective, Jews were poisoning wells and hoarding all the money in an age of Mercantilism. It's not really a matter of evil men doing wicked deeds (though many detractors at the time certainly felt so) it's just that nowadays we know better, or are at least supposed to.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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I think you're looking into my comment a bit too much. I wasn't advocating anything.

You didn't have to advocate anything. When it came to issues of death and killing, your first reaction was to justify the actions of men in the field, more than likely a conditioned response due to the patriotic impulse to "support the troops." It's of nobody's particular fault, it's just interesting to see how propaganda shows up.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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"They come here and don't integrate and expect us to tolerate them and their habits." You ever think that minorities group together because they aren't welcomed much?

It's called "subtle segregation." It perpetrates itself automatically because people prefer to interact with people of their own demographic instead of interacting with those outside of them. It's what causes the sense of "other" within societies based on whatever lines. In High School it was social, and as you move up the scale, it becomes racially or habitually-related.

Illegals don't conform for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it's impossible for them to conform because they have no legal status.

In the case of Muslim immigrants in Europe, Pakis and such don't operate outside of social circles that are comfortable to them, and this is what causes subtle segregation, because those circles are more often than not based on ethnic lines. When a minority segregates itself from larger society, it by a rule becomes disadvantaged, and because the segregation is perpetuated, so does the poverty. It's how you have 3rd Generation French Moroccans who feel like second class citizens because all parties involved worked to keep each other segregated.

Immigrant minorities are not welcome in countries because they do not make themselves welcome. That is what causes resentment amongst natural-citizens who feel entitled to the native culture.

This isn't like language with Mexicans, though, in the case of Muslims in Europe it comes along much more sobering issues such as child abuse and terrorism.

Europeans have a right to be pissed about Islamism snaking its way into politics, but they also have to understand that they're as much a part of the problem.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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Trouble is, these nasty little things called 'opinions' get all muddled up in a whole lot of those distinctions we've made up.

Which completely refutes thousands of years of written and spoken language. Ok.

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When a country enters a conflict under false pretenses or for reasons that a great deal of it's people feel are unfounded, when many believe there is no justice in the war itself, does that mean all the (religious) individuals in the millitary, the ones actually committing the killing for an unjustified reason are still somehow in the clear with their god? I know you aren't exactly saying that, but you're certainly leaving room for someone else to say it.

There's actually no room to say it. Soldiers in the field are justified in killing an enemy combatant because it comes down to simple matters of self-defense. The exception comes in the case of war crimes, which not every US soldier commits, but which should ultimately fall on the shoulders of their superiors, all the way to the top.

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If it was true that Jews were poisoning wells and hoarding money, then I can most assuredly see a justification for war.

First of all, there was never any kind of "war" against the Jews, and second you know that's not true at all. My point is that reason is determined by perspective, and whether what one has done is right or wrong ultimately depends on personal and majority opinion. Nowadays we have a different opinion of Jews, so we think it's wrong to up and kill them for being Jewish.

I don't really get your point at all. Unless you're trying to say that Justice is subjective, and therefore you're right. Which would be retarded.

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There are many "modernist" style Muslims that tend to get ignored because a lot of people have this image of a person wearing a head covering and a smock.

And why shouldn't they be ignored? If they've conformed to the dominant culture, then they're about as visible as the guy who runs the pumping station.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

It's the beard.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

It's so hard to remember if The Guardian is a tabloid or not. Can't trust any British publication, it seems.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I was hoping somebody wouldn't bring up The Economist. Thanks a lot, Minion. =/

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?