Common Folk Using Common Sense

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majidida al-Tikriti President of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003

I haven’t written anything about this soul-less butcher and the announcement of his guilty verdict. I wanted the US elections to come and go first. But now let me say just a few words about Baghdad’s Butcher. What’s so bad about Saddam?

• The use of poison gas and other war crimes against Iran and the Iranian people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraq summarily executed thousands of Iranian prisoners of war as a matter of policy.
• The “Anfal” campaign in the late 1980’s against the Iraqi Kurds, including the use of poison gas on cities. In one of the worst single mass killings in recent history, Iraq dropped chemical weapons on
  Halabja in 1988, in which as many as 5,000 people – mostly civilians – were killed.
• Crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of Iraq’s 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq. This includes the destruction of over 3,000 villages. The Iraqi government’s campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq has created approximately 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country.
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Marsh Arabs and Shi’a Arabs in southern Iraq. Entire populations of villages have been forcibly expelled. Government forces have burned their houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Thousands of civilians have been summarily executed.

But there is more. Other than just a cold list of “things” that happened “years ago” in a country “far away” it is necessary to examine the human component. I’m sure that most major US cities have someone that understands first-hand who Saddam was.

Kawa Talabani lives in metro Atlanta. Talabani is a Kurd who was born in Northern Iraq in the city of Kirkuk. He fled Iraq 11 years ago after a total of 63 members of his extended family were murdered under Saddam’s regime. 63 members. Here is a human death toll that I can’t fully comprehend. How can Saddam, just a single man, inflict this degree of pain? Yet he did.

“I’m waiting for this day,” Talabani said. “I’m as happy as all the galaxy. They’re sleeping in the grave peacefully now. They’re in peace.”

But surely he can’t be all that bad, right?

An Iraqi soldier, who according to the facility’s records witnessed the beatings, said interrogators regularly used pliers to remove men’s teeth, electric prods to shock men’s genitals and drills to cut holes in their ankles.

In one instance, the soldier recalled, he witnessed a Kuwaiti soldier, who had been captured during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, being forced to sit on a broken Pepsi bottle. The man was removed from the bottle only after it filled up with his blood, the soldier said. He said the man later died.

“I have seen interrogators break the heads of men with baseball bats, pour salt into wounds and rape wives in front of their husbands,” said former Iraqi soldier Ali Iyad Kareen, 41.

Amnesty International has compiled evidence of:

• Eyes being gouged out.
• Being fed alive to wild animals.
• Piercing of hands with electric drills. Acid was then poured into the wounds.
• Being suspended off the floor for hours by their wrists with their hands behind their backs. This would painfully dislocate the shoulders and tear the muscles and ligaments.
• Women would be raped and gang raped, many times in front of their husbands and/or children.
• Victims were hung up by their wrists and then slowly lowered into a vat of acid.
• Use of spike filled tombs.
• The twisting of limbs until they broke.
• Rape rooms.
• Mass graves.

Saddam, pending appeal, has been sentenced to hang. Personally I think that’s way too nice, way too painless, way too quick. This butcher needs to receive some of what he’s done to others. Twist an arm until it breaks. Drill a hole in his leg and then pour acid in the wound. Gouge out an eye or two. Have a wild dog chew off an arm. Make absolutely sure he doesn’t die anytime soon but instead lives in utter pain and despair for many days.

And yet Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said, in 2004, that Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein.

And yet Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said, in 2006, that Iraqi citizens were better off under Saddam Hussein.

And yet Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said, in 2005, that Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein.

Kawa Talabani understands. Hillary Clinton, Hans Blix, and Howard Dean do not.

Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Crimes against humanity, war crimes, Kawa Talabani, Hillary Clinton, Hans Blix, Howard Dean

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