Monday, December 15, 2003

Howard would back Saddam death penalty: "'I read articles that are critical of the Americans and critical of my government and the implication of those is that Iraq would probably still be better off with Saddam Hussein', [said Aust Prime Minister Howard]. 'You can't have it both ways, you can't say that he was a loathsome dictator and murdered his people and then criticise the people who remove him.'"

'Removing' Saddam by means of an illegal war has cost the lives of an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians, an unknown number of Iraqi soldiers, and seems to have succeeded in making the situation in Iraq even worse than it was under the Saddam/sanctions regime, extremely bad as that was. So one might indeed criticise those who 'removed' him for their lawless violence hardly different from mass murder, coupled with monumental lies about the basis for the war and colossal hypocrisy concerning the welfare of the Iraqi people. Howard mentions nothing about oil and he expects us to believe that that was not a factor in launching the war. And where was Howard when Saddam launched the Iran-Iraq war, backed to the hilt by the righteous West, or when the west imposed the genocidal sanctions regime on Iraq?

No one should face the death penalty, not Saddam, not Hitler or Stalin. But 'removing' Saddam will clear the air somewhat in Iraq: whether the insurgency has truly been 'Saddamites' as claimed by the US or whether it is more widely and popularly based.

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