Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity
BAGHDAD, Saturday, Dec. 30- Saddam Hussein, the dictator who led Iraq through three decades of brutality, war and bombast before American forces chased him from his capital city and captured him in a filthy pit near his hometown, was hanged just before dawn Saturday during the morning call to prayer. The final stages for Mr. Hussein, 69, came with terrible swiftness after he lost the appeal, five days ago, of his death sentence for the killings of 148 men and boys in the northern town of Dujail in 1982. –New York Times
Maoists flay Saddam Hussein’s execution
KATHMANDU, Dec 30 – The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) on Saturday flayed the execution of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Issuing a statement today, CPN-M spokesperson Krishna Bahadur Mahara said the news of the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has drawn “grave attention” of the party. CPN-M said, “Hussein’s execution – orchestrated by the Bush administration – is not only a grave violation of human right but also a glaring example of the US’s double standards on the issues of human rights and democracy.” “The CPN-M condemns the decision by the puppet government in Iraq to execute Saddam Hussein,” the release said, slamming the decision as a “blatant violation of human rights norms.” “Regardless of who killed whom, the act is against international humanitarian law and against the fundamental right to life,” the statement added.-eKantipur
It’s very difficult to support or condemn the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. We might find it unsuitable because we don’t have the provision of execution in Nepal. And it is no new news that probably dozens of people are being executed daily in the world. While condemning the execution, we should not forget that what Saddam did against his people as a dictator was definitely crime against humanity. We can argue that capital punishment itself is not a good form of punishment but while doing so it wouldn’t be appropriate to single out certain case and express our opinion for or against it. There is legal provision of capital punishment in many countries including the United States, China and India and people are being executed daily in those countries after their judiciary decides to use that form of punishment. There is whole lot of movement going on in the world for and against the capital punishment. I am happy that we don’t have such form of punishment in Nepal and wish other countries also get rid of this. But I don’t want to single out the Saddam Hussein case and say that it’s bad.
Yes, I am against the capital punishment but I don’t want to single out the any specific case and condemn the execution of Saddam Hussein. Execution itself it bad! And I agree with Nepali Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala that “capital punishment should be abolished from the world.” “The death penalty is against human civilization,” Koirala told journalists today.
Here is what I found in Wikipedia on the issue:
Capital punishment is a contentious issue. Supporters of capital punishment argue that it deters crime, prevents recidivism, and is an appropriate punishment for the crime of murder. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it does not deter criminals more than life imprisonment, violates human rights, leads to executions of some who are wrongfully convicted, and discriminates against minorities and the poor. It is also argued that capital punishment is a hypocritical punishment, especially in murder cases, as it implies killing a certain individual is wrong before exacting the same action upon them.
Now about the Maoist reaction on the execution. Even if the Maoist statement says “regardless of who killed whom” it is not difficult to conclude that the rage comes because the United States, the enemy of the Maoists, is involved in the execution. The irony is that Maoists themselves have performed same kind of execution of many innocent Nepali in Nepal when they were waging peoples’ war. Who will forget the inhuman execution of Mukti Nath Adhikari? What about those, to use the words from the Maoists statement, “blatant violation of human rights norms” comrades? I think first Maoists should see themselves in mirror before commenting on others’ deeds.
I agree. I am also against capital punishment but don’t want to single out Saddam Hussein and condemn it. We must express ourselves against all form of killings in future. Life imprisonment is better than killing the criminal.
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Though it is good to hear those sentences, BUT it does not fit to your mouth Mr Mahara! You have murdured so many innocent Nepali that you also deserve the same fate! It is amazing that you have no hesitancy to speak! Absolutly amazing!
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He was not an ideal ruler. He killed hundreds of innocent people. But I believe, in the due process of law, Saddam’s case cannot be taken as a fair trial. Capital punishment cannot be justified by any means. Isn’t his hanging a state sanctioned assassination?
Rather than the ‘end of the dark era’, it may be a start of a darker period. World may divide into Pro- and Anti-American quarters. This may transform into Islam and Anti-Islam outlooks. More intensively. Beginning of the Third Great War? I wish it was not true.
History should not be written in favour of the winners only; even the baddies win the war. Who knows Mr. Bush et al too would have to face the fate of similar kind.
Saddam’s smile at his last moments teased the world. I felt he was mocking at the double standards of US, UK and the rest of the world that sticks to the politics of profit only.
Amen!
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Oneday, Prachanda, Baburam, and others will face the same fate for their crimes against humunity.
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Instead of Criticizing America, the Gov of Nepal and CPN-M should start to think about how to punish Gyane for his crimes, and be ready to face punishment themselves in about 10 years time (possibly Prachanda should sacrifice his own dignity and be ready to be punished for his crimes) to put Nepal in the right track.
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LET THOSE HELL BE HANGED AND THERE WILL BE PEACE!
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Mahara: YOU EXCEED THE HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY!
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I myself have always had mixed feelings about the death penalty. However, Saddam Hussein was evil. Another example of the devil at work. We cannot continue to let convicted murderers get away with murder by allowing them apeal after apeal while our tax dollars pay for them to sit on death row for twenty years! Just send them over to Iraq when the death penalty is handed down because they do not mess around over there. They just get rid if them in a just and timely manner.
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fck CPN!
“act against humanity”..what in the hell do they do in nepal? shut up and look at yrself in the mirror if not in the newspaper every freaking day with reported maoists killing ppl…what a lame bunch of hypocrites!!
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Shit it makes me nervous, I wonder when they will catch me and hang me.
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“He killed hundreds of innocent people.”
No, he killed lahks of people including many in his own family. It can only be hoped that Jung, Amadinejad, Assad, Nasrullah, Omar, Bin Laden and other murderous minded despots can now imagine their necks in a rope someday soon. Pol Pot was allowed to die a natural death which was shameful.
Why is Charles Sobraj still a guest of the Nepal Government? Why is Charles Manson still alive? Rabid animals must be killed, they cannot be cured.
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Prachanda and Baburam and their goons Girija et al. got scared and spoke against the hanging because they know that they will have similar fates very soon. LOL.
Although, I am against what happened to Saddam. Death in any form is to be condemned. But I will be very happy when death will come to Prachanda, Baburam and gang for creating Crimes against Humanity. You Nepalis will be liberated when these terrorists are out of this world.
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Hello,
I would like to invite you to join our new Death Penalty Debate forum.
Anti and Pro stance are welcome.
We discuss the death penalty world wide and also many other topics.
Check us out at:
http://deathpenalty3.proboards103.com/index.cgi
Every one is welcome there 🙂
Greetings,
Anja
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If my guess is right, some victims of maoists autrocities will kill Prachanda, Baburam, and their leutinents within six months.
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you can’t run an insurgency that killed 13,000, take no accountability for any of the deaths and then lash out at others for implementing capital punishments— true, that it is wrong to kill anyone as a punishment for the crimes committed but the Maoists are the last persons in the world who have the RIGHT to condemn such killings… first they have to repent for the 13,000 deaths, publicly acknowledge their wrong means that made so many families be deprived of their loved ones and bring people who were involved in all those atrocities to justice…else Mahara should just shut up.
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crating bad karma thats all, do not retaliate. Make peace with the enemy.
om shanti
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Nadie puede entender. Todos odiamos the bush administration, el gobierno solamente de EEUU, nadie esta de acuerdo con nada por buenos razones. Los arabes parecen los nuevos judios del mundo. Hay muchisimo racismo, no se puede decir.
Si Hussein es un martyr, del mundo arabe, si se puede entender mucho…
En Europa los arabes no encuentran trabajo. Habria que hacer cirurgia plastica e cambiar de identidad.
?Quien tienen la culpa? Habria que hacer la biografia psicoanalitica de la vida de Ussein.hicieron de Hitler, Ceausescu e G Bush. Cuantos cristianos no quieren saber mas nada de la iglesia por un representante del genere.
. Es que no hay dignidad en el machismo yanqui. Peor aun hemos siempre tenido razon, cuando nos prohibian de pensar.
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Do you guys want the Maoists to be against the death penalty, or not?
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Neil,
Your indirect but filthy support to the Maoists and their recent statement makes me sick.
What people in this room are saying (it is my guess) is that killers, irrespective of their methods and intentions, belong to the same species. Bush is a killer, and the Maoists are no different either. The Maoists’ criticism of Bush is funny not because what Bush has done is right. This is because a killer has no right to criticize the act of another killer. Criticism of Bush sounds good only by those who have no blood of innocent people on their hands.
I think the Maoists are against hanging Saddam because they fear that they may have to face the same destiny in future.
Like many of this room, I am against capital punishment given under any pretext. Neither the state nor any political party can ever do so. I am for life imprisonment to all human rights abusers. Therefore, I firmly believe that the time has now come to impart this punishment to Prachanda and his cronies including the one who published this statement.
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The person who posted the message “Noname (08:43:04) ” is not me although he thinks like me.
What the heck are the blog owners doing? Stop people using duplicate names.
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[The following comment has been adapted from BBC.]
I don’t understand the gloating.
Saddam was just hanged for an incident that occurred in 1982, while he was our ally. Why didn’t we cut off relations with the “monster” then?…Because he was too helpful against Iran, and served our purposes.
He is accused of using the poision gas the CIA gave him in 1983 against the Kurds in ’89. Now, gassing civilians is a horrific crime against humanity, but who is more guilty, the dictator who used it or the country that gave it to him?
Brian Kasbar, Spokane, WA
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[The following comment has been adapted from BBC]
2 wrongs don’t make a right!
niraj shah, london
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noname: if you wan’t a unique name why not use a real name. if you want a noname, it’s good that other people are using it too.
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Mahara is concerned about human rights violation from death of Saddam. hahahahahahahaha, biggest joke of 2007. Soon it will be the fate of this guy too. Consider all the human right abuses him and the Maoist party has done.
Yes Yes, I know the excuses Maoist supporters in this website are going to use…saying well What about the RNA, they also abused human rights. This is the best you guys can come up with.
Abduction of children from schools and enrolling them into militia.
Seizing property and displacing people from their houses for the sake of horsesh*t propaganda.
Demanding money from people with threats and calling it “donation”
Imposing their views and ideals on innocent and illiterate peoples in rural regions with the gun.
None of these are of course violations of human rights. In Nepali we have a saying:
Afno jeu ma bhainsi nadekhne aru ko jeu ma jumra.
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Mr. Mahara: There is a saying: Duudh Ko Sachii Beeralo!!
Ane…. Choor ko Khutta Kaat Bhanda sabae bhanda pahela Choor le khuta uchale jaste ho ne ta temeharu……
I pray your murderer group one day be hanged like the same way due to your crime against humanity!
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THE WILL OF THE GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE HAS BEEN CARRIED OUT AND SAADAM SWONG LIKE A PIG FROM THE HANGMANS NOOSE- ALL COMMUNSITS MUST BE IDENTIFIES AND FACE THE SAME FATE LIKE CEAUSEAU AND SAADAM THE AMERICANS PEOPLES WILL WAS CARRIED OUT- THE FILTHY DIRTY COMMUNIST IN NORTH KOREA WILL BE NEXT TO FACE JUSTICE – AMERICAN LIBERAL DEMCOCRACY AND CAPITALISM MUST BE ENFORCED WORLD WIDE AT ALL COST !!!!
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????? ?????? ?? ????? ????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ????? ?????? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ?????? ????? ?, ?????? ??? ?? ?????? ****? ?? ????? ????? ??? ????? ???? ???????? ???? ??????; ?????? ????? ?? ?????? ????, ?? ???? (??? ?????) ? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ???? ???? ????? ????????? ? ??????? ?????? ???, ????? ???? ????? ???? ??????????? ??? ????, ??? ?? ??? ???? ? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ????? ??-???-????? ???????? ?????, ?????? ? ??! ???? ???????? ?????? ???? ???? ????? ?????!
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?????? ??? ?? ????? ????? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???? ????? ????? ?????? ???????? ?? ????? ????? ????? ??? ?? ???? ?????? ????? ??? ????? ??????? ? ???? ?? ???? ?????, ?? ?????? ???? ??? ???
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i can say this! he was a scum bag, but watching him go to the gallows, he took it like a man, not blubbering all over, falling down, crying and so forth. i’ll give him that! your balls sure got to be tight, think?
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Scott:
Nice try but I think you forgot that Pinochet (who was far from being the kind of pro-democracy that you are talking about) never was brought to justice and the dictator got American support throughout his life in exile. I think we can also add Marcos to the list. So, please don’t try to preach to the world anything that you yourself are not practicing.
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Badri… you just proved that whatever it is that you are asking the Nepalese to plug is wide open in your case. Get a life! It also goes to show that Haribansha and Madan Krishna didn’t name one of their movies after Badri for nothing!
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Koirala is responsible for operation romero. It was a systematic program of extrajudicial killing, rape, and torture carried out in Rolpa before the insergency ever started, and in a true sense made the insergency possible.
Not to mention that the RNA subsiquently has had an equivilant to worse human rights record as the Maoists up to this very day. You see, the false encounteres, extrajudicial killings, and rapes continued.
So, If the Maoists can’t condemn the hanging, then Koirala can’t condemn the hanging. For that matter neither can the French after what they have been doing in Africa (algerian civil war anyone? ended in 2003, supported by the french, over 100,000 people died). The british can’t. They did after all, participate in Iraq; a war that has killed far more Iraqies than this war has killed of Nepalies (in a country of roughly the same population). Indeed, if you put the whole of the world leadership together in one room, there wouldn’t be anybody in that room who could condemn the hanging without some mesure of hypocracy.
So I’ll ask again. would you rather the Maoists be for or against the death penalty?
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Neil– would you be for or against death penalties to the ones who “did” Madi?
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Waiting for the day when Baburam and Prachanda are going to be hanged for their crimes against the 13 thousand Nepalese people and their families.
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For all I care- we read about Sadaam from the view point of Western Media that he was this and that- how are we to presume that he was evil even if he was. I say what we got about him was distorted information by design. The very same thing is happening in Nepal. By design- media is hyping up things that are basically a propoganda, not an iota in the intereast of the country or a society whereas Neil (gringo) believes in justifying every action of Maoist as bona fide- see the crux.
And the question of right or wrong in regards to Sadaam will never end-the hate breds hate and consequence is more turmoil in the long run. Sadaam may be gone but some will always try to ape him, good or bad, to further their own agenda by making right all the wrongs- Maoist.
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Gaaaaaah Go Christianity
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Anno (21:21:07) ,
‘noname’ is also a name. Have you heard of Anaam? I know you have heard of it because it starts sending shivers down the spine of terrorists.
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“algerian civil war anyone? ended in 2003, supported by the french, over 100,000 people died).”
I hope no one takes a history class from you. The French OAS ended their involvement in Algeria many years ago. The present on-going disturbance, which did not end in 2003, is driven by the Islamic Brotherhood terrorist group which beheads entire villages for cooperating with the government. They are not entirely unlike your sponsors the Maoist terrorists.
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Neil, go and justify your bullsh*t to someone else…idiot
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Neil don’t justify your (ie Maoists) activities with excerpts from history of which you are oblivious. Illiterate and uneducated individuals high on Ecstacy guided by few power hungry individuals are members of your Militia, yes mark my words your milita. Remember yours is a armed struggle, there will be many more to come to fight you also whether it maybe from within the Nepali Army or from outside.
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“it makes me nervous, I wonder when they will catch me and hang me.”
When the Maoist gang takes power and you speak against them.
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Neil- take your fight for or against Capital punishment in US- not here. You harebrained Gringo- when there is wonton butchery by Maoist who has the balls to talk about Maoist accept capital punishment? And I know you are playing in these sentiment- quiet a affront to people like us.
Before you shot off your mouth- learn to respect Nepal and not be one eyed messiah of Maoist.
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Poor Man, got hanged, the US would gain nothing from the murder of Saddam, it would result in more violence. The US had no business to be involved in Iraq, without the approval of the UN. Their occupation of Iraq is illegal and the killing of Saddam is condemnable.
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I am against capital punishment. It is not a matter of whether an individual deserves to die. It is a matter of whether that is a power you want to grant a state. As states often change into undesirable configurations without warning, granting the power of capital punishment to the state is inviting future execution of political apponents and others deemed inconvienent.
The french have not ended their “involvement” in Algeria. Before 2001 the U.S. actually greatly angered france by recognizing the islamic radicles in Algeria. The U.S. thinking was that the rebels would probably win, and they should be prepared to deal with the future governement. Kinda Ironic.
Even assuming no french “involement” in algeria. The Algerian war of indepedence and the french belief that they somehow had a right to the territory cost 300,000 lives, and layed the groundwork for the recently ended conflict. Yes, it effectively ended in 2003. No, it is not driven by the islamic brotherhood. Good thing I didn’t take a history class from YOU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_civil_war
———————————-
The Algerian Civil War was an armed conflict between the Algerian government and various Islamist rebel groups which began in 1991. It is estimated to have cost between 150,000 and 200,000 lives. The conflict effectively ended with a government victory, following the surrender of the Islamic Salvation Army and the 2002 defeat of the Armed Islamic Group. However, low-level fighting still continues in some areas.
The conflict began in December 1991, when the government cancelled elections after the first round results had shown that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party would win, citing fears that the FIS would end democracy. After the FIS was banned and thousands of its members arrested, Islamist guerrillas rapidly emerged and began an armed campaign against the government and its supporters. They formed themselves into several armed groups, principally the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA), based in the mountains, and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), based in the towns. The guerrillas initially targeted the army and police, but some groups soon started attacking civilians. In 1994, as negotiations between the government and the FIS’s imprisoned leadership reached their height, the GIA declared war on the FIS and its supporters, while the MIA and various smaller groups regrouped, becoming the FIS-loyalist Islamic Salvation Army (AIS).
——————-
NepArmy, I have at no point attempted to justify Maoist human rights abuses. However, you seem to think that the presence of the Maoists justifies torture and rape. Nepal was the worst human rights abuser in asia during the conflict; a fact that you cannot erase by denoucing me and others like me as Maoist supporters.
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Brutal murder of Saddam is a lesson for all future US allies: you will be mercilessly executed once your utility is over. There is no other meaning in it. It was not “capital punishment”, it was murder pure and simple.
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“It is a matter of whether that is a power you want to grant a state.”
Neil, after you wrote the above line, your earlier question whether we want the maoists to be for or against capital punishment becomes irrelevant. They themselves are extra-judicial at the moment and aren’t part of the state. So, let’s cross the bridge when we get there.
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Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our
complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his
‘enemies’, equipped him for atrocities – and then made
sure he wouldn’t squeal
Published: 31 December 2006
We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded
executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in
Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington’s secrets were
safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military
support which the United States – and Britain – gave
to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one
terrible story which our presidents and prime
ministers do not want the world to remember. And now
Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western
support – given to him while he was perpetrating some
of the worst atrocities since the Second World War –
is dead.
Gone is the man who personally received the CIA’s help
in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam
seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the
home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other
cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union’s
influence in Iraq. Saddam’s mukhabarat visited every
home, arrested the occupants and their families, and
butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters;
the communists, their wives and children, were given
special treatment – extreme torture before execution
at Abu Ghraib.
There is growing evidence across the Arab world that
Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American
officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 – both
he and the US administration believed that the Islamic
Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions
across the border – and the Pentagon was instructed to
assist Iraq’s military machine by providing
intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One
frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the
German arms dealer who initiated those first direct
contacts between Washington and Baghdad – at America’s
request.
“Mr Fisk… at the very beginning of the war, in
September of 1980, I was invited to go to the
Pentagon,” he said. “There I was handed the very
latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front
lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There
were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind
Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern
side of the Karun river, the tank revetments –
thousands of them – all the way up the Iranian side of
the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more
than this. And I travelled with these maps from
Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on
Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were
very, very grateful!”
I was with Saddam’s forward commandos at the time,
under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces
aligned their artillery positions far back from the
battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines.
Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the
first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week.
The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to
tell me how he had managed to choose the one river
crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago,
we met again, in Amman and his junior officers called
him “General” – the rank awarded him by Saddam after
that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of
Washington’s intelligence information.
Iran’s official history of the eight-year war with
Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons
against it on 13 January 1981. AP’s correspondent in
Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of
an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. “We started
counting – we walked miles and miles in this fucking
desert, just counting,” he said. “We got to 700 and
got muddled and had to start counting again … The
Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination –
the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies … the
mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs.
That’s why they spat blood.”
At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible
cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US.
Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right.
The lengthy negotiations which led to America’s
complicity in this atrocity remain secret – Donald
Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan’s
point-men at this period – although Saddam undoubtedly
knew every detail. But a largely unreported document,
“United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related
Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on
the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War”,
stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies
had sent government-approved shipments of biological
agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis,
which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli).
That Senate report concluded that: “The United States
provided the Government of Iraq with ‘dual use’
licensed materials which assisted in the development
of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems
programs, including … chemical warfare agent
production facility plant and technical drawings,
chemical warfare filling equipment.”
Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi
use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam
gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona,
a US defence intelligence officer – one of 60 American
officers who were secretly providing members of the
Iraqi general staff with detailed information on
Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage
assessments – to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi
forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He
reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used
chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior
defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter
Lang, later said that the use of gas on the
battlefield by the Iraqis “was not a matter of deep
strategic concern”.
I saw the results, however. On a long military
hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I
found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and
mucus from their lungs – the very carriages stank so
much of gas that I had to open the windows – and their
arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new
bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original
boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases
were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder
that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the
slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes
against Iran.
We still don’t know – and with Saddam’s execution we
will probably never know – the extent of US credits to
Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the
sum of which was spent on the purchase of American
weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By
1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By
1990, just before Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, annual
trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a
year. Pressed by Saddam’s foreign minister, Tariq
Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then
Secretary of State, but the same James Baker who has
just produced a report intended to drag George Bush
from the catastrophe of present- day Iraq – pushed for
new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.
In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert
military assistance to Saddam guaranteed 250m to Iraq
shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad
Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating
an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the
very chemical components sent by the US, was later
hanged. Within a month of Bazoft’s arrest William
Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: “I
doubt if there is any future market of such a scale
anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if
we play our diplomatic hand correctly… A few more
Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would
make it more difficult.”
Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then
Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing
controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this
secret, he wrote, because “it would look very cynical
if, so soon after expressing outrage about the
treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible
approach to arms sales”.
Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS
Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a
missile attack on the American frigate, killing more
than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the
vessel. The US accepted Saddam’s excuse that the ship
was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam
to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.
The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the
Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in
Washington and London must have sighed with relief
that the old man had been silenced for ever.
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There is no law and rules at the moment. SPA(+M) is the law and they make the rules and acts and stamped it in the destroyed (by themselves) parliament easily whatever they feel comfortable to stick in power. That is the end of the story. So talking about human rights etc…etc…is futile in Nepal at the moment.
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Hejo samma Raja lai Fasi de bhanne haru Aaja chai Saddam ko Fansi lai Amanabiya bho bhanchan bhane k garlan….. des ko halat k hola …..yasta le des chala u lan ra hamile tholo bhag khaula …………..
hey bhagaban …..rakshya gara..
jai nepal.
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You are right Jai Nepal…
I can not distinguish between Prachande and Saddam……though one is dead and is roaming like beast….. They both have same shorts of mustache….. they both are buthers of the innocent people….
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