[Beef]

Here is an excerpt from an independent journalist who is currently in Iraq about how prison life was like for the Iraqi people while Saddam was in charge. And some believe that it was wrong to remove Saddam from power:

The jail in Fallujah is the only functioning jail I have ever visited. I did, however, go inside one of Saddam Hussein’s former jails in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The famous “Red Building” in the city of Suleimaniya is a horror show. It’s a museum of sorts now, in the way Auschwitz is a museum. Perhaps monument or memorial are better descriptions.


Before it was liberated by the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, resistance fighters and their family members were arrested, interrogated, and sadistically tortured inside its walls. A free-standing rape room with large windows was built just outside. Bloody women’s underwear was found on the floor after the Baath regime agents were ousted. Inside some of the cells are messages carved by children into the walls. “I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution.” “Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed by the Baath. I will not see you again.”


10,725 people were murdered in the Red Building alone by the previous government of Iraq. All died during torture. Formal execution actually took place in Abu Ghraib.


I wrote about and photographed this hideous place on my first trip to the country, and Martin Kunert left the following note in my comments section:

“Two years ago, I produced the documentary film Voices of Iraq[Image: http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=micha...&l=ur2&o=1], where we sent 150 DV cameras across Iraq and allowed Iraqis to film their own lives. The cameras got into the prison you visited and others. I viewed several hours of video and testimony detailing the horrors of Saddam's torture. One woman recalled tearfully how her newborn baby was fed to dogs in front of her eyes. Another video shows floors stained with blood and fat that liquefied off torture victims and poured onto the tiles below them. What transpired in those chambers is beyond belief. It takes a strong stomach to go through the tours you're experiencing.”


An Iraqi interpreter I met in Baghdad who calls himself Hammer spent time in Abu Ghraib prison while Saddam was in charge.


“On the bus to the jail I didn’t have handcuffs,” he said. “I asked why. The guard said Look behind you. The first guy behind me got a 600 year sentence. The next guy got six hanging sentences. The third guy was sentenced to be thrown blindfolded out of a second story window. Twice. Another guy f*cked his mother and sisters three times. He was freed on Saddam’s birthday. Another guy had his hand cut off.”

http://www.michaeltotten.com/

[*Central_Cheer_Chick]

:Sad04:

[thecavemaster]

I have seldom heard that it was "wrong" to remove Sadaam from power. However, I have heard that it was wrong to remove him from power under the pretext that he somehow helped mastermind or fund the 9/11 attacks or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "guaranteed" by intelligence. Sadaam was a brutal dictator who maintained law and order and civil obedience as dictators do. The world has many of just such types. Why do we not invade them?

[BFritz]

I have seldom heard that it was "wrong" to remove Sadaam from power. However, I have heard that it was wrong to remove him from power under the pretext that he somehow helped mastermind or fund the 9/11 attacks or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "guaranteed" by intelligence. Sadaam was a brutal dictator who maintained law and order and civil obedience as dictators do. The world has many of just such types. Why do we not invade them?

We can't just invade everyone. We needed to take him out before he grew a pair and actually started lobbing WMD at us. Sadaam didn't have WMD, but bluffed like he did, and it only would have been a matter of time before he got some.

[thecavemaster]

We can't just invade everyone. We needed to take him out before he grew a pair and actually started lobbing WMD at us. Sadaam didn't have WMD, but bluffed like he did, and it only would have been a matter of time before he got some.

Do you know what Guessers are? People of privilege, wealth and power, who play with the world, with its peoples like so many pawns on a chess board. Sadaam would "lob" WMD's at the USA, who could then respond with various and sundry nuclear strikes which would completely eradicate his nation from the map? Iraq is/was a nation of 25 million people and an aging, depleted military establishment. They didn't have bullets in their holster, and we act like they were armed like the Starship Gallactica in some end of the world Sci-FI movie.

[vundy33]

They have more weopons than you think.

[thecavemaster]

They have more weopons than you think.

So, are you suggesting that Iraq, 25 million people, miniscule defense spending compared to USA, no capacity to defend a WMD attack from USA, would initiate a "fight to the death" with America? Sadaam wanted to be King of the Middle East, which is hard to do in the radioactive heat of a nuclear retaliatory strike. In the end, Sadaam died anyway... but his ego was the biggest WMD in his arsenal.

[BFritz]

So, are you suggesting that Iraq, 25 million people, miniscule defense spending compared to USA, no capacity to defend a WMD attack from USA, would initiate a "fight to the death" with America? Sadaam wanted to be King of the Middle East, which is hard to do in the radioactive heat of a nuclear retaliatory strike. In the end, Sadaam died anyway... but his ego was the biggest WMD in his arsenal.

Who's to say that he wouldn't have attacked the rest of the Middle East, gotten power then, and found someone who knew how to make WMD in one of the countries he took over (I believe Iran had a very good chance, if they haven't already)?

[vundy33]

So, are you suggesting that Iraq, 25 million people, miniscule defense spending compared to USA, no capacity to defend a WMD attack from USA, would initiate a "fight to the death" with America? Sadaam wanted to be King of the Middle East, which is hard to do in the radioactive heat of a nuclear retaliatory strike. In the end, Sadaam died anyway... but his ego was the biggest WMD in his arsenal.

No, Of course not. Saddam was that crazy though. I think if maybe he would've had more resources and still had a little power before he got caught then he would initiate an attack like that before getting caught. That's how he was, he could've cared less about the people of Iraq.

[thecavemaster]

No, Of course not. Saddam was that crazy though. I think if maybe he would've had more resources and still had a little power before he got caught then he would initiate an attack like that before getting caught. That's how he was, he could've cared less about the people of Iraq.

However, he did not have resources... nor the respect of other Arab leaders. He had become a paper tiger for many reasons... the biggest one the UN sanctions. One negative result of our attack was to make of him somewhat a sympathetic figure in some corners of the MIddle East. I agree with his callous attitude... but think his ego and basic self-preservation instinct would have held him in check, except for hot air.