2000 AD Online Forum

Didn't he do well!

as you can cleary see in this picture. he was found by an off duty serviceman who was buying toys for his children.

the former dictator and leader of Iraq was posing as santa.

Saddam attributed his incredible ability to escape detection by the yanks to his secret escape to New Zealand three years previously, where he disguised his Evil Dictatorous Ways by posing as a plucky film director.

paint him blue and hecould be poppa smurf.


smurfalicious!


val

Hmm...

Strangely, he looks exactly like my next door neighbour.

They should let him sit in a warmer room, though - the fellow's gone blue!

It's bloody Santa I'm telling you...

Saddamta: Little boy...

Boy: Whuh?

Saddamta: Wake up, little boy. I have something to show you.

Boy: Santa? Is that you?

Saddamta: Yes, western scum-child. Merry Christmas!

[Little boy sits up and puts the light on just in time to witness two of Saddamta's heavily mustachioed helpers garotting his parents]

HO HO HO

"Well Mr President, the bad news is the DNA test confirm it's not Saddam but the good news is we can have holidays in Cuba again."

He was found and arrested by Wolverine apparently.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the news entirely.

ADE

SADDAM FOUND IN NORTHAMPTON SHOCK!

The evil overlord, Saddam Husein was captured yesterday morning by a local milkman.
The nasty man had this to day:

"Please let me go, I've got to finish Promethea!"

Looks like the crypto teams are going to be busy for a long time then....

Meanwhile Slobodan Milosevic is simultaneously being tried for war-crimes and running for president. Serbia is weird.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3319387.stm

the world is wierd my friend. was i the only one who felt vaguely sorry for the hagard old evil despot?


yes? oh well i'll get my coat.

Am I the only one who thinks Slobby was tried in Holland because he couldn't involve the western/CIA sevices in his defence? Where as old Saddam has some nice info on where he got his WMD, who okayed his genocide etc and who backed him over the last 20 years as a bulwark against Islam. Hence tried in-country where these questions will not be asked?

no wonder Toni and Dode show want him deed asap...

I've read quite a few suggestions that Saddam Hussein may not get to trial - the "Iraqi Jack Ruby" hypothesis.

I'm hoping for a full, fair & open trial, held in Iraq with international support & assistance. No-one should be protected - whether it's the former & current US administration, French prime ministers or IGC members - and the bastard should be given a fair hearing.

I doubt we'll get it, though. Too many people have too many things to hide, and an open account of Saddam Hussein's reign isn't going to be high on their agenda.

And now we have Jack Straw warning us that Saddam is not capaable of telling the truth... now why would he be trying to get us all to believe that?

Well he lied about those WMD, he said he had them and could use em, blow me, 250 days later nuffink,
pants on fire I say

There will not be any form of international justice practised here.  The occuping force, the US, has invoked the Geneva Convention on prisoner's rights, but is not a signatory to the International Court and has refused to allow the UN any influence.  Most likely outcome is a fair-ish and open trial in Iraq (Saddam Hussein being tried, ironically enough, by judges he himself appointed), followed by a public hanging or exection by firing squad under Saddam's own laws.

The US & the UK should succeed in keeping all questions about who supported the original Ba'athist coup and armed it for 20 years, as the trial will focus on only the murderous aspects of the Ba'athist regime.

So to summarise: fair-ish trial, guaranteed death.  I don't support it, but it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

"Most likely outcome is a fair-ish and open trial in Iraq (Saddam Hussein being tried, ironically enough, by judges he himself appointed), followed by a public hanging or exection by firing squad under Saddam's own laws."

Not sure about this, but I was under the impression that the legal system in Iraq wasn't in any state to conduct even a reasonably fair trial.

Saddam Hussein's capture *should* be a good thing for Iraq, but given the record of the US administration during the war so far, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they fucked this up. Fingers crossed that they don't.

I still worry that this is going to be a sideshow & that his capture is going to have little effect on the ongoing guerilla actions. There may be elements who were fighting for him (though pretty obviously not directed by him) who are going to be weakened by this, but the nationalists and the foreign fighters may well be given a boost by his capture. The worst-case scenario would be to have the more militant groups among the Shi'ite population enter the fray, free from the fear of Saddam's return.

More of Wagner's eerie predictions, eh?

"Prominent foreign terrorist-type meets his end in preordained western show trial"

.. and some guy in the US agrees with you...

Let's all grow Saddam style beards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so do we think it should be a world trial or one for the Iraqi people to decide? ( not that we or thay will get any say in the matter, ys dubya ys sir anything you say sir)

"ah said president buuush sends his regaaards"

wanker.

But how impressive of Saddam to learn English (which he didn't speak previously IIRC) while he was down the hole!  Or even better how clever of the Americans to use the one US Army private with that sort of command of Arabic to lead the arrest team!!

...Dudley

Dudley puts it well - couldn`t happen to a nicer guy.  As well as his various crimes, he could be tried for:
 - being anti-American and in posession of oil
 - being as bad as the governments of China, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Burma but much easier to get at
  - being something effective to do after Afghanistan
  - being easier to find than Osama bin Laden
...........and so on.  NOw we are going to hear a lot about how awful he was, how many people he tortured etc.  If he had done what the US wanted him to as far as inspections go, they would have been happy for him to still be torturing them.
  ho hum,

Floyd

Yeah, I get all of that side of it, protested fairly vocally against the war, am going to change my vote because of it, etc.  But surely it's important for opponents to the war to try to hold both thoughts in their heads at the same time, to whit:
1) Saddam is an evil, torturing megabastard who was far worse than he needed to be simply because he's an evil, torturing megabastard
2) That doesn't mean our Prime Minister had the right to rip up international treaties and obligations, undermine the UN, lie, lie, and lie again, break human rights legislation and fan the flames of anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world that were set alight by British actions more than 90 years ago...draws breath, sense I'm losing audience

...Dudley

Yeah you might lose your audience....

Thing is that neither side of the international community comes out of this with their innocence showing.

USA, UK, Australia et al, have all been duplicitous regarding Saddam.  They have turned a blind eye to his evil and his torture chambers as long as he was on their side.  As soon as he became a percieved threat to their safety and oil, the gloves came off.  I think the US handling of the peace has been particularly suspect.  No contracts for non coalition countries???  Using the oil revenues to fund the war effort???  All against international war laws....

However, Germany, France et al can hardly come out of it wearing angels wings.  The French in particular, were protecting their own business interests in Iraq (dont believe for a second that theres some altruistic motive behind this), Chiraq has gone out of his way to butter up Saddam and keep money in the State propping up his regime.  The same can probably be said for Russia as well, both of whom have a vote on the security council, making the law against Iraq unlikely to be ratified there.

Personally, the hyporacy thats been shown by all members of the western international community has been awful.  The Arab nations themselves can hardly hold themselves up as paragon either, many of them supporting certian terrorist activities or funding extreme fundamentalist Muslim sects to distract from their own internal strife (....stand up Saudi Arabia....), many of whom are no less dictators than Saddam.....

One thing for certain is that the international community is fractured and split, its going to take some huge diplomatic efforts to heal a lot of these wounds.

Yer "Rambling on too much" Slips


 

Looks like the Americans don't want Saddam to face an international trial. They want him to facea nice homebrewed kangaroo court where the chances of his coming out not guilty are lessend dramatically. Bush did go on the record yesterday to say that he wanted Saddam dead.

Anyway, if Saddam was to face international justice, he could call people that personally sold him weapons during his rise to power, people like Donald Rumsfled and Jacques Chirac, both of whom are seen in films, meeting  and shaking the ex-tyrants hand with big shit eating grins on their faces. Could be slighlty embarassing.

Anyway, at least Bush Snr has a nice Christmas present now.

'When the heat was on he ran and hid in a hold, the coward' or something close - President Bush.

Well, he would just be following the example of his old FRIEND Dick Cheney, who hid inside a moutain bunker for about a month after September 11th.  Which one had more to fear, and so was most justified in hiding?  Saddam - country conquered, enemy troops crawling all over the place?  Or Cheney - member of the most powerful government on Earth?

is the death penalty allowed by international law?

i remember when they filmed...shit what was his name, some dictator of oppressed eastern block country megabastard & his wife. megabastards the two of them, & they showed you them being unceremoniously shot. It was horrible viewing. But what should you do with megabastards? does their existance threaten the world, are they better just quietly dead? on a cognitive level i think its wrong, 2 wrongs don't make a right, no-one has the right to take life etc, anyone standing up for global law & order MUST take the moral high ground.

...but then if any megabastard hurt my family i'd kill the fecker.

That'd be Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife, ex-Romanian despots, who were particularly repugnant characters (many Romanians actually thought they wree vampires, and you can believe that if you look at em)

I vant fresh bluuuuhd...

I always liked they way that Count Von Ceaucescu wife, who had some minor science qualifications, insisted that her name was on all scientific papers published in Romania and she was a co-recipitant of any awards etc...

I'm pretty sure a trial under international law would exclude the possibility of a death sentence, which is presumably partly why the US is so keen for him to be tried under Iraqi law...

Ah, but did she award herself a huge medal for eating babies?

There's no prohibition of the death penalty in international law.

The only time it's mentioned is in human rights documents where there is a basic right against "arbitrary execution."

That means you get a trial first.

These days, practically all our international law is post-1947, when the UN Covenant was signed, but the closest thing to an international criminal court we've seen (pre-Milosevic) were the Nuremburg trials in '46.
The death penalty was used at Nuremburg.

It is entirely possible the same model can be adopted for international trials today.

- Trout LLB (Hons International Law)

undermine the UN,

dont usually jump into pollitical threads but just thought I'd point out U cant undermine the UN as they screw em selves up enough...totally pointless and spineless world organization, look how they handled the Balkans did nothing but round up civs for massacre by old evil Slobby...

Fark I hate pollitics, why can't we all just get along?

CU Krestel

did nothing but round up civs for massacre by old evil Slobby...

'Fraid I'm gonna have to take issue with you on that one.  The incident you're referring to was the responsibility of the Dutch Army (under the flag of the UN but not following UN orders).  The report into Srebrenica lead to the mass resignation of the entire Dutch cabinet.

The UN didn't step into the warzone and start firing, but there are a lot of reasons for that.  If a soldier acting for the UN kills a single person who is firing at them, then the community will usually understand.  Getting into a proper battle with soldiers and killing lots of them in the name of the UN (remembering that the UN doesn't even have an army of its own) means you'd create huge resentment and the UN would be seen as partisan - the one thing it has NOT to be.

In Cyprus, the UN operation I've managed to see most closely, the UN has done a fantastic job of pissing off both Greeks & Turks by refusing to take sides, but they've also fed and clothed the refugeee populations, created work, and helped along all the fledgling intercommunity organisations.  In Yugoslavia the UN's presence has proved essential in maintaining a peace between 6 groups all of which contain bloodthirsty megabastards (in utero) ravening to kill people from the other groups.  The US/UK-led offensive into Kosovo has proved to be one of the most destablising events that took place in the area.

...Dudley

>In Cyprus, the UN operation I've managed to see most closely, the UN has done a fantastic job of pissing off both Greeks & Turks by refusing to take sides

But its only the Turks that are still dug in on 40 minutes notice to move.

The Greeks on the other hand leave the line to the UN and generally dont do a great deal.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.

this is the reason I stay off these threads, my info's always shit or wrong, though I did get this info off a Doco that was very pro-American and probably a bit biased(which unfortunatly most media is), the image of Blue Helmets standing back passivly while artillery bombed the crap out of a refugee camp got my goat up, it was a very graphic doco and living in Oz we generally dont see women and children with half their heads missing getting moved about on corrugated iron for stretchers, by far the worst thing I've seen in years and really made me think about how lucky I am to live in Australia...

still cant see why we all just cant get along.....

CU Krestel

indeed kesrel. why can't we get along? i guess its something to to with entrenched hatred, history, the struggle for survival/ or 'perceived survival' & poverty ( which also comes under the struggle for survival category). I guess when everyone has a warm safe place to sleep & food in belly & freedom to work/create/love/produce sprogs, then people might get over whats gone before & get along, & news headlines would be more, "Government re-arranges filing systems at westminster again & laurence bowellen-bowen changes wallpaper!"

Saddam Sings


La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.