Countdown to Saddam's Execution

[Khalaf]

Will Saddam be executed? I think so.

 

By Alastair Macdonald

 

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - With Saddam Hussein hours from learning whether he will hang, Iraq's government imposed curfews on Sunday and has canceled army leave, fearing the historic trial verdict might trigger fresh sectarian bloodletting.

 

As Baghdad went into lockdown overnight, mortars slammed into the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiya, killing seven people and wounding 20, an Interior Ministry source said.

 

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who called for the ousted president to be executed quickly, said he should get "what he deserves" for killing, torturing or jailing hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims after gunmen from Maliki's Shi'ite Dawa party tried to kill Saddam in the town of Dujail in 1982.

 

"If he is guilty, he deserves the death penalty," Ali Hassan, who testified against Saddam last year, told Reuters in Dujail. "The law must take its course."

 

Saddam's lawyers told Reuters they chatted with him for more than three hours on Saturday, saying he was in high spirits and talked about mounting U.S. military losses and the insurgency.

 

"I will die with honor and with no fear, with pride for my country and my Arab nation but the U.S. occupiers will leave in humiliation and defeat," they quoted Saddam as saying.

 

"They will see rivers of blood for years to come. It will dwarf Vietnam."

 

Chief judge Raouf Abdul Rahman, an ethnic Kurd, was expected to summon the court to order from around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT) and spend several hours delivering a summary of the verdicts and sentences for Saddam and seven others accused of crimes against humanity, though court officials do not rule out a postponement.

 

continue: source

[N.O.R.F]

He obviously did some bad things and people have not forgiven him.

[Captain Xalane]

He shouldn't have been taken alive in the first place.

[Kashafa]

Waraa Saddam,

 

Please don't talk about honour. You were dragged out of a dirt-hole like a fieldmouse. Now, you will die a coward, a murderer, a Ba'thist tyrant. I haven't heard you publicly repent and ask for forgiveness from the Iraqi & Kuwaiti people, therefore I can heartily say : Mac Sonkur calaa shaah

 

Sic Semper Tyrannis(Thus always with tyrants), punk

 

 

P.S. Say hi to Munkar and Nakir for me.

[SOO MAAL]

Saddam's conviction is meaningless

 

Saddam’s conviction has nothing to do with bringing a brutal dictator to justice, because in our world there is countless number of dictators. True Saddam was a bad, a brutal dictator, but so is most if not all Arab and African leaders like Mubarak of Egypt, Qadafi of Libya, Al asad of Syria, saud house in Arabia, Ali salef of Yemen, Mee Zenawi of Ethiopia, Musharraf of Pakistan etc

 

Saddam's conviction is just another indication that America is the sole super power in our world and nothing to do with justice

 

Anyways, its fact that every evil and tyrant dictator will have disgraceful conclusion

 

American sources admitted that more 600,000 have died because this conflict since the war started 2003. Saddam regime ruled Iraq close to 40 years and Iraq never seen this scale of violence

 

Anyways, I don't believe americans will bring freedom or good governance to Iraqis, I am sure saddam was better for them

 

 

 

Study estimates 600,000 Iraqis dead by violence

Updated 10/11/2006 1:20 PM ET

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

More than 600,000 Iraqis have died by violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to a study released Wednesday by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The figure is based on surveys of households throughout most of the country. It vastly exceeds estimates cited by the Iraqi government, the United Nations, aid and anti-war groups, and President Bush.

 

The new estimate was immediately challenged by the Pentagon. Lt. Col. Mark Bellesteros, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Iraqi government "would be in a better position ... to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq."

 

Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council said "many experts" found that a 2004 study by the same group "wildly inflated the findings." That study said the war had caused 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

 

"This study appears to be equally flawed," he said. The new study said the deaths have resulted from coalition military activity, crime and religious violence.

 

ON DEADLINE: Read the report

 

At a White House press conference this morning, President Bush said "a lot of innocent people have lost their lives" in Iraq, but that "600,000 is not credible." He said he did not know, however, what a more accurate number would be.

 

The Iraqi government dismissed the Johns Hopkins estimate. The toll in the report "exceeds the reality in an unreasonable way" and the report "gives inflated numbers in a way that violates all rules of research and the precision required of research institutions," Iraq spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

 

"These numbers are far from the truth," al-Dabbagh said.

 

The Iraqi government has never given an official number of people killed since the U.S. invasion.

 

Iraq's Health Ministry has estimated 50,000 violent deaths since the war began, through June. Last December, President Bush put the figure at 30,000. The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, estimated the death toll at 60,000.

 

Overall, the analysis estimates that 2.5% of the Iraqi population has died as a result of the conflict.

 

The research relied on random sampling of 1,800 Iraqi households by researchers from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the School of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Based on deaths suffered by those households, analysts calculated an average of about 600 deaths a day since the invasion.

 

"I think it's perfectly plausible," said the study's lead author, Gilbert Burnham, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins.

 

Then-British foreign secretary Jack Straw was among those who criticized the earlier study.

 

This time the researchers doubled the size of their random survey. In 92% of the homes in which residents reported deaths, families had death certificates, they said.

 

Beyond violent deaths, the study said about 53,000 deaths from other causes, such as accident and illness, were attributable to the war because of its effect on health care.

 

Gunfire was the leading cause of violent death; car bomb fatalities are rising, the study said.

 

James Fearon, a Stanford University political scientist and Iraq expert, said, "One thing (the study may) certainly do is confirm the view that there is a very, very serious civil war going in Iraq."

[Khalaf]

^^^Agree w/ u bro, and this too: The Mile of Death

 

 

this annoucement is perfect timing for the mid term elections. maybe this is good for saddam redemption of his sins.