Officially, Saddam Goes At 10 p.m. EST

[Annie]

Official: Saddam to Be Executed Tonight

Dec 29, 7:11 PM (ET)
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

(AP) In this photo released by the Iraqi Special Tribunal, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is seen as...
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The official witnesses to Saddam Hussein's impending execution gathered Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities.

With U.S. forces on high alert for a surge in violence, the Iraqi government readied all the necessary documents, including a "red card" - an execution order introduced during Saddam's dictatorship. As the hour of his death approached, Saddam received two of his half brothers in his cell on Thursday and was said to have given them his personal belongings and a copy of his will.

Najeeb al-Nueimi, a member of Saddam's legal team in Doha, Qatar, said he too requested a final meeting with the deposed Iraqi leader. "His daughter in Amman was crying, she said 'Take me with you,'" al-Nueimi said late Friday. But he said their request was rejected.

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. Also to be hanged at that time were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

(AP) Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, speaks in Baghdad on Iraq's Army Day Monday Jan.7, 1997. The...
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The time was agreed upon during a meeting Friday between U.S. and Iraqi officials, said the adviser, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

http://story.news.ask.com//article/20061230/D8MAQTP80.html

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

It's 10:10pm Eastern time and FOX News says an Arab news source is reporting that Saddam is dead.

 

[Emmett]

What a shame huh!

 

[maineman]

I only hope his death does not spawn a rash of violence against Americans

 

[Little-Acorn]

I only hope his death does not spawn a rash of violence against Americans

Bring it on.

(Like there hasn't been violence against Americans, especially in Iraq, BEFORE Saddam assumed desert temperature?)

 

[red states rule]

The server at Proflowers.com is now overloading as antiwar, Bush hating, terrorist appeasing libs place their orders to send to Saddam's family

 

[red states rule]

CNN Worries Around the Clock: 'Will Saddam Suffer in Death?'
Posted by Tim Graham on December 29, 2006 - 15:32.
MRC’s Michelle Humphrey passed along an example of CNN already feeling the pain of Saddam Hussein. On Thursday night’s "Anderson Cooper 360" – re-aired Friday in the 9 AM hour – CNN reporter Randi Kaye did a whole story suggesting the idea that hanging Saddam was a cruel and outdated mode of execution. This is the same program that recently focused on the coldly efficient killers of American troops without focusing any sympathy on their suffering. Instead, they focused on how insurgents supposedly tried not to slaughter innocents as they shot at American troops.

Kaye began: "This is what is Iraq's government calls the death chamber. Soon, Saddam Hussein will be here to meet the same fate as these men. This is what his final moments will look like. But we wanted to know what hanging will feel like. Will Saddam suffer in death?"

Kaye’s expert witness was forensic specialist Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, who theorized that there won’t be conscious suffering: "My suspicion is that there is no consciousness when a person is hung."

Kaye related that some countries and states still use hanging: "Hanging has been used for centuries, dating back 2,500 years to the Persian Empire. Today, it is still used in many Middle Eastern countries. In the United States, New Hampshire and the state of Washington still allow prisoners to be hanged...Serial child killer Westley Dodd was executed by hanging in Washington back in 1993. He told CNN he wanted to hang because that's how he killed one of his victims. The last hanging in the U.S. came three years after Dodd, in 1996, when convicted murderer Bill Bailey was hanged in Delaware. The outdoor gallows used in that execution were later torn down."

CNN then emphasized that Saddam won’t die immediately, the poor man: "At three minutes, the brain will be dead from insufficient oxygen." She complained to Kobilinsky: "With such a tight noose, three minutes seems like a very long time to actually cut off somebody's air."

Kobilinsky: "Well, it's a matter of the brain going into a -- a certain mode, where it tries to conserve energy and use whatever oxygen is available as efficiently as possible."

Kaye, reading dramatically: "When the brain runs out of oxygen, the person will be declared dead, even though the heart may beat for another 10 minutes."

On Thursday night, Anderson Cooper popped a question to Kaye that further underlined the grotesque:

Cooper: "This may be a dumb question. Why a hood? They often put a hood over people?"

Kaye: "Well, according to Dr. Kobilinsky, who we talked with today, who you just saw in our story, he said, under that hood, there would certainly be a grimace. The -- the -- the face would actually contract. The muscles would contract, which is an automatic reflex from the noose and not being able to breathe. He said that there are -- are also reports of hemorrhaging or bleeding into the white parts of the eyes. But he set us straight on that today. He said that doesn't happen, because, actually, the arteries and the veins, they are shut down. They are closed down right here, so the blood isn't actually supplying any pressure to the brain, or even into the eyes. So, you wouldn't actually see any of that."

Cooper replied: "So, it seems to be more for people who are witnessing it, less than..."

Kaye: "He thinks it's -- right. He thinks it's actually either just part of the tradition or just to disguise what is, I'm sure, a very horrible, very disturbing face under that hood."

By the way, the rotating orange circle in the corner of the CNN screen Thursday night had "HANGING HUSSEIN" on one side, and on the other, "WILL IRAQ ERUPT?"

http://newsbusters.org/node/9869

 

[red states rule]

CNN.com Home Page Photo Gives Saddam the 'Deceased Statesman' Look
Posted by Tom Blumer on December 29, 2006 - 23:10.

 

[Emmett]

It has just been announced that the other two dudes were not hanged afterall. Here is my conspiracy theory! They hanged a double, he had a few of them you know. Thee were NO American witnesses! They used a hood! The other two (including his half brother) have recieved a stay indefitnitly.


Ut - Oh!!!!!!!

 

[Semper Fi]

The death of a tyrant brings a smile to my heart. The world is a better place without him.

 

[Avatar4321]

The world is better off and it is a really sad statement that any human being should be better off dead then a life.

He had every opportunity to change his ways. I dont think he is going to have a very pleasant meeting with his maker, but atleast now Iraq can heal.

 

[UnAmericanYOU]

Now, that was swift justice. Apply the death penalty like THAT, and it would be a deterrent for other murderous dictators, but as the old saying goes, Sadaam Hussien sure is going to stop after this!

It was kind of funny that he and his lawyers tried to appeal to the United Nations, they were useless even for him. The Iraq government must not trust the MSM much, these details dribbled out slooooowly, even to FauxNews.

There is and was this theory that executing Sadaam would only make the situation worse, that it would escalate "tensions" between the US and jihadists. Nah, but executing Sadaam on December 31...the symbolism of that wasn't lost on me! That last letter (rant) Sadaam wrote:

'The scum disappears like froth cast out; while that which is for the good of mankind remains on the earth'

Scum disappeared.

 

[red states rule]

The liberal media never fails to disappoint me............


'Today': Saddam Execution 'Vindictive, Primitive, Revenge, Suspect, Rush to Judgment'
Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 30, 2006 - 07:43.
This morning's "Today" show characterized the execution of Saddam Hussein in generally negative terms. According to NBC reporter Richard Engel, reporting from Baghdad:

"The Iraqi government is now going to great lengths to say that this execution was carried out with the utmost respect for human rights; that it was a very organized, precise event. However, interviews that we've conducted with witnesses, judges and other people who attended and followed all the proceedings say it was much more emotional and chaotic."

Continued Engel: "The execution was primitive and vindictive. "

Engel stated that the site of the execution was one of Saddam's most notorious intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, where Shia radicals were executed, Shia from the same party now leading the Iraqi government.

As video of Prime Minister Maliki flashed on the screen, Engel concluded: "today was their revenge."

View video of Engel here.

Host Lester Holt then interviewed NBC consultant Rick Francona, a retired Lt. Col. Francona began by unwittingly refuting Engel's claim that the execution was "primitive," noting that the gallows were newly-constructed in the western "drop" style, causing instantaneous death, in contrast with the traditional "hoist" method employed in the Middle East causing death by slower asphyxiation.

But Francona then claimed that the execution would be viewed as "vindictive" and that "the timing is now suspect." He pointed out that others had been sentenced to death with Saddam but that he had been the only one executed yesterday, prior to the Muslim holiday. Asked Francona: "So what was the rush to judgment?"

He actually went on to answer his own question: "I think everybody was concerned that this tension was building. It was getting worse ever since the appeal was denied. So they wanted to get this over with."

View video of Francona here.

Makes sense. And that being so, in what sense was the timing "suspect" and "a rush to judgment"?

http://newsbusters.org/node/9877

 

[red states rule]

Why do libs always want to curl up and cuddle with America's enemies?

Why do they always want to feel sorry for murderous bastatds like Saddam?

This from the publisher of the daily DNC talking points




The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein

The important question was never really about whether Saddam Hussein was guilty of crimes against humanity. The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners.

What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future. A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness. It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions.

It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.

What might have been a watershed now seems another lost opportunity. After nearly four years of war and thousands of American and Iraqi deaths, it is ever harder to be sure whether anything fundamental has changed for the better in Iraq.

This week began with a story of British and Iraqi soldiers storming a police station that hid a secret dungeon in Basra. More than 100 men, many of them viciously tortured, were rescued from almost certain execution. It might have been a story from the final days of Baathist rule in March 2003, when British and American troops entered Basra believing they were liberating the subjugated Shiite south. But it was December 2006, and the wretched men being liberated were prisoners of the new Iraqi Shiite authorities.

Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/opinion/29fri1.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 

[tim_duncan2000]

I wish I could say I was surprised.