Saddam to hang

[Forumbore]

There wouldn't have been more death on the streets than there is now, our boys wouldn't be fighting and dying for no reason and the UN wouldn't have been made to look completely impotent when the US said pass a resolutions or we'll ignore you. We wouldn't have wasted millions of pounds of tax payers money on a war that was pointless and nothing to do with us and we wouldn't have broken international law by invading a country for no reason other than George wanted us to.

All in all yes I belive we should have left him in power....

He has a point

[Bagpuss]

Where do you draw the line with mass-murdering dictators then? Hitler? Milosevic? Would you have ignored them too?

They didn't ignore him they supported him with weapons and pats on the back.Several years later it was deemed politically expedient to remove him , ooh terror, panic, terror. There is no moral justification in this. Unfortunately it's worked out worse and more bloody than they could possibly have imagined.

[Troll]

PM 'opposes' Saddam death penalty

Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he is opposed to the death penalty, but it was for the Iraqis to decide the fate of former president Saddam Hussein.

"We're against the death penalty, whether it is Saddam or anybody else," he told reporters, but said there were "other and bigger issues" in Iraq.

An Iraqi court sentenced Saddam Hussein to death by hanging after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Amnesty International has condemned the trial as flawed and unfair.

Mr Blair said Saddam's trial had given a "clear reminder of the barbaric regime" he had overseen.

Oh Dear

[hattra]

you guys seem to be forgetting how this all started out.

UK and France created Iraq, ignoring natural tribal boundaries, then then carved off Kuwait so we coulds access oil if any trouble arose.
UK and US provided sadam arms to overthrow a previous reigieme. and then for many years ignored what was going on, untill Oil became an issue.

Actually Iraq was based on the Ottoman Empire's Province of Mesopotamia (a Caliphate, I think) , and the British "liberated" it from the Turks during the First World War (look up the Siege of Kut, Townsend's Regatta etc etc). We then "administered" Mesopotamia under a League of Nations mandate (which included Palestine, the cis-Jordan and the trans-Jordan (where my father was born) and a large part of the Saudi peninsula (remember Lawrence). We set up the various kingdoms in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Emirates - and yes we did fudge things to reward various tribal leaders who had helped us with more than they really should have got, in a belated attempt to remedy the fact that we broke most of the promises that had been made to them during the War. The only French area of influence was the Lebanon, and the USA has never had a toehold in the Middle East (though the CIA were crawling all over Iraq in the Seventies.

We finally withdrew in 1948 (voluntarily, as it happens) in the full knowledge that Iraq had huge reserves of oil (as did Persia, which was friendly to the UK). We continued to run the Iraqi oil industry through until c. 1975, though they did chuck us out & attempt to replace us with the Russians several times, then changed their minds and asked us back when it turned out that the Russians weren't as good as they thought they were.

And before we keep going on about how we armed Hussain, just remember that when he came to power ALL the Iraqi armed forces equipment was Soviet built, and guess what, when we invaded Iraq, it was STILL all Soviet manufactured, apart from some French missiles and aircraft (the ones that weren't still in Iranian hands, that is).

[hattra]

That's alright then!

There you are you see, we are making a difference.

I think you miss the point - its shocking now, but I bet you never gave it a moments thought when Hussain was doing it, and it was just as shocking then

[lukemg]

Wake up people, what a lot of b*llocks is in this thread. If we are talking regime change (which we weren't at the start) then that is half the countries on earth, starting with Africa, finishing with South America, N.Korea, Saudi Arabia (known terrorist sponsors) and China !! That is no justification at all.
Knee-jerk 9/11 reaction by the USA - need to be seen to do something to retaliate AND it's a message to the rest of the planet that they could be looking at the same (anyone seen Libya cacking it and playing nice now ?). Now, the main reason to stay is that chaos will interrupt the oil supply, if that wasn't there, they would be long gone and letting them fight over the sand and shanty towns till half of them are dead.
GB are there to keep step with USA, we are reliant financially and need to be in their good books. End of story.
It will end in a sh!t storm and everyone knows it. People sat in their cosy middle class democratic stable countries have no idea how the rest of the world works, it's every man for himself and the winner takes all the power and riches.
Civil war, emergence of military led government dictatorship, some progress towards stability - 10-15 years I reckon (oil production limited through all this time)
HTH

[stackpole]

"We're against the death penalty, whether it is Saddam or anybody else," Blair told reporters, but said there were "other and bigger issues" in Iraq.

What are these "bigger issues" that make it paramount that Saddam is executed? So much for Tony Blair's principles!