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| 5/20 |
| 2006/11/6-7 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:45178 Activity:low |
11/6 On the timing of the Saddam verdict. Hmm ... what to think?
"The idea's preposterous. This is one of these tinfoil hat sort of
things." -WH press sec Snow
- http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1781719.htm
"Only the naive believe it's a coincidence."
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1940534,00.html
\_ What to think? Think for yourself.
\_ Its all part of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, you know the
one that is run by the Bush BrownShirts and is responsible
for the "hundreds" of warcrimes against dissidents across
the country. The Cabal will do anything to keep itself in
power. We are just cattle to them. They are preping us for
colonization. Trust No One. -fmulder
\- i really do think the Cockroach Republicans are only limited
by imagination and are not at all ethics. now if some "crypto-
anarchist" would get a job at diebold and put in a virus to
cause mass failure on election day, instead of cracking DMA
technology, that would be interesting. you have to wonder
what the aftermath would look like if there simply was no
result to a large fraction of the elections in the country.
[i think this is a really tricky area to come up with remedies.
it's one when when basically the election is solid with a few
one off problems, but mass problems would be unprecidented].
\_ yes all corruption is republican. democrats are all squeaky
clean and golden. you are brilliant. your solution to your
false sense of republican-only corruption is voter machine
anarchy. great. all that will happen is setting a new date
and doing them on paper followed by lawsuits about how the
ballot format disenfranchised stupid people.
\- i didnt say the democrats were clean. i did say the new
breed of cockroach republicans have charted new terrain
in corruption and sleaze. sure it's possible some Dems
have it in them, but until they do it, it's a thought
crime. here i include things like inter-census
\_ $90k in your fridge isn't a thought crime. and
he's still in office and has his committe position
too, btw.
gerrymandering, signing statements, something like the
\_ gerrymandering is a cooperative two party effort.
cheney energy tast force is vastly more secretive than
the hillary health care one. i thought Billhary had plenty
\_ secrets are not corruption nor a sign of it in and
of themselves.
of sleazy with filegate and travelgate and such or
rostenkowsky stealing postage stamps but delay, brownie,
are all taking it to a new level. this is a far cry from
\_ not really. same old, same old. i see no real
difference. they just have different sub-
specialties of corruption and an equal share of
the generic stuff.
the part of people like warren rudman, for example ... or
even alan simpson or o hatch. at least mccain is
apologetic over the keating five episode.
\_ mccain is a scum bag. i dont want his apology.
i want his head on a pike with all the rest of
the corrupt scum bags in DC. his apology has
no value. apologise for a joke gone bad? sure.
apologise for criminal activity? sorry, pal, try
prison instead.
\_ So McCain gets the death sentence for bribery
but Cheney gets a pass for colluding to offer
no-competition contracts to Halliburton? If it's
death for the goose, it's at least prison for the
gander.
\_ Pike em all but I'd settle for prison. And
I do mean *all* regardless of party. The
Congress would be mighty close to empty if
we really took corruption seriously.
\_ Agreed. --erikred
\- if you think mccain and cheney are
comparable, i dont think we can
really have a conversation [speaking
personally]. mccain has done some
fucked up things [agan keating 5],
but he's also done some thing waaaaay
beyond almost all others and they are
things you cant make up or posture.
i mean not only was he tortured but
was super connected and could have
gotten himself out of it. he adopted
child from bangladesh ... that probably
wasnt motived by it being good press,
his son is in the marines etc.
\_ So do you guys believe that the
politicians presently in power are
somehow born bad, and we just need
to replace them with Good(TM) people?
This makes no sense to me. The problem
is not that we happen to have bad
people in Washington, but rather
that we have a culture in Washington
that brings out the worst in people.
I have no idea how to fix this culture,
and I'm not convinced it will ever
be fixed, but I'm positive that just
changing the face of the corruption
won't do it.
\_ I can't speak for pp, but I don't
think they're all bad people. I think
we have a system in place now that
encourages corruption and moral
ambiguity (i.e., a disincentive to
avoid conflicts interest). There are
tools that could be used to fix this
(or at least make it unattractive),
but there's a culture of back-
scratching and mutual-benefit cover-
ups that makes real reform unlikely.
Campaing finance reform would be an
excellent step in the right direction
but a non-partisan, independent body
to investigate corruption might be a
better idea. The problem is that even
a "Grand Inquisitor" office is
vulnerable to corruption and
political stacking, and so the entire
cycle keeps rolling. --erikred
\_ I don't know. My current working
theory is that, for the most part,
only power-hungry megalomaniacs
are willing to go into politics.
Normal honest people would quit
before they ever got to even the
state level.
\_ I believe that line about power
corrupting and absolute power, etc.
Term limits and none of this merry-
go-round stuff to a different
district stuff. Serve your time as
a *public service* and get the hell
out. It sickens me everytime some
senator retires after 6+ terms in
office and they have him voting from
his death bed wheeled into the
chamber.
\_ Non-event. The media would bluster about it for a week or
so, until some juicy sex scandal popped up. Most people
would just say let's do it over w/ paper ballots and the
country would go about its business. I'm all for this plan
b/c it would surely return us to paper ballots and delayed
election results. Delayed results means the media would
have nearly nothing to pontificate about and we would have
to be subjected to endless drivel about red-blue state
"seismic" shifts on election day. |
| 5/20 |
|
| www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1781719.htm EMAIL STORY AM - Monday, 6 November , 2006 08:06:00 Reporter: Kim Landers TONY EASTLEY: The US President, George W Bush, is hailing Saddam Hussein's conviction as a milestone for Iraq's fledgling democracy. The White House is also calling the guilty verdict a "good day for the Iraqi people". The US is denying it had any role in the timing of the sentence, which comes of course two days before Americans vote in an election seen as a referendum on Iraq. KIM LANDERS: US President George W Bush isn't gloating about Saddam Hussein's death sentence, but he's nevertheless praised the outcome. GEORGE W BUSH: Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law. It's a major achievement for Iraqian democracy and its constitutional government. KIM LANDERS: And he's linked the trial to efforts to unite the war-torn country. GEORGE W BUSH: Yet history will record today's judgment as an important achievement on the path to a free and just and unified society. KIM LANDERS: The Iraq War is the number one concern of American voters ahead of this week's mid-term congressional elections. But White House Spokesman Tony Snow scoffs at suggestions the US has been scheming to time the announcement of Saddam Hussein's verdict for just days before the poll. KIM LANDERS: It's a denial echoed by Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih. The judicial process here has proven to be professional and just. KIM LANDERS: While the US hails the conviction of Saddam Hussein a major achievement, Tony Snow says that doesn't mean the Bush administration is now hoping he'll be executed. What we do is we respect the Iraqi judiciary for doing its work. We simply think it's important that you establish a rule of law where people have their rights protected, where they have rights to appeal, where they have rights to counsel, but also where victims of violence have redress. KIM LANDERS: The Democrats have been trying to use this week's mid-term congressional elections as a referendum on the Iraq War. Although opinion polls show they'll win control of at least one House of Congress, Vice-President Dick Cheney is warning there'll be no change in the President's Iraq policy. DICK CHENEY: I think it'll have some effect perhaps in the Congress, but the President's made clear what his objective is, it's victory in Iraq. KIM LANDERS: It's not just Democrats arguing for a change of course, some Republicans want that too. But Dick Cheney has made it clear they too won't influence the Bush administration. DICK CHENEY: No, you can't make policy, national security policy, on the basis of that. KIM LANDERS: Yet with analysts predicting heavy election-day losses for the Republican Party, there could yet be a change in tenor for the final two years of the President's term. |
| www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1940534,00.html The Guardian Why was Saddam prosecuted for Dujail and not the much bigger incidents, say at Halabja? Dujail was the subject of the first trial because it was quite straightforward to prosecute. Saddam is also being tried for the 1988 Anfal operation in which 50,000 Kurds were killed, and a trial over the gassing of Kurds at Halabja is in preparation. Anfal occurred at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam had UK and US support. Under which law has he been tried - pre-existing Iraqi law, international law or new laws passed since his fall? Lawyers say it is a mix of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which brought in a statute that established the special tribunal that tried him, the Iraqi penal code 1969, and the Iraqi criminal code 1971. The latter two were amended by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Who decided the nature of the process - the Iraqi government or the US? The US set up the court, funded it and provided the security. The US, and to a lesser extent, the UK government, had lawyers working openly and behind the scenes from the beginning. Was the court independent of the government and occupation forces? The Iraqi government criticised the first judge, Rizgar Amin, as too lenient on Saddam. The Coalition Provisional Authority ordered the interim Iraqi government, the Iraqi governing council, to choose the judges - basically anyone with sufficient legal experience who had not been a member of the Ba'ath party. Why was the trial not held by an international tribunal at The Hague, as was the trial of Slobodan Milosevic? The US government announced before the fall of Baghdad that it wanted the trial to be in Iraq. Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa director, said there was a case initially for making it an Iraqi process but given the flaws in the tribunal hearing, Amnesty is "urging the Iraqi government to consider other options". He has 10 days to appeal, and it could take between a month and two years. He has to be executed within 30 days of an appeal being rejected. Has the timing of the verdict anything to do with the US midterm elections? Miranda Sissons, head of the Iraq programme for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, said yesterday: "I wish I knew the truth. The judgment was originally scheduled for several weeks ago." Under international law, how do the Dujail killings compare with post-Saddam attacks on Iraqis such as the US assault on Falluja? Richard Dicker, an international lawyer with Human Rights Watch, said: "What occurred in Falluja would be covered by the laws on war, the Geneva Convention. There are no definitive figures for the number of Iraqis killed in the US offensive against Fallujah: estimates range from 4,000 to 6,000. The insurgency is inspired mainly by national pride rather than loyalty to Saddam, other than among hardline Ba'athists and some of the residents of his hometown, Tikrit. |