what RichL said reminds me of a Simpons episode where homer is president.. anyway, it’s interesting that this ruling should come at a time so close to the midterm elections.

i wanna see a huge-profile case like saddam’s where the indicted person is declared innocent. really. it’s like.. what, did you expect him to go free? despite the huge political and social weight this trial has, briging closure to milions of people who lived oppressed for so many years, i think he’s used too much as an osama-stand-in by the US media. and that’s not right. the only people who will benefit from his death are the iraqis, not some republican congressman who wants to get re-elected.

Proper research would probably point out that it was time for the sentence to be made anyway. But at the same time I can’t possibly imagine this being just a coincidence, not when Bush is campaigning for the Reps with the same and Iraq is such a big issue in these elections. I’d say that not believing this to be a suprising coincidence, at least, is more naive than thinking otherwise. Let’s not turn this into a love/hate Bush thing.

Mihnea: Did you notice that one of Saddam’s co-defendants actually WAS acquitted for lack of evidence?

It is telling that the first comment was the Bush revenge theory.
The people in the United States are becoming almost as bad as the people in Europe when it comes to believing conspiracy theories and constructing one for every event.
The people in Europe are becoming almost as bad as the people in the Middle East. Sadly, Middle Easterners are usually prone to believe conspiracy theories becase in that region, many incredible ones have taken place. While I don’t doubt that a handful have occurred in recent history in the West, the ones that are most popular (every 9/11 one) are usually so elaborate and huge they would require a massive network of informed people that NEVER spilled the beans, despite all the potential gain in exposing such nefarious plots. This is the fundamental flaw of such idiocy. The Bush revenge theory is theoretically possible because only G.W. would need to know the truth but assumes that the president completely lacks a conscience (I know this makes it more convincing to some) and would embark on a huge, lengthy and risky effort in order to avenge a questionable PLOT against his father. A plot mind you, not even a foiled attempt on his life.
However, in the case of the verdict it would be feasible to pull off I suppose. This is HIGHLY unlikely though for at least a couple of reasons
1. A portion of the American people oppose the death penalty. These people are not all Democrat party supporters or liberals.
2. The political capital to be gained from this is neglible – so much so that it would certainly not outweigh the risks (i.e. Iraqis revealing the truth with massive damage to already weak US
image)

The fact is, of the reasons people are upset about Iraq, the fact that Hussein hasn’t been executed yet is not even on the list. In fact, that he was toppled and captured is enough (for now) for the Americans this news appeals to. Simply put, it is neutral. For many of us, it was a rare just moment in a usually unjust world and for those rangng from leftists to Baathists to Sunni Salafists it was another reason to distrust, dislike or outright hate the United States.

It is the height of arrogance to assume that ALL events that unfold in other soveriegn nations do so at the behest of the current American administration. One could argue that Saddam’s capture came at the opportune time so that his trial could take place and sentencing pass in time to influence American mid-term elections.

Granted, there are some instances where American influence, trade pressure, intel cooperations and diplomacy do work to further American goals. However, Saddam’s trial had to have had a strictly “hands-off” policy if the verdict would have any legitimacy. I was very impressed with the judges (especially when they had Ramsey Clark escorted out of the courtroom).

GWB’s big problem is he has difficulty reaching outside his goup of advisors. During his initial campaign back in ‘99, he didn’t even have a running mate until late in the campaign when he was able to coax Dick Cheney, a friend of his father, out of retirement. Cheney never really wanted to be veep and he won’t run for Pres once the current admin term is up.

GWB got burned by Powell, a man recommended to him but not one of his poker buddies, and so we see he’s hesitant to put anyone in power that he doesn’t have a close personal relationship with. We saw this trait in the Harriat Myers debacle. He prefers the known quantities of longtime associates.

Rumsfield is another old buddy pulled out of retirement to head up the transformation of the US military. The idea was to go from a bloated Leviathon to a quicker, streamlined lethal force. Rumsfield wasn’t brought in to fight the long war—his focus has always been on transformation (one of the reasons my career field was phased out in the USAF). Transfor the support structure and put the edge on the tippy point of the spear (as Reagan referred to it). Then 9/11 happened and we removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

Armchair generals and 20/20 hindsight make it easy to see what went wrong. The question is what do we do with what we’ve got? Perhaps the Iraqis will be able to pull their act together and get a functioning country once more, or perhaps they’ll go the way of old Yugoslavia and split into component territories. Give ‘em some time, get them connected. Shrink that gap.

In the meantime, we’re going to keep losing troops. The upside is our troops have gotten a lot smarter on learning how to deal with urban insurgencies. As with every major conflict the US has been involved in, the Mid-East wars have proven a boon to tech development and strategic/tactical doctrinal evolution. The case for SysAdmin has never been stronger.

No doubt about it, we live in interesting times. -cp

i don’t necessarily consider myself lied to.. i just have an opinion which in my mind is educated enough to warrant posting it. and i believe that the sentence was brought forth in coincidental times. simple as that.

And all I am trying to say is that conspiracy theories usually gain credibility when societies lose trust.

Mike – the lies used to sell the idea invading Iraq to the US and the rest of the world. I am not going to recount them all here. You have heard this before, and if not, feel free to google a few keywords.

Back in 1992 many were arguing that the cost to the US - in lives and treasure – would have been to topple the regime. The point at that time, and the reason why GWI was a success, was that all of the coalition partners were on side. The transgression was clear – you invade Kuwait, you will be pushed out and punished. There was no need to invent anything or to insinuate connections that did not exist. People around the world were more or less in agreement, because what happened had actually happened. G.H.W.Bush and the people around him at the time seemed to have a better grasp of what they were getting into.

If you want to understand why people might be giving more credence to conspiracy theories than in the past (which has not been established, it’s merely an impression that has been raised in this thread) one place to look is certainly a perception that people cannot take what they are told by officials at face value.

Mihnea – “I’d say that not believing this to be a suprising coincidence, at least, is more naive than thinking otherwise.” If I misinterpreted your tactful way of putting that, my apologies. I retract. The line in the earlier post should now read, “But using the “height of arrogance”Â? argument to answer a lot of people’s concerns …”