K, believing the USA government is for the gullible and naive. People believed the stories about WMDs, and remember the babies in Kuwait who were tossed out of incubators. <I choose to believe evidence that is presented to us with pictures and from our Government..>
Do you think there were mass graves in Hiroshima? When Saddam was fighting Kurds and Shiites, it was good old-fashioned tribal conquest with winner takes all. That's how it works.
The mass graves resulted from such conflict. WWI resulted in plenty of mass graves too and the war between Iran and Iraq was similar in nature to WWI. You should not be surprised that there were mass graves. I'm sure you can imagine there were plenty of mass graves in North Vietnam and elsewhere. My Lai for example involved a lot more people, including women and children. Saddam was hanged for killing far fewer blokes, some of whom had tried to kill him.
Did you read Raybon Kan's comments? Very good, as usual.
I'm aware of all the stories but don't see anything particularly evil compared with the equivalent by all sorts of megalomaniacs who use total power and total war to maintain their position.
As for using gas in the war with Iran, so what? Did you hear about what was used recently in Fallujah? Very icky. As General Schwarzkopf said, "There's no nice way to kill somebody in a war". Whether one is fried by a bright light from a fusion reaction, cooked with napalm, asphyxiated with various burning or toxic gases, stabbed with a knife, shot with a bullet, buried and crushed by a bulldozer, or blown up with a hand grenade, it's all quite unpleasant for the victim.
Back to the competition for most killed by one person, I don't think we should just count those killed by order of somebody. Kissinger was giving a lot of orders and he's still alive. We'd have to get the rules of the competition straight as it might be that Saddam wasn't all that much of a champion.
I know we are all supposed to demonize Saddam, but how about General Dostum, who the USA supports gung ho? If Saddam is world champion, it really is a peaceful world these days compared with the vast horrors of the 20th century.
Something like quarter of a million Iraqis have been killed due to King George II deciding to attack Saddam because of those WMDs. Does Saddam get to claim those, or does King George II? Or does each person who did a killing or lots of killings get their own score?
There are enough to swing the scoreboard significantly.
Mqurice |
