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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (162003)	5/14/2005 3:48:00 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So we agree here. The US needs to get things back to that point, without being a tyrant about it. Thats the fix we are in. You can never get things back to that point, without being a tyrant about it. The whole point is that totalitarian regimes can do it, because they've got the criminal class working for them as government officials.

To: neolib who wrote (162003)	5/14/2005 4:08:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

He had a number of significant campaigns against Kurds & Shittes. Those could be viewed as wars or civil wars. You can view the Holocaust that way too. After all, the Jews and the Gypsies had been declared "enemies of the Reich." Doesn't really help your understanding imo. The Anfal campaign was to ethnically clear regions of Iraq of Kurds and replace them with Arabs. Figures of 30K/year are tossed around for the rest of the time. Those are the figures I doubt. I don't. Rather modest for a totalitarian regime of that ilk. A ruler like Saddam can't stop them, don't you understand? He needs the fear. Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model comments on executions just for 2002, the last "light" year of Saddam's rule, a year with no mass graves: Why there are no reports or links for mass graves in Iraq in 2002? I've noticed this question being repeated more than once on the comment section here and on a few other sites. I want to know why such a question is being asked; would a report about mass graves in 2002 make the situation any different? Is it that some people think it's too much for Iraqis to get a year off from being buried in mass graves? Is the question suggesting that all the mass graves fond so far in Iraq do not count if 2002 was free of mass graves? Or maybe people asking this question are trying to say that Saddam suddenly became a better person in 2002? Maybe I'm being oversensitive here and maybe it's just an innocent question; however I'd like to talk shortly about it. The tragedy of mass graves was associated with certain incidents, namely the uprising in 1991 and the notorious campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s and a few other cases and I guess most of you already know this. The other thing is that the absence of mass graves in a specific year does NOT mean that no people were executed at that time because there were always executions carried out separately in different spots in the country and the victims' bodies were either buried separately or sent to their families to be buried. I still have to admit that 2002 was relatively less bloody than the years that preceded it; at that time I noticed that people would express their anger on the streets with less fear from punishment, not because Saddam became a nicer guy or decided to allow free speech (God forbid!) but mainly because he was more concerned about a greater threat coming from across the Atlantic so he partially ignored the war on the "internal front" against the people. In spite of that, executions continued until the last days in the regime's life and there are stories about people executed even in the 1st week of April 2003 (sorry for not providing links). More over, many doctors who served in Abu Ghraib before 2003 confirmed that an average of 40 prisoners were executed weekly in that prison alone in two execution sick festivals each week, every week on Saturday and Tuesday if I didn't forget, which gives a total of around 2000 executions/year in Abu Ghraib alone (sorry again for not providing links). I read some report a week ago about the number of executions in different countries and China ranked 1st with a total of approximately 3400 executions/year and the Chinese government is being severely criticized for that. And considering that the population of China is more than 50 times that of Iraq; a total of 80 executions/year would more or less put Iraq in the same rank of China's when it comes to declaring an execution crisis. But Saddam being keen on fulfilling his responsibilities towards his people was able to finish the assignment of one year in a matter of two weeks. iraqthemodel.blogspot.com