December 23, 2003
SPIDER HOLE SADNESS
Judy Finch feels sorry for Saddam:
To broadcast the scene as a humiliated and broken old man was being so personally examined by an American doctor shows abuse of power and absence of compassion - the very values which were absent in Saddam's own regime.
Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya begs to differ:
The capture, says Makiya, and the humiliating TV pictures of Saddam being checked for lice, 'are a very big shock for all the Arabs - a shock in a good way'. They showed the dictator shorn 'of the bombast and nationalism' of his rule.
Makiya has established the Iraq Memory Foundation in Baghdad, planned as a memorial and a vast information resource. His hope is that 'truth can help heal a society that has been politically brutalised'.
The foundation has amassed millions of files from Baathist government agencies, including the intelligence service and Special Security Organisation, the brutal network led by Saddam's late son, Qusay. One of the most dramatic finds came last month, when Makiya unearthed a web of tunnels, whose entrance lay beneath the tomb of Baath party founder Michel Aflaq, inside the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters. It contained three million files with new insights into the regime's repression and depravity.
'There is a blacklist of schoolchildren, a register of every schoolchild in Iraq, listing their relatives and their supposed political affilitations. If a file recorded that a brother or an uncle had been executed for political reasons, that child was blighted. There was a special intelligence department that collected rumours, and tried to track their source. And we have files on the mass graves - including documents which show how the regime tried to fabricate a claim that they contained not its victims, but Baathists killed in the Shia and Kurdish uprisings of 1991.'
(Via contributor J.F. Beck)
Posted by Tim Blair at December 23, 2003 06:49 AMTim, if you wanted to Finch-fisk-fish, methinks you've already got the catch of the day right there.
Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) at December 23, 2003 at 07:48 AMNo Judy, broadcasting the scene as a humiliated and broken old tyrant is suspended by his feet, screaming, as W's offspring flog his soles with a sturdy whip, THAT would show abuse of power and absence of compassion. A medical exam is a slightly different order of magnitude. The fact that you cannot differentiate between the two scenes and, more significantly, did nothing about the former, is the nadir of moral confusion.
Posted by: Fidens at December 23, 2003 at 08:06 AMNo Judy, broadcasting the scene as a humiliated and broken old tyrant is suspended by his feet, screaming, as W's offspring flog his soles with a sturdy whip, THAT would show abuse of power and absence of compassion. A medical exam is a slightly different order of magnitude. The fact that you cannot differentiate between the two scenes and, more significantly, did nothing about the former, is the nadir of moral confusion.
Posted by: Fidens at December 23, 2003 at 08:06 AMI hear that one of Saddam's main torture techniques involved giving the victim a standard medical exam and then showing it on TV.
Posted by: dang at December 23, 2003 at 09:27 AMOh for God's sake. When David Beckham went to Real Madrid, they had his physical ON FREAKING PAY-PER-VIEW.
And this is humiliating? Why, because Saddam didn't get a percentage?
Crap. What would have been humiliating is if they'd checked for lice and FOUND some.
Posted by: Steve in Houston at December 23, 2003 at 01:22 PMOne day, you are the all-powerful ruler of a large nation, a vicious dictator, yes, but a strong hand, willing to stand up to those Yankee imperialist pig-dogs. (Provided the French shill for you, that is, but let's not split hairs.)
The next day, you are the leader of a resistance movement against those same colonialist Yanks, Brits, Aussies, Spaniards, Poles, Italians, and various other unilateralists.
Then, suddenly, you are but a "humiliated and broken old man." How shameful is that? I find Judy Finch's description cruel and disrespectful, demonstrating abuse of her power and a lack of compassion -- the very values that were absent in Hussein's regime. Into The Hague with her!
Posted by: E. Nough at December 23, 2003 at 02:31 PMWhen I saw the pictures of Saddam, I did feel sad. Not sad because of his capture and because of the pictures. I was sad because I saw a man who had lost his soul. I think it's fine to feel compassion for a "humiliated and broken old man" as long as one recognizes that his broken-ness and humiliation were caused by his own choices and actions-- and that those actions have consequences--consequences such as punishment and even death at the hands of the Iraqis he oppressed. The consequences he may face after death are unknown to me--but I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.
Posted by: md at December 24, 2003 at 01:11 AM