Saddam, from His Prison Cell

MMAN (Reuters) - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appealed to Iraqis from his prison cell to unite against what he called U.S. efforts to sow sectarian divisions, his lawyers said on Sunday.

Ziad Khasawneh, a Jordanian lawyer and spokesman for Saddam's defense team, told reporters: "President Saddam Hussein urged the unity of his Iraqi people, regardless of their religious and ethnic creed, to confront U.S. plans to divide their country on sectarian grounds."

Saddam relayed his messages through Khalil Dulaimi, an Iraqi lawyer and member of the defense counsel who met the ousted leader for more than four hours on Thursday -- Saddam's first access to lawyers since he was arrested a year ago.

Dulaimi's identity was until Sunday kept secret by Saddam's Amman-based legal team for fears over his life after he escaped an assassination attempt two weeks ago, defense lawyers said.

Saddam, who is denied access to news, was eager to know what had happened in Iraq since his captivity, Khasawneh said.

I truely look forward to these trials. The outcome is really going to tell us alot about how this maelstrom is going to work out. I wonder, though, why this is the first he has had access to lawyers?

yo, fuck irag. if i was iragi, i woulda lefted there a long time ago.

do we really think his trial will be made public?

I'm not so sure about what affect and how effective the trial of saddam will be on this whole situation but Saddam does bring up some good points.

The ethnic divisions. The US has a long history of picking sides. I think the effort at unity is kinda half assed here. The sunni are just pissed off for losing what they had and because they are pretty sure they will get fucked over in a democracy. The shiite are pissed that we are there but are kinda okay with an election because they will win big cause they have the largest population. The Kurds love us but the elections make them very very nervous, because they will be outvoted. Ethnic divisions have been worsening. Also contributing to this is the fact that most of the Iraqi special forces are kurdish who pretty much hate everyone else in iraq. there are similar problems on a smaller scale in comparison among the police forces and national guard. Alot of our troops are kinda dumbstruck by this iraqi-on-iraqi violence.... and not so concerned about it as long as they kill each other and not them. But this is not a good thing for any of us. The CIA warned of the situation spiraling into civil war.... the signs are there.

It's pretty sad when Saddam brings up more valid points in foreign policy than our own president.

Originally posted by BROWNer@Dec 20 2004, 10:39 PM

do we really think his trial will be made public?

Quoted post

I hope it's made public... if it is it certainly will be edited.... for sensitive information.

Originally posted by Weapon X@Dec 20 2004, 09:55 PM

yo, fuck irag. if i was iragi, i woulda lefted there a long time ago.

Quoted post

Maybe you would have come to america to take spelling lessons. Retard.

^^^

Smooth.

Originally posted by villain@Dec 20 2004, 10:51 PM

It's pretty sad when Saddam brings up more valid points in foreign policy than our own president.

Quoted post

retarded lab rats with implanted tumors often have more valid foreign policy than our president.

i am interested to see what saddam has to say though. we've always seen him painted as this tyranical dictator, which im sure is partially true, but there has to be more to him. he presided over a country that was always half a step away from potential civil war, but somehow (even if just by fear) managed to keep it from imploding. before the war alot of 'scholars' were discussing the signifigance of iraq not only in terms of oil, but in terms of the stability that it (somehow) anchored for the entire middle east. i dont know details, but i remember it being described as a pretty big deal, and a potentially disasterous situation.

i think we in the west sometimes forget that 'brutal' is relative, and not everyone is ready for democracy.

Originally posted by ODS-1+Dec 21 2004, 03:59 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ODS-1 - Dec 21 2004, 03:59 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-Weapon X@Dec 20 2004, 09:55 PM

yo, fuck irag.  if i was iragi, i woulda lefted there a long time ago.

Quoted post

Maybe you would have come to america to take spelling lessons. Retard.

[/b]

America's not really the best place to spell. You spell colour without the u for a start.

Originally posted by seeking@Dec 21 2004, 08:59 AM

retarded lab rats with implanted tumors often have more valid foreign policy than our president.

 

I agree, there is more to Saddam Hussein than meets the eye. And this case will be very, very interesting. I'm pretty sure the ugly Iran Contra affair will be cracked open again. Then it would look pretty stupid to try a man for what neocons in the US were trying to provoke and supply. Because after all this is mainly what this is about..... You can already tell people are squeamish because when justification for the war first shifted to Saddam, there was all this talk of mass graves.... referring to the gassed kurds and his own people. But, I guess they realized that some people had not forgotten Iran-Contra, .... and then the talk of mass graves shifted to "women and children shot in the back of the head by death squads". Not that I'm discounting any of this but here we are "cherry picking" intelligence again so it suits our interests rather than the greater good.

yeah. how the media consistently failed to report the fact that when he gassed 'his people' he did it with our gas and our intelligence. also, they failed to mention that we propped up the kurds against him, then left them to be slaughtered. also, the kurds were never really 'his people' to begin with.

i would love to see contra brought back up, and the full details of that being disclosed. all the stuff, from us playing both (or 3 really, if you count the kurds) sides, to the backroom deals that aimed to remove the democratically elected leader of nicerauga. contra was such a fucking web of everything that is wrong with our foreign policy, if saddam could manage to actually expose some of that, it could be a good thing for the world. not so hot for us, but i mean...fuck us.

dont let any of this sound like i'm a fan of saddam. dude was a lunatic and murdered innocent people, etc, but we put him in power, we kept him in power and IMO this is more about us than it is him. he did some brutal shit within the borders of his country, but we do brutal shit all over the world.

Which makes me wonder.... I'm pretty sure that the plan is to try Saddam by his own people. That being the case I would say that chances are good that the Iran-Contra dirty laundry would be aired out.

to quote ONE LIFE CREW...

"fuck osama, fuck saddam, fuck liberals, im a hardcore XAMERICANX"

I would find it incredibly ironic and funny if Saddam was able to unite the Iraqi people from jail.