Courts, International, Military

Judge Who Sentenced Saddam Hussein To Death Is Reportedly Killed In Retaliation By ISIS Rebels

800px-SaddamHussein_in_court_2004July01_DF-SD-05-03944There are reports this week that Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman, who sentenced former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death by hanging in 2006, has been killed by rebels in retaliation for the execution. It is the nightmare of judges who could find themselves called to account for prior rulings by a mob. In this case, Rahman could see the steady territorial gains of the Sunni ISIS militants and must have known that he was at great risk.

In reality, Rahman should never have the judge in the trial. He was the replacement chief judge of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal’s in 2006. The prior judge was removed over perceptions that he was too lenient. Rahman however, was sitting in judgment over, among other crimes, Hussein’s killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail. Yet, Rahman’s home town had been the subject of a poison gas attack in 1988 by Hussein.

In the meantime. Saddam Hussein’s former generals and Baathist party members are joining the ISIS insurgency in a deepening sectarian war against the Shia. So we could have not only an Al Qaeda offshoot (that didn’t exist before we invaded) and Saddamists create a new government in Iraq after spending $2 trillion and suffering thousands of military deaths and injuries.

48 thoughts on “Judge Who Sentenced Saddam Hussein To Death Is Reportedly Killed In Retaliation By ISIS Rebels”

  2. Eric, Great assist! Thanks. Facts won’t matter w/ cultists. But, we need to keep putting them out there for people w/ open minds.

  4. “But, we bugged out when the Arab Spring was brewing. It could not have been worse timing.”

    Maliki refused the troops. End of story.

  5. It is sad to see that We the People, with jonathanturley as Exhibit A, have moved such a long, long way from President Kennedy’s pledge (1961), “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” and President Clinton’s counsel (1998, specifically regarding the US-led enforcement with Iraq) that “In the century we’re leaving, America has often made the difference between chaos and community; fear and hope. Now, in a new century, we’ll have a remarkable opportunity to shape a future more peaceful than the past — but only if we stand strong against the enemies of peace.”

    9/11 signaled an irrevocably changing world. What that change would be was still open to competition. To stake America’s claim, President Bush at least tried to deliver on his predecessors’ promise – America’s promise – to the world. Tragically recalled in light of current events, we were succeeding. But some would rather we withdrew our champions from the arena as they were winning rather than see the American promise win the historic contest.

  6. Saucy, I stated we may have just been prolonging the inevitable w/ a support 5k troops. But, we bugged out when the Arab Spring was brewing. It could not have been worse timing.

  7. Nick wrote “a few more years until they set up a more stable govt.”

    I dislike Obama immensely, but I do not believe that Iraq would ever be stable under a secular elected government. As in Afghanistan, as soon as we leave, the country reverts to Mecca Macabre.

  8. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant unjust and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

  9. But Saddamists (and the malignant source of Saddam himself) and al Qaeda (and fellow-travelling radical, violent Islamists) did exist before OIF.

    Saddam set the bar for repressing the Iraqi people and supported terrorism before OIF. There’s conjecture that the terrorists entered Iraq in the post-war on Saddam’s invitation for the post-war guerilla insurgency. According to the Duelfer Report, before OIF, Saddam was growing more irrational while consolidating power and reconstituting his WMD. There’s a reason we intervened with Iraq in the first place in 1991. Since then, Saddam was getting worse, not better, while defying the ceasefire obligations that were designed to ensure Saddam was rehabilitated and could be trusted with the peace.

    The bad v worse Saddam v ISIS choice is a false binary choice that presumes a premature American departure from Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom opened the 3rd way for an Iraq where, as President Obama observed in 2011, “we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. The Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence in favor of a democratic process”. The 3rd, better, choice for post-Saddam Iraq required long-term American security and other help scaling back responsibly and proportionately with Iraq’s progress. It wouldn’t be our first time. We’ve done the job just that way in other modern nation-building projects. Leaving Iraq in 2011 deviated from the norm.

    Proximate v attenuated cause. With our help and protection, post-Saddam Iraq was succeeding at the point we abandoned the Iraqi people to deal with surroundings growing sharply more dangerous with the degeneration of the Arab Spring. What would have happened if President Eisenhower had abandoned our post-WW2 nation-building, protective custodies (especially Korea) at the 8-year mark and left them vulnerable to their respective threat environments? Among other expected consequences, would perhaps the most radical of the safely marginalized, but not yet generationally neutralized Nazis and Japanese Imperialists have reasserted themselves in the extreme conditions that likely would have manifested following the premature American departure? Would we then have blamed the fall-out on President Roosevelt for displacing the nostalgically softened Nazi and Imperial Japanese?

    Always remember Iraq as it was before we left the Iraqi people too early to face the dangers surrounding them:

    President Obama, May 19, 2011:
    “Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. The Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence in favor of a democratic process, even as they’ve taken full responsibility for their own security. Of course, like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. And as they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner.”

    Statement on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq website:
    “After a long and difficult conflict, we now have the opportunity to see Iraq emerge as a strategic partner in a tumultuous region. A sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq that can act as a force for moderation is profoundly in the national security interests of the United States and will ensure that Iraq can realize its full potential as a democratic society. Our civilian-led presence is helping us strengthen the strong strategic partnership that has developed up to this point.”

  10. With the holy month of Ramadan and July 4th approaching, what could possibly go wrong?

  11. “Mankind is facing a crossroad – one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction – I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road”.

    ― Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy

  12. 5k troops left, like Obama is doing in Afghanistan, would have prevented all this. Now, this hatred seethes and may have eventually boiled over. We couldn’t stay there forever. But, a few more years until they set up a more stable govt. would have been the thing to do. But, it’s “Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I know I’ll here “Yeah, buts” from cultists.

  13. I have been to MSL games in KC. I’m not a big fan but that is a great, intimate venue, like old baseball parks. It’s much better in person, like baseball and hockey. I watch some World Cup. This was one of the most incredible ending to a game I’ve ever seen. Don’t they use prevent defenses? You have a one goal lead. There’s a minute left. Have 5 defenders in front of the goal? Am I talking outta my ass?

  15. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/wheres-saddam-hussein-whe_b_5524414.html “From Egypt, it was off to Baghdad for Kerry to see whether Iraq’s bold effort in democratic nation building could be resuscitated in the face of imminent collapse. The problem there is that Kerry will have trouble locating a military strongman to back. The nostalgic choice might be someone like Saddam Hussein. He too was a secular military strongman who very effectively controlled religiously motivated parties, but he’s no longer available.”

  18. When are they going to get around to hanging George W. RETARD??????

  19. Iraq is a Pirate Territory for which there is a three state alternative solution to the one state notion left us by colonial powers when they drew lines in the sand. One territory is Shia or Shiite, one territory is Sunni and one territory is Kurdish. Everytime some outside power or collection of so called civilized nations intervenes they make things worse. As for the dead Judge: those who live by the sword, die by the sword. And don’t forget the Sixth Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill. As for Saddam, well he was a tyrant of sorts but the best rulers of Pirate Territories are pirates. He was not a Pirate of The Carribean and had his own notions of “take no prisoners”. We spent trillions of dollars to get rid of him and all we have is this vast pirate territory back to square one. Three state solution or find another Saddam. Don’t worry about freedoms for humanoids. It will never happen in that neck of the woods.

  20. We could have exactly what we started out with or we most likely will see an Iraq that makes Saddam look like a pussy cat. Religion makes people awfully brutal because “god” is on their side and anyone who does not agree with them is an infidel or nonhuman whose life is worthless. Perhaps GWB, Cheney and Rumsfeld should have thought of that before they decided to play war in Iraq.

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