This came in today --- I wish I could say that I'm all for what it says, --- or totally against it, but I can't because much of it is beyond my understanding. I will say that my gut feelings agree with the overall direction of the article. It's a long one, but I think we would all do well to read it to the end.
If you feel that we don't belong in Iraq, you need to read this slowly and try to comprehend the message. This is one of the best written articles I have seen in a while. -------------------------------------------------------------- Most of us know some of these facts and figures, but few of us know most or all. This guy has put them together in an easily-understandable way. I just wish there was some way to get into the schools and re-teach the American history that you and I grew up upon, so to correct the junk that Academia is producing in today's history classes. Send it on to anywhere you feel it would do good.
Here is a post from Raymond S. Kraft, a California lawyer, that seems to present the "Big Picture"" in a thoughtful manner.. This is something all Americans should read!!
A California Lawyer's Perspective on Iraq War.
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.
Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.
The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.
America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves.
All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.
America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could.Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.
Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.
Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.
Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.
Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.
France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.
You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.
(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.
The Euros could have done this, but they didn't, and they won't. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms - we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq. If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?
And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children.
World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.
World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
[The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 1/2 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.
Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.
The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.
If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya, for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.
The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.
The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options -
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.
Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.
The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.
The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.
Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:
1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.
We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.
The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice - we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile - but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.
2. We went to Iraq with too little planning.
This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.
That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.
3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.
This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq.
It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.
Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.
The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.
World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).
I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.
300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?
"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.
Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.
If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.
Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California. Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY - - history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.
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MeanDean
March 8, 2006, 12:14am
Guest User
That's not an article, is a long well thought out opinion filled with very, very specualtory justifications and it's pretty dodgy to compare today's events with World War 2... a war that indeed lasted for a long time before the US had to get involved. It was inevitable that the US would get involved and the wake up call of Pearl Harbor was enough to get the 2/3 votes to make it Congresionally approved but it's naive to say that it wasn't already a concern or that no one pushed in that direction prior to it. There were also many, many things that hinged this way and that way of how the war ended, it didn't hinge on one particular thing and it a poor comparison to speculate what MIGHT could maybe be and to say that history is at this very moment hinging on this particular thing or that particular thing. Oponnents to this attitude point out, rightly in my opinion, that more (many fold) terrorists are created by US and Australian meddling than could possibly ever be created by preaching alone and that THIS is the hinge we need to focus on.
I have a much better solution to it all though. I mean... if the above is the reason for things being as they are, we sure as s**t are capable of understanding it but it was put to us 786 other ways all of which turned out to be a load crap... so why should I beleive this guy? Perhaps instead we should offer over the politicians that fed us a load of crap in the first place. Terrorism is not new, the World Trade Center was bombed in attempt to bring it down in recent history before 911 <--and I'm so fucking sick of calling "Terrorist attacks on the US" by that number. Terrorist plots have been consistently thwarted in recent US history. One wasn't... Bush swore vengence... the people wanted it... he used that to do whatever he wanted. Now we are a lot more likely to see more terrorist because of it. And what about terrorists that are American born people with no political agenda that can be blanketed over a group of people. They just get to be called criminals... serial killers their called. Saddam Hussein is a Weapon of Mass Destruction, Ronald Reagan was a weapon of Mass Destruction, John howard is a weapon of mass destruction, Whoever is the President of Colombia... whatever his name is, he's a terrorist too... hey, unrelataed to Colombia, anyone notice a correlation with the not so long ago US "approval" of India as a unquestioned nuclear weapon holder... that the common enemy is Pakistan... but even more relevant, that Australia is likely to be a uranium supplier? Just what was the verbal part of the free trade agreement I wonder...
World War 2 happened because of events that unfolded and many beleive (including many at the time) that the US got involved later in the game than they should have, to protect their own interests, but comparing that situation with today's MESS that we have made is not a fair comparison whatsover. Hindsight of World War 2 is good and at the time foresight was not, but that is a poor way of trying to say that we need to use the hindsight of World War 2 and apply it to our foresight today.
I think the author of that opinion was blessed with good persuasive writing skills. I can say that. I can't say that he is correct. I can say that a lot of what he says is an attempt to spin rational justification into beleif and I can say that some of his claims are really grabbing at straws between apparently lucid statements of debatable relevance to reality. Perhaps he is right, but it's a big, big "What if" spoken with some kind of bold Authority... Fear the right wing, the biggest, meanest, and stupidest always speak first, speak boldest, and speak the loudest and they do not tend to compromise.
Stupidest, meanest, boldest idiot of a speaker: George W. Bush Hey now that I think of it, John Howard is sort of a roll on over you with a tank then shoot you with a shell for good measure type of guy too... I can picture that. Two more words: Amanda Vanstone... enough said.
This is a typical example of the "fear tactics" that politicians and those who agree with them use to garner support for their own political agendas - be it power, money or oil.
This opinion piece has a number of innacuracies, let me point out a few:
- There is no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin-Laden nor 9/11. This was LIE. - There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, this was a LIE. - Iraq under Saddam Hussein was 'secular', and not governed by Sharia Law or Wahhabi Islam. Saddam's deputy Tariq Aziz was Christian and Saddam allowed churches and Christians to practice their religions. Women had the right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property. Although this began to deteriorate after the Gulf War as the U.N. sanctions meant men were given priority over women with access to food, health care, and education.
Quoted Text
France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.
He conveniently leaves out the fact the prior to the Gulf War the U.S. was allies with Saddam Hussein and also sold him weapons. And let's not forget our very own "wheat-for-weapons" involvement via the AWB.
Quoted Text
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.
The civil war in the middle east has been raging for decades, if not centuries. The only way the reformists will win, is if the west continues exploiting the middle east instead of helping.
Quoted Text
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.
This is true. However the Jihadis are a minority in the Middle East. They have waged their war for 20+ years and have failed time and time again. Most middle eastern countries have rejected their way of life and fought against them. For example Saudi Arabia expelled Bin-Laden for exactly this reason.
The only reason the Jihadis appear to be growing in strength is because of the Israel/Palastine issue and western interference in the middle east. They are recruiting easily by spinning the rhetoric that the west wants to rid the middle east of islam and make them like us. The majority of the people in the middle east are poor and uneducated, and with their only sources of information Government controlled media (TV/newspapers/radio) they are easily manipulated.
The Iraq war played into their hands that the west is their to conquer and take their oil.
Quoted Text
You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.
Spreading fear in a way that your average person can understand. As I said before the Jihadi's have been waging their war for control of the middle east for over 20 years. Prior to the Iraq war, they were no close to winning that when they started.
There's no way the OPEC heads (lead by the Saudi Royals) will allow the Jihadis to take control of their #1 source of wealth.
Quoted Text
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq
Interesting choice to make Iraq the focal battle ground. A country who's leader was an evil dictator that the middle-east and rest of the world hated, a country who was already secular (meaning less resistance from religious extremism), and a country that controlled 11% of the world's oil. Doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out the agenda.
The war on Iraq is an illegal invasion. Hypocricy, lies, and dead innocent civilians is not going to help the reformists win. If anything they are losing quite badly right now and the inquisitors (terrorists) are gaining momentum.
The war is evil against evil. Don't get bought into taking a side. Take the side of humanity.
I think the author of that opinion was blessed with good persuasive writing skills.
For people who are uninformed on the issues yes this would be the case. When in doubt, people tend to allow their own personal prejudices decide for them, so it's not hard to convince people of the "we're good, they're bad" propaganda the writer was pushing. Especially with the way our media likes to show us exactly how bad they are, but never questions our own Governments and their agendas.
The lyrics from a song called "Civil War" which are very powerful and very meaningful today. The term "Civial War" is used to describe any war.
Quoted Text
Civil War
Look at your young men fighting Look at your women crying Look at your young men dying The way they've always done before
Look at the hate we're breeding Look at the fear we're feeding Look at the lives we're leading The way we've always done before
My hands are tied The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars
D'you wear a black armband When they shot the man Who said "Peace could last forever" And in my first memories They shot Kennedy I went numb when I learned to see So I never fell for Vietnam We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land
And I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war
Look at the shoes your filling Look at the blood we're spilling Look at the world we're killing The way we've always done before Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more
My hands are tied For all I've seen has changed my mind But still the wars go on as the years go by With no love of God or human rights 'Cause all these dreams are swept aside By bloody hands of the hypnotized Who carry the cross of homicide And history bears the scars of our civil wars
I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh And I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war I don't need one more war
I don't need one more war Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway
Didn't consider making a new thread regarding Saddam Hussein so am adding the latest on him, to this thread.
I'd like to be shot, Saddam says July 26, 2006 - 9:11PM
Saddam Hussein, weak from a hunger strike, said on Wednesday that he has been forced to attend his trial for crimes against humanity and that he would prefer to be shot than hung if found guilty.
The entire defence team boycotted the latest session in the controversial trial which is approaching its conclusion.
"I wrote you a petition clarifying that I don't want to come to court, but they brought me against my will ... I have been on a hunger strike since July 8," Saddam, wearing a dark suit and holding a Koran, told chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman.
Saddam, 69, had been fed through a tube in a hunger strike to protest against what he says is an unfair trial.
The man who once ruled Iraq with an iron fist said he would rather face a firing squad than death by hanging if convicted.
"I advise you as an Iraqi if you were in a circumstance in which you have to issue a death penalty you have to remember that Saddam is a military man and in this case the verdict should be death by shooting not by hanging," he told the judge.
Saddam appointed himself to head the army and he was never actually trained or served as a soldier before taking power.
The hunger strike did not take the edge off the trademark defiance Saddam has exhibited throughout the trial in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, home to some of his former palaces.
Although his once imposing voice was weak and despite losing some weight, the former Iraqi leader behaved angrily at times.
"Even if I don't eat for 10 months, I will have my full power and health," he said. "Did you think Saddam Hussein would not be able to speak after 20 days?"
Saddam and seven co-defendants are charged with the killing of 148 Shiites after an attempt on his life in Dujail in 1982.
Saddam faces a second trial on charges of genocide against Iraq's ethnic Kurds in August.
The trial has already been tarnished by the killing of three defence lawyers and the resignation of the first chief judge to protest what he said was government interference.
"Half my lawyers were killed. Is it too much for you to protect them?," Saddam asked Abdel Rahman.
When the ousted president's court-appointed lawyer was about to read his closing argument, Saddam interrupted him: "The argument was written by a Canadian American agent".
Saddam's lawyers have accused the US military of force feeding him to end the strike.
"In hospital they were feeding me through my nose to my stomach," said Saddam.
Three other defendants are also staging hunger strikes to protest against what they consider to be an unfair trial.
Here is a post from Raymond S. Kraft, a California lawyer, that seems to present the "Big Picture"" in a thoughtful manner.. This is something all Americans should read!!
And it's just that - Americans should read it because (they'll be the only ones who agree with it) it's nothing more than American propaganda.
In heaven, there are no interesting people - Nietzsche
Here is a post from Raymond S. Kraft, a California lawyer, that seems to present the "Big Picture"" in a thoughtful manner.. This is something all Americans should read!!
First... I could not help but notice that the Americans have still not forgotten the French for not joining them in Iraq.
A lot of his facts on WWII are inacurate.
Hitler could not cross a 30 kilometres channel to get to England. I fail to see how he would have managed to land in the USA.
Same goes for The Jihadis. They can easily take over Europe... And they will eventually if not stopped now. But they will never take America.
And yes, while I would agree with some of it, it does sound a lot like propaganda. But I would not dismiss the idea entirely. The English and the French did not want a war with Hitler and they tried to negociate with him to avoid it. As a result the French and English were caught un-prepared for it and suffered the consequences.
We could not even try to negociate with The Jihadis because they don't want to negociate. Like Hitler, they want a war.
Here is a post from Raymond S. Kraft, a California lawyer, that seems to present the "Big Picture"" in a thoughtful manner.. This is something all Americans should read!!
First... I could not help but notice that the Americans have still not forgotten the French for not joining them in Iraq.
A lot of his facts on WWII are inacurate.
Hitler could not cross a 30 kilometres channel to get to England. I fail to see how he would have managed to land in the USA.
Same goes for The Jihadis. They can easily take over Europe... And they will eventually if not stopped now. But they will never take America.
And yes, while I would agree with some of it, it does sound a lot like propaganda. But I would not dismiss the idea entirely. The English and the French did not want a war with Hitler and they tried to negociate with him to avoid it. As a result the French and English were caught un-prepared for it and suffered the consequences.
We could not even try to negociate with The Jihadis because they don't want to negociate. Like Hitler, they want a war.
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