Punishing an evil dictator for bringing death to so many over there… so that we don’t have to here.

Saddam must die in 30 days

Scores of Iraqis volunteer to be hangman as court rules

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of Iraqis vied for the hangman’s job as Iraq’s highest court set a 30-day clock ticking yesterday for Saddam Hussein to die.

Iraqi officials have already rejected demands for an outdoor public hanging of the 69-year-old toppled dictator at Baghdad’s Shaab soccer stadium, where the execution could be viewed by tens of thousands who suffered under his 30-year dictatorship.

But if the procedures for other executions under Iraq’s new government are followed, video and still photographs of Saddam’s execution would be taken and at some point excerpts would be shown on official Iraqi TV.

Bassam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has been flooded with hundreds of “letters, e-mails, telephone calls and even mobile text messages from people within Iraq and outside who want to hang him.”

The basic message is that “we want to kill him. He killed my family, so we have the right to do it,” Ridha said.
…

For security reasons, Iraqi officials would not specify where and when Saddam might be executed and who might witness the hanging. Saddam has been held under American guard at a U.S. military base south of Baghdad, and it was unclear whether the U.S. would be involved in the hanging.

The U.S. banned the death penalty after the invasion but it resumed under the interim Iraqi government in September 2005, and more than 60 executions have been carried out.

In the Iraqi method, prisoners are not told of the execution until the day of hanging. They are given a last meal and a cigarette and then are led in orange jumpsuits and a black hood, shackled hand and foot, to the gallows.

Source: Richard Sisk, New York Daily News

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Let me get this straight. They arrest 5 Iranians in Iraq. They claim they were illegally arming insurgents who want to kill U.S. troops. They claim they had maps, photos, videos and documents. Then they let three of them go. Sounds like bullshit to me. More of the kind of bullshit we heard when they lied and did whatever they had to to link Iraq to 9/11 so they could invade. Now they want to link Iran to Iraq so we can invade Iran. Maybe I’m wrong to be so cynical, but hey……this administration and their endless thirst for power, their enormous military budget and desire to continue to build a military empire has caused me to be.

BAGHDAD: The U.S. military said it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against U.S. forces. Evidence also emerged that some of the detainees were involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.

In its first official confirmation of the raids last week, the U.S. military said Tuesday that it had confiscated maps, videos, photographs and documents in one of the raids on a site in Baghdad. The military confirmed the arrests of five Iranians and said that three of them had since been released.

The Bush administration has described the two Iranians still being held late Tuesday night as senior military officials. Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. command, said that the military, in the raid, had “gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel.”

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Here’s coverage on former President Gerald Ford from The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. All of them have photo galleries and/or multimedia features as well.

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