response 17 of 140:

Dec 15 01:04 UTC 2003

Re #15:  Various Saudis, including their government, have been pouring money
         into Wahhabi outreach programs and related Islamic charities for
         decades.  I'm sure a lot of that money wound up with Al Qaeda.

Re #16:  We can only hope.  At least Communism is secular, and intolerant
         of religious radicals.

response 19 of 140:

Dec 15 02:49 UTC 2003

Saddam will be executed, and no great lawyers will be able to do 
anything about it, even if they do turn out to be qualified to 
represent clients under the system that will try him.

You sound like you're rather gleefully anticipating the spectacle.  
Personally, I'm dreading the gargantuan effort it will take to avoid 
being sickened by it.

response 21 of 140:

Dec 15 03:06 UTC 2003

I'm glad Saddam has been captured.  I was glad when he was removed 
from power and still think it was a good thing.

I am still upset that I was misled into supporting the war in part by 
false guarantees of finding nuclear weapons.  Capture Saddam, bin 
Laden, and 50 other huge terrorist figures, and that one still isn't 
going away.  The phrase, "Oops!  We invaded another country, it was a 
mistake" doesn't work well for me.

response 23 of 140:

Dec 15 04:41 UTC 2003

Re #20:  If Hussein donated to them, he's one of many.  Most of whom are our
         allies.  That's messed up, that is.

Re #21:  Meanwhile, the Saudis had more to do with 9/11 than Iraq, and we
         didn't invade them.  Iran actually *has* a nuclear weapons program,
         and we didn't invade them.  Hmm...

Re #22:  I've never heard anyone advance the theory that they've had Saddam
         on ice all this time.  I've heard a theory that they've been holding
         back evidence on WMDs for the election, but if they had Saddam
         they would have let us know pretty quick.

response 25 of 140:

Dec 15 05:09 UTC 2003

Re 23:  Actually *I* have speculated, here on Grex, that perhaps Saddam had
been captured long ago.

response 27 of 140:

Dec 15 05:21 UTC 2003

Re #24, you are forgetting the half-a-million or so Iraqi 
children who died for the lack of food and medicines during a decade 
of sanctions. It is appalling, how the international community can 
demonize Saddam for it and not take any blame for that??!!

The Lancet
Volume 351(9103)
February 28, 1998             
p 657
------------------------------------------
Does Iraq's depleted uranium pose a health risk?

Birchard, Karen
-------------------------------------------
The office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights has
received a report hypothesising that the current health and 
environmental problems in Iraq may be linked to US and British weapons 
left behind after the Gulf War in 1991.

The literature review, compiled by Bill Griffin, an Irish petrochemical
engineer, with access to material in both the West and Iraq, points out
that the mortality rates among children have increased sharply: as 
many as 500 children a day are dying in Iraq along with cancer rates. 
He proposes that radioactive waste caused by projectiles containing 
depleted uranium (DU) may have played a part. DU weapons were 
developed by the Pentagon in the late 1970s as anti-tank armour-
piercing shells but were not used in combat until the Gulf War. DU is 
a radioactive by-product of the enrichment process used to make 
nuclear fuel rods and nuclear bombs.

The report notes that the death rate per 1000 Iraqi children under 5 
years of age increased from 2.3 in 1989 to 16.6 in 1993. Cases of 
lymphoblastic leukaemia have more than quadrupled with other cancers 
also increasing "at an alarming rate". In men, lung, bladder, 
bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers show the highest increase. In 
women, the highest increases are in breast and bladder cancer, and non-
Hodgkin lymphoma. Diseases such as osteosarcoma, teratoma, 
nephroblastoma, and rhabdomyosarcoma are also increasing with, 
according to the review, the most affected being children
and young men. Congenital malformations have also increased, as have
diseases of the immune system.

The review says that a confidential report by the British Atomic Energy
Authority in 1991 estimated that at least 40 tonnes of DU were 
dispersed in Kuwait and Iraq; but according to Greenpeace-based on US 
government information released under the Freedom of Information Act-
"over 300 tonnes of DU mostly in fragmented form (dust) were left on 
the battlefields in Iraq and Kuwait".
--------------------------------------------------------------------

See the whole item here:
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00246.html

Who accounts for these??

response 29 of 140:

Dec 15 06:48 UTC 2003

It is possible that Saddam will cooperate with the US, tell all, and
offer to speak to his country to tell the guerillas to lay down their
arms and cooperate in rebuilding the country. It might save his skin -
or even make him a candidate for the Nobel prize.

response 31 of 140:

Dec 15 07:31 UTC 2003

Uh, yeah.

So you want to like pass some of whatever it is your having
down this way?  

:-)

response 33 of 140:

Dec 15 09:43 UTC 2003

Not unless the US recognizes the International Court of Justice.

Btw, by the looks of him I truly think I have seen Saddam scurrying 
around the dustbins nearAmsterdam Central Train Station, the last 
couple of months.

Seriously, 
I am curious what details mr. Hussein is going to provide in about the 
US schemes in the eighties when they supported him in the war against 
Iraq. Or before that when they virtually helped get into power.
Every single time this happened with republicans in office. Coincidence?

response 35 of 140:

Dec 15 10:10 UTC 2003

Neither the US nor Iraq recognise the ICC. However, if the new Iraqi
administration chooses to recognise it, they might turn him over
instead of trying him in their own courts.

Also, a separate war crimes tribunal could be set up under the UN (the
court that is trying Milosevic is a war crimes tribunal, not the ICC).
However, this would require the legalization under UN law of the
occupation of Iraq, otherwise the UN would have no jurisdiction.

response 37 of 140:

Dec 15 14:24 UTC 2003

Pax Americana?

response 39 of 140:

Dec 15 14:35 UTC 2003

Agora *is* the conspiracy item.