In the wake of Saddam Hussein and the villainization of myself and others on this blogsite by certain pseudoliberals (I cannot call them liberals; they are inconsistent in their belief and thought and real liberals do not deserve the stain these people who profess to be liberals put on the name. They are no more liberals than the KKK are Christians), it has been stated that my words, my opinions, are equivalent to the actions of one Mr. Saddam Hussein. The implication is clear: either I should hang for my words, or he shouldn't have.

My words stated a lack of sympathy for his daughter, who was denied access to her father in the final moments before he was executed. I stated then, and I believe now, that she should not have been granted the access that she sought, and my total contempt for the piece that was presented, the writer of the piece, and the presenter of the piece, who, it must be noted, presented a copyrighted piece in its entirety without the consent of the publisher.

It is my firm conviction that the actions of Saddam Hussein speak FAR louder than any words I might have to say. And that the actions of those pseudo liberals who defend Hussein speak far louder than THEIR words, for the man that they are defending contradicts in so many ways the values they profess to hold dear. I am using in support of this statement a report prepared by the US Department of State on September 13, 199, BEFORE 9/11, BEFORE George W. Bush took office (those who argue that Bush lied about WMD's might just want to check out this linked report as well; if Bush lied, he did it with a HELL OF A LOT of help from his predecessors...but I digress): http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/02/iraq99.htm

Saddam celebrated his birthday this year by building a resort complex for regime loyalists. Since the Gulf War, Saddam has spent over $2 billion on presidential palaces. Some of these palaces boast gold-plated faucets and man-made lakes and waterfalls, which use pumping equipment that could have been used to address civilian water and sanitation needs.

In July 1999, Forbes Magazine estimated Saddam Hussein's personal wealth at $6 billion, acquired primarily from oil and smuggling. (as pseudo liberals preach about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in America, they might want to take this into consideration).

Iraqi authorities routinely practice extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions throughout those parts of the country still under regime control. The total number of prisoners believed to have been executed since autumn 1997 exceeds 2,500. This includes hundreds of arbitrary executions in the last months of 1998 at Abu Ghraib and Radwaniyah prisons near Baghdad. (This article fails to mention if any of them were allowed last minute phone calls from their family members)

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Iraqi regime destroyed over 3,000 Kurdish villages. The destruction of Kurdish and Turkomen homes is still going on in Iraqi-controlled areas of northern Iraq, as evidenced the destruction by Iraqi forces of civilian homes in the citadel of Kirkuk (see Photo 3 & 4).

Going Further:

 In northern Iraq, the government is continuing its campaign of forcibly deporting Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern governorates. As a result of these forced deportations, approximately 900,000 citizens are internally displaced throughout Iraq. Local officials in the south have ordered the arrest of any official or citizen who provides employment, food or shelter to newly arriving Kurds.

The scale and severity of Iraqi attacks on Shi'a civilians in the south of Iraq have been increasing steadily. The Human Rights Organization in Iraq (HROI) reports that 1,093 persons were arrested in June 1999 in Basrah alone. Tanks from the Hammourabi Republican Guards Division attacked the towns of Rumaitha and Khudur on June 26, after residents protested the systematic maldistribution of food and medicine to the detriment of the Shi'a. Iraqi troops killed fourteen villagers, arrested more than a hundred more, and destroyed forty homes. On June 29, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Resistance in Iraq reported that 160 homes in the Abul Khaseeb district near Basra were destroyed (see photo 8).

In March 1999, the regime gunned down Grand Ayatollah al Sayyid Mohammad Sadiq al Sadr, the most senior Shi'a religious leader in Iraq. Since 1991, dozens of senior Shi'a clerics and hundreds of their followers have either been murdered or arrested by the authorities,and their whereabouts remain unknown. (Yet when we detain one Muslim at the airport, we're guilty of religious bigotry).

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror was a brutal regime for many who suffered under it. And his children were accomplices in this brutal dictatorship, including the "loving daughter" who is begging for sympathy because she was not allowed to be at his side. When we begin to equate WORDS expressing a lack of sympathy with ACTIONS that kill thousands, if not millions, of people, we negate the impact of those actions and diminish the values of the lives of those that were lost as a consequence of those actions.

Saddam Hussein should be remembered as one of the most brutal madmen of the latter half of the twentieth century, not as a hero, not as a martyr, and not in any way as a sympathetic figure. And my words, while admittedly and unapologetically unsympathetic, should be remembered as just that: words. Words that harmed noone, words that killed noone, words that caused no widespread suffering. Saddam Hussein has thousands of gravestones that bear witness to the impact of his regime on the people who suffered under it. I will save my tears for the families deprived of a father under the brutal reign of this madman, NOT for the daughter of the madman, who served as her father's willing accomplice and acts as his apologist after his death.