Would Iraq be better off if Saddam was still in charge?

Lotusflower · June 14, 2014

Or your complete assertion that the UK and USA is the cause of the current situation in Iraq and nothing at all to do with Islam.

I can easily provide factual evidence to support the claims I have made. If you or tonkatoy can show some counter evidence I am waiting!

Take your Islamophobia elsewhere please because it does not belong on this thread.

daneha · June 14, 2014

I can easily provide factual evidence to support the claims I have made. If you or tonkatoy can show some counter evidence I am waiting!

Feel free to provide it, at least then you stand a chance of changing our minds, until then my opinion is that Islamists are inspired by Islam and not what the UK does or doesn't do.

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 17:03 ----------

Take your Islamophobia elsewhere please because it does not belong on this thread.

That word is meaningless, there was a Muslim on here the other day calling another Muslim Islamaphobic.

Lotusflower · June 14, 2014

Feel free to provide it, at least then you stand a chance of changing our minds, until then my opinion is that Islamists are inspired by Islam and not what the UK does or doesn't do.

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 17:03 ----------

That word is meaningless, there was a Muslim on here the other day calling another Muslim Islamaphobic.

What does it take to get it through your thick skull?

This is not a thread about Islam and I am NOT going to discuss it on here or for that matter anywhere else.

daneha · June 14, 2014

What does it take to get it through your thick skull?

This is not a thread about Islam and I am NOT going to discuss it on here or for that matter anywhere else.

So if we remove Islam from the equation, the answer is no, Iraq wouldn't be better off with Saddam, it is far better off now than it was.

Lotusflower · June 14, 2014

So if we remove Islam from the equation, the answer is no, Iraq wouldn't be better off with Saddam, it is far better off now than it was.

Thank you! See how easy that was!

Let's agree to differ now shall we.

daneha · June 14, 2014

Thank you! See how easy that was!

Let's agree to differ now shall we.

It kind of make the thread and question pointless if we have to ignore the cause of the current problems though.

Edited June 14, 2014 by daneha

Lotusflower · June 14, 2014

It doesn't kind of make the thread and question pointless if we have to ignore the cause of the current problems though.

The problems currently being experienced by the Iraqi people would never have happened under Saddam. We can go on with this merry-go-round until it gets closed or as I suggested earlier just agree to differ.

I will add at this point that I am not a fan of Saddam and nor have I ever been.

He was a power mad despot who ruled with a rod of iron and if you stepped out of line you were taken out. That included extremists of all faiths.

tonkatoy · June 14, 2014

Take your Islamophobia elsewhere please because it does not belong on this thread.

I'm not about to go elsewhere and It is you that seems to feel the need to call names. Islamophobia shouldn't be confused by the truth about Islam. You could do well to take that on board.

This is a public forum and we are free to express our views. This is the reson why refugees from the troubled countries want to come here. Sadly so many of them forget this and try to impose on the UK the very things that persuaded them to quit their homeland.

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 17:55 ----------

The problems currently being experienced by the Iraqi people would never have happened under Saddam.

So does that apply to Syria under Assad and Libya under Gadaffi?

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 17:57 ----------

I can easily provide factual evidence to support the claims I have made.

Go on then because we all know you are still posting ngombi like you have from post one.

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 17:58 ----------

So if we remove Islam from the equation, the answer is no, Iraq wouldn't be better off with Saddam, it is far better off now than it was.

But it would clearly be better off without Islam.

---------- Post added 14-06-2014 at 18:01 ----------

It doesn't kind of make the thread and question pointless if we have to ignore the cause of the current problems though.

:clap::clap::clap:

Its a bit like doing an Iraqi autopsy and ignoring gun shots.

Edited June 14, 2014 by tonkatoy

purdy · June 14, 2014

Given the current situation in Iraq and the changes it has experienced since the Bush/Blair led bombing and invasion would the Iraqi people be safer had Saddam not been deposed and hanged?

Wasn't this Iraq under Sadam?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/iran-iraq.htm

Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties -- perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war; estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000. Iraq suffered an estimated 375,000 casualties. Another 60,000 were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Iran's losses may have included more than 1 million people killed or maimed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq

In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... and the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances".[1]

Full political participation at the national level was restricted only to members of the Ba'ath Party, which constituted only 8% of the population.

Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it was to express support for the government. The Iraqi government controlled the establishment of political parties, regulated their internal affairs and monitored their activities.

Police checkpoints on Iraq's roads and highways prevented ordinary citizens from traveling across country without government permission and expensive exit visas prevented Iraqi citizens from traveling abroad. Before traveling, an Iraqi citizen had to post collateral. Iraqi females could not travel outside of the country without the escort of a male relative.[2]

The activities of citizens living inside Iraq who received money from relatives abroad were closely monitored[citation needed].

Halabja poison gas attack:The Halabja poison gas attack occurred in the period 15–19 March 1988 during the Iran–Iraq War when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces and thousands of civilians in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja were killed.[3]

Al-Anfal Campaign: In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The campaign was mostly directed at Shiite Kurds (Faili Kurds) who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 182,000) people, many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms and power stations.[3][4]

In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed full-scale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.[5]

In June 1994, the Hussein regime in Iraq established severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion, while government members and Saddam's family members were immune from punishments ranging around these crimes.[6]

On March 23, 2003, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraqi television presented and interviewed prisoners of war on TV, violating the Geneva Convention.

Also in April 2003, CNN revealed that it had withheld information about Iraq torturing journalists and Iraqi citizens in the 1990s. According to CNN's chief news executive, the channel had been concerned for the safety not only of its own staff, but also of Iraqi sources and informants, who could expect punishment for speaking freely to reporters. Also according to the executive, "other news organizations were in the same bind."[7]

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several mass graves were found in Iraq containing several thousand bodies total and more are being uncovered to this day.[8] While most of the dead in the graves were believed to have died in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, some of them appeared to have died due to executions or died at times other than the 1991 rebellion.

Also after the invasion, numerous torture centers were found in security offices and police stations throughout Iraq. The equipment found at these centers typically included hooks for hanging people by the hands for beatings, devices for electric shock and other equipment often found in nations with harsh security services and other authoritarian nations.

Edited June 14, 2014 by purdy