[Vision2020] Saddam Now Martyr Among World's Sunnis

[J Ford]

Good...so does that mean we'll stop seeing your ridiculous posts that have 
no basis in reality?  I mean if you don't care what anyone else thinks, why 
continue to hit them over the head with your views in a vain attempt to 
convince them you're right?  Of course you're right....FAR right.

Say "Good-night" Pat.



J  :]





>From: "Pat Kraut" <pkraut at moscow.com>
>To: "vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Saddam Now Martyr Among World's Sunnis
>Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 10:14:39 -0800
>
>Oh, Please! They would have made a hero of him no matter what
>happened...logic has nothing to do with any choosing of heros in the middle
>east nor anywhere else. He was of their party he did good for them and they
>don't care about anyone in the other party. Heros are often choosen by a
>group based on only what they think not the whole truth.
>But, once again there is an expectation that the rule of law will be
>followed up on and something will happen to the person who taped it on 
>their
>phone. Saddam would have thought it was funny.  I do see changes in Iraq 
>and
>I don't much care if you don't see them.
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
>To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 9:50 AM
>Subject: [Vision2020] Saddam Now Martyr Among World's Sunnis
>
>
>Greetings:
>
>Those who understand the Arabic on the video of the hanging say that the
>trap door was sprung right in the middle of Saddam's final prayer.
>
>The report below says that Saddam has beocme "a Sunni Arab hero who stood
>calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him."
>
>Just a reminder: Sunnis make up 90 percent of the world's Muslims.
>
>“All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with 
>someone
>who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”
>
>“He stood as strong as a mountain while he was being hanged,” said 
>Ahmed
>el-Ghamrawi, a former Egyptian ambassador to Iraq.
>
>The Libyans plan to erect a statue honoring him.
>
>Even the American soldiers who handed him over the government said that
>Saddam acted with calm and dignity.
>
>January 6, 2007, NY Times
>Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many
>By HASSAN M. FATTAH
>
>BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in 
>an
>execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab
>world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of
>admiration and awe.
>
>On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has 
>emerged
>as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners
>tormented and abused him.
>
>“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” 
>President
>Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper
>Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian
>news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”
>
>In Libya, which canceled celebrations of the feast of Id al-Adha after the
>execution, a government statement said a statue depicting Mr. Hussein in 
>the
>gallows would be erected, along with a monument to Omar al-Mukhtar, who
>resisted the Italian invasion of Libya and was hanged by the Italians in
>1931.
>
>In Morocco and the Palestinian territories, demonstrators held aloft
>photographs of Mr. Hussein and condemned the United States.
>
>Here in Beirut, hundreds of members of the Lebanese Baath Party and
>Palestinian activists marched Friday in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood
>behind a symbolic coffin representing that of Mr. Hussein and later offered
>a funeral prayer. Photographs of Mr. Hussein standing up in court, against 
>a
>backdrop of the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, were pasted on city
>walls near Palestinian refugee camps, praising “Saddam the martyr.”
>
>“God damn America and its spies,” a banner across one major Beirut
>thoroughfare read. “Our condolences to the nation for the assassination 
>of
>Saddam, and victory to the Iraqi resistance.”
>
>By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad 
>and
>dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually
>cleansed of his past.
>
>“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands 
>of
>people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred 
>for
>him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated
>unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”
>
>Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who 
>deserved
>the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle
>East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes
>against humanity in November.
>
>But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed
>Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to 
>them.
>From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr.
>
>“The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time,” said Ahmad 
>Mazin
>al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting
>Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. “The 
>way
>Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no
>fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to
>have pride too.”
>
>Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al Ghad,
>said, “The last image for many was of Saddam taken out of a hole. That 
>has
>all changed now.”
>
>At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the
>hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in
>political theater and overseen by the American occupation.
>
>In much of the predominantly Sunni Arab world, the timing of the execution
>in the early hours of Id al-Adha, which is among the holiest days of the
>Muslim year, when violence is forbidden and when even Mr. Hussein himself
>sometimes released prisoners, was seen as a direct insult to the Sunni
>world.
>
>The contrast between the official video aired without sound on Iraqi
>television of Mr. Hussein being taken to the gallows and fitted with a 
>noose
>around his neck and the unauthorized grainy, chaotic recording of the same
>scene with sound, depicting Shiite militiamen taunting Mr. Hussein with his
>hands tied, damning him to hell and praising the militant Shiite cleric
>Moktada al-Sadr, touched a sectarian nerve.
>
>“He stood as strong as a mountain while he was being hanged,” said 
>Ahmed
>el-Ghamrawi, a former Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. “He died a strong
>president and lived as a strong president. This is the image people are 
>left
>with.”
>
>Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian media critic and director of the online radio
>station Ammannet.net, said: “If Saddam had media planners, he could not 
>have
>planned it better than this. Nobody could ever have imagined that Saddam
>would have gone down with such dignity.”
>
>Writers and commentators have stopped short of eulogizing the dictator but
>have looked right past his bloody history as they compare Iraq’s present
>circumstances with Iraq under Mr. Hussein.
>
>In Jordan, long a bastion of support for Mr. Hussein, many are lionizing
>him, decrying the timing of the execution and the taunts as part of a
>Sunni-Shiite conflict.
>
>“Was it a coincidence that Israel, Iran and the United States all 
>welcomed
>Saddam’s execution?” wrote Hamadeh Faraneh, a columnist for the daily 
>Al
>Rai. “Was it also a coincidence when Saddam said bravely in front of his
>tormentors, ‘Long live the nation,’ and that Palestine is Arab, then 
>uttered
>the declaration of faith? His last words expressed his depth and what he
>died for.”
>
>Another Jordanian journalist, Muhammad Abu Rumman, wrote in Al Ghad on
>Thursday: “For the vast majority Saddam is a martyr, even if he made
>mistakes in his first years of rule. He cleansed himself later by
>confronting the Americans and by rejecting to negotiate with them.”
>
>Even the pro-Saudi news media, normally critical of Mr. Hussein, chimed in
>with a more sentimental tone.
>
>In the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, Bilal Khubbaiz, commenting on
>Iranian and Israeli praise of the execution, wrote, “Saddam, as Iraq’s
>ruler, was an iron curtain that prevented the Iranian influence from
>reaching into the Arab world,” as well as “a formidable party in the
>Arab-Israeli conflict.”
>
>Zuhayr Qusaybati, also writing in Al Hayat, said the Iraqi prime minister,
>Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “gave Saddam what he most wanted: he turned him 
>into a
>martyr in the eyes of many Iraqis, who can now demand revenge.”
>
>“The height of idiocy,” Mr. Qusaybati said, “is for the man who rules
>Baghdad under American protection not to realize the purpose of rushing the
>execution, and that the guillotine carries the signature of a Shiite figure
>as the flames of sectarian division do not spare Shiites or Sunnis in a
>country grieving for its butchered citizens.”
>
>In Saudi Arabia, poems eulogizing Mr. Hussein have been passed around on
>cellphones and in e-mail messages.
>
>“Prepare the gun that will avenge Saddam,” a poem published in a Saudi
>newspaper warned. “The criminal who signed the execution order without 
>valid
>reason cheated us on our celebration day. How beautiful it will be when the
>bullet goes through the heart of him who betrayed Arabism.”
>
>Mr. Safadi, the Jordanian editor, said: “In the public’s perception 
>Saddam
>was terrible, but those people were worse. That final act has really
>jeopardized the future of Iraq immensely. And we all know this is a blow to
>the moderate camp in the Arab world.”
>
>Reporting was contributed by Mona el-Naggar from Cairo, Nada Bakri from
>Beirut, Rasheed Abou al-Samh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Suha Maayeh from
>Amman.
>
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>=======================================================
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