Check this out from the NYT.....
July 20, 2006
Hussein Writes to Americans, Urging Iraqi Pullout
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 20 — Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein released a letter on Thursday that he recently wrote in prison that attempts to persuade the American people to demand a troop pullout because President Bush misled them into the Iraq war.
The 5,000-word letter is a rambling treatise outlining what Mr. Hussein asserts are the false reasons that the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq, from weapons of mass destruction to Iraqi links with Al Qaeda. Mr. Hussein blames Iran and pro-Israel interests for helping lead the Americans into war. He invokes the specter of Vietnam and the spirit of Mao Zedong, saying the Chinese revolutionary is “laughing in his grave because his prediction has been fulfilled and America is a paper tiger.”
The letter is dated July 7. It was handed by Mr. Hussein to Ramsey Clark, the former United States attorney general, who serves on Mr. Hussein’s defense team, said Rasha Oudeh, the office manager for Mr. Hussein’s eldest daughter. In the letter, Mr. Hussein said he wrote out his message to the Americans by hand at the behest of Mr. Clark.
“People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab nation and within it our heroic people — including the breakdown of America’s standing and reputation — were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism,” Mr. Hussein wrote, according to a translation of the letter sent by e-mail to reporters.
“The massacres and blood that now flows in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents — the responsibility for that falls on America before all others,” he added.
The release of the letter came on the 14th day of a hunger strike by Mr. Hussein and three of his co-defendants. Mr. Hussein and seven other men, including his half-brother, have been on trial since last October for the imprisonment and executions of 148 men and boys from the Shiite town of Dujail. The victims were killed after what Mr. Hussein said was an assassination attempt on him in 1982.
The trial is in its closing stages. Arguments are expected from the defense lawyers. But the main lawyers and defendants have been boycotting the trial for various reasons.
Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for the American-run detainee system, said Thursday that Mr. Hussein was in “relatively good health” and was being monitored every day by medical professionals. He said Mr. Hussein has rejected all his meals but drinks coffee with sugar and water with nutrients.
The American military had no immediate comment on the letter, he added.
In the letter, Mr. Hussein said an American general tried to use intimidation and threats against him after his capture, and also “tried to bargain with me, promising to let me live if I agreed to read in my own voice and sign a prepared announcement that was shown to me.”
“That stupid announcement called on the people of Iraq and the courageous resistance to lay down arms,” he said.
“They said that if I refused, my fate would be that I would be shot like Mussolini,” he added.
A week after that conversation, Mr. Hussein said, a group of Americans came to speak to him, saying they were from an American university. “I confirmed to them that Iraq didn’t have any of the things the American officials claimed,” Mr. Hussein wrote.
Farther down in the letter, Mr. Hussein sought to portray himself as a humanitarian, telling the American government to designate a neutral country to whom insurgents can hand over American prisoners “rather than executing them as currently is said to be taking place.” That appeared to be a reference to the abduction and mutilations of two American soldiers in the town of Yusufiya last month.
The letter ends with a final bit of advice: “Save your country, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Originally posted by Derfel CadarnThat's why I've always said someone should have dropped a grenade down that hole and that would have been the end ofhis crap.
Check this out from the NYT.....
July 20, 2006
Hussein Writes to Americans, Urging Iraqi Pullout
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 20 — Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein released a letter on Thursday that he recently wrote in prison that attempts to persuade the American people to demand a troop pullout because President Bush misled them into ...[text shortened]... , esteemed ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Originally posted by Derfel CadarnHow bout this for a plan: He may at some point want to commit suicide, evidenced by his hunger strike. Ok, so we engender it.
I think we should have shot him on sight, and said he was killed in crossfire or something.
Have a gun in a metal noose like the upper shoulder armor of the old knights of heraldry where the gun cannot be moved from being aimed at his head. One bullet inside. At any time, he can pull the trigger and end his misery. Of course there will be a 'Guncam' which will show him pulling the trigger himself and with no pressure by anyone forcing him to take this way out. It would show him pulling the trigger and the bullet entering his skull with exquisite detail, thus denying him the dignity of martyrdom. Would that work?