Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 7

message: The intro contains the following sentence: "While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Arabs for standing up to the West and for his staunch support for the Palestinians,4 the United States continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War."
I have a few problems with this.
#1. I do not believe he was a hero to "many" Arabs, rather a hero to "some" Arabs. This is because many, many Arabs hate him with a true passion, probably because Saddam has killed more Arabs than any single person in modern history (last few hundred years). The number of Palestinians who may have liked Saddam and much smaller than the Arabs of southern Iraq who hate him.
:No. See the citation that goes along with the sentence. 172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Support for the Palestinian cause had consistently been a major part of his brand of Ba'aathism, foreign policy, and personality cult, and this did not go unnoticed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Again see the citation that goes along with the sentence bringing up the Palestinians. 172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Why the U.S. viewed him with suspicion is obvious. And listing is inappropriate in the intro. 172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Again, the Palestinain problem was major aspect of his ideology and foreign policy. It must be mentioned in the intro. 172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flawed intro 

message: Shouldn't "cementing close ties with French political and business circles" be replaced by "cementing close ties with French business and conservative political circles"?
As far as I know, privilegied relationships with African or Middle-Eastern strong-man regimes is a trademark of the "old Gaullist guard" (Charles Pasqua etc.). I don't know of any similar relationships with left-wing political circles. David.Monniaux 11:04, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. Neither do I. I would not object to the change proposed above. 172 11:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I changed the sentence. David.Monniaux 13:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links with French political circles 

message: I have added a truthful and up to date summaried appraisal to Saddam Hussein.
It keeps being reverted to the previous version which began "Saddam Hussein was a rising star". Sddam Hussein came to power by killing his opponents, and remained in power by killing his opponents. The fact that there is also only a cursory mention of the Special Tribunal is ridiculous. I have now directly linked a summary of the IST's task with the article.
Please do not alter the intro backwards again!
:The old intro calls him a rising star within the Baath Party, which means nothing more than he was rising up the party ranks in the 1960s and early 1970s. Is this untrue? Of course it is not. Your complaint against the old intro is dubious. Futher, by managing to fit in as many emotive terms as possible into your version, we have a flagrant violation of Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. Chaebol 19:33, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fluctuating Intro 

message: A large slice of text was deleted. Is this deliberate, or is it unpatrolled vandalism? JFW | T@lk 16:00, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: According to the article, Britannica (since when do we care what Britannica thinks?) uses "Saddam", and links to an article (header) which appears to corroborate this. But the CBC article that "explains it all" says: "Following this convention, then, "Hussein" would appear to stand out as the obvious choice, and a few large papers have embraced it, including the Globe and Mail, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.
It's also the path taken by some encyclopedias, including Britannica and Columbia."
Hence the judgement that Saddam is more appropriate than Hussein, simply because its informally popular needs some explanation. -SV|t 00:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fn 2 "Saddam" 

message: The following text was inserted by 12.74.187.234 and 209.247.222.98 to replace "(No evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to have been found)" :
A Legal decision by Judge Harold Baer, a Clinton nominee, in the 1st Circuit Court in Manhattan legally establishes proof of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. The civil trial included vast amounts of evidence including testimony about a hjacking school at Salman Pak and testimony from Bill Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey. 
Even Dick Cheney claimed last September never to have suggested a link between Iraq and 9/11.  The edit's double reference to Clinton appears to be a political jab.
I bet that Mr. Bush would have liked to have seen these "vast amounts of evidence" to which Baer was privy.  If that were the case, he probably could have based his case for war on more sound footing than nonexistent WMD and the possibility that bin Laden and Hussein concievably could work together.  It turns out, they've been working together all along!
I'll quote somebody else's comments on this issue: First, because Iraq didn't show up to defend the case, the only issue Judge Baer decided was whether there was enough evidence to send the case to a jury, not whether the facts actually support a finding of Iraqi involvement. That is an extremely low standard under the law and, more importantly, doesn't involve any evaluation of credibility, any cross-examination, etc. There is no finding at all that Iraq was behind the attacks, just a finding that the plaintiffs met the bare minimum threshhold to allow a case to go forward. 
The judge criticized the arguments as based on "classical hearsay" but said that the case was technically sufficient, "albeit barely." 
Part of the plaintiffs' case was based on the Czech report of a supposed Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer.  Czech intelligence has since retracted that report and neither the CIA nor FBI now believe that the meeting ever happened.  
Actually, just go look at Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks.  First entry.  Bin Laden considered Hussein an "infidel" and supported anti-Saddam islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mohammed Atta considered Hussein "an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East," et cetera et cetera.
There seems to be a continuing irrational fixation on Iraq.  It's bewildering that some people choose to grasp at weak or nonexistent links to Iraq when the countries to which al Qaeda is tied are so obvious. Ignored in the Iraq obsession is the overt and active support or strong links to al Qaeda from other nations such as (of course) Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan, where bin Laden based his operations for years in the 1990s at the invitation of Hassan al Turabi, a Sudanese leader.  
The country that started this [pattern of Islamic extremism], Iran, is about to turn around, 180 degrees. We ought to be focused on that. The father of extremism, the home of the ayatollah -- the young people are ready to throw out the mullahs and turn around, become a secular society and throw off these ideas of extremism. That is more important and critical. They're the ones that funded Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. That ought to be a focus. And I can give you many, many more before you get down to Saddam and Iraq. :--General Anthony Zinni
I don't think that the assertions of an Iraqi link are accurate and I wish people would stop digging up discredited arguments from years ago.  I'm restoring the previous text.
Mr. Billion 01:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, since Iraq didn't show up to defend itself the best the anon editor could argue is that the allegation went "uncontested", which is hardly a determination of fact or proof. And don't forget about the 1980s links between the USA and proto Al Qaeda. zen master    T  03:53, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaeology of rumor 

message: The July 2005 issue of GQ magazine clear says that Saddam doesn't use toilet paper but perfers to use his left hand why does this keep getting removed?
:Because how the guy wipes his ass isn't relevant. --Mr. Billion 8 July 2005 03:08 (UTC)
Isn't that a POV?
I don't know about Saddam, but it's how many people in the Middle East do it. With a hose of warm water to wash everything, mind you. They think our habit of "smearing it around" (as they would say) with toilet paper is as disgusting as wiping with your hand must seem to you. This is also why, when invited for tea, you shouldn't pick up the cup with your left hand but with your right, same for eating. LeoDV 17:26, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  why does this keep getting removed? 

message: Even though it's true that Saddam was a truly important reformer, esp. for the middle east, such euphemisms as taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following (in other words having all opponents shot and making the Ba'ath party the only party), a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it (in other words a secret police which put every dissenter in jail/tortured/executed them, etc.), Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis (personnality worship) are intolerable. LeoDV 17:18, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saddam's consolidation of power and the modernization of Iraq is POV 

message: The article says,  
The U.S. launched a missile attack aimed at Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad June 26, 1993, citing evidence of repeated Iraqi violations of the "no fly zones" imposed after the Gulf War and for incursions into Kuwait. Some speculated that it was in retaliation for Iraq's alleged sponsorship of a plot to kill former President George H. W. Bush.
That is incorrect. The air strikes were not due to violations of no fly zones.  President Clinton explained in a national address that very evening that the air strikes were in retaliation to Saddam's attempted assassination of former President Bush . I made the necessary corrections to the article. --Herb West 22:58, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  6/26/93 Air Strikes on Iraq 

message: Why is this image used in the article? Every news organization cast doubt on whether it was truly Saddam in this footage. Of all the thousands of images that could go in the Invasion of Iraq section, why use propaganda disseminated by the Iraqi government and of questionable veracity?
Anyways, it's more appropriate to illustrate the Invasion of Iraq with the iconic image of the toppling of Saddam's statue rather than an image in which Saddam appears triumphant. --Herb West 17:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saddam body double image 

message: Saddam presided over an exceptionally brutal and violent regime and I don't think that comes out in the article. I expanded the third paragraph to make clear the nature of Saddam's rule. I think it renders moot the "dictator" argument. --Herb West 06:54, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Further info belongs in more specialized entries, such as Human rights in Saddam's Iraq for crimes against humanity. It is important that editors stay on topic and biographical in the Saddam Hussein article, not going into excessive detail on topics that already have their own articles. Also, notice the statement at the top of the browser: "This page is 60 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see article size." Long articles are not a problem in and of themselves, but dumping too much detail in one article while ignoring related entries renders Wikipedia less organized and usable. 172 | Talk 20:10, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Saddam's crimes against humanity

message: Please enlighten me: How much support is there for an NPOV tag on this article?  Is it just one individual? - Tεxτurε 20:01, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed the tag. The discussion between the two of you has been over for days.  If there is no further support for an NPOV tag then it should remain off.  A difference of opinion between only two users is not a basis for an NPOV tag.  You need to gather a consensus that the article is in a POV state before incorporating the tag. - Tεxτurε 20:11, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV tag