Mere Rhetoric: Death for Saddam

Good.

Previously:
Broad Palestinian Support for Saddam, Hitch Justifies Liberation of Iraq. Again, Knight Ridder Has Trouble "Reporting" "News" on Iraqi WMDs

UPDATE 1: Hey, we don't know much about much. But this is a quote from the JPost edit of the AP article:

The verdict was immediately condemned by the head of the second largest Sunni bloc in parliament, who predicted it would spark even greater bloodshed between Sunnis and the country's majority Shiites, who were heavily persecuted under Saddam's more-than two decades of authoritarian rule but now largely control the government and security forces. "It was not wise and the government, not the court, has gone to the extreme with issuing this sentence, even in advance," Salih al-Mutlaq told the al-Arabiya satellite television station.

In general, when a country is actually liberated, there's a decade or so where the old regime is condemned simple on the basis of good manners. This ["Saddam shouldn't be killed" thing] is actually really, really bad. Obviously, it's bad because it shows that there are a lot of pepole in Iraq who really love the idea of a brutal dictator. But it's also bad in another way: now we're going to have to stop saying that Israel is the only country in the world where there are people sitting in parliament who want to destroy the country.

Live and learn, we suppose.

UPDATE 2: Added phrase in brackets to UPDATE 1 - "[Saddam shouldn't...]" - based on email.

About

Omri Ceren is a PhD student studying Rhetoric at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He lives in downtown Los Angeles.
Email: omri@mererhetoric.com
IM: mererhetoricblog (AIM | ICQ | MSN | YIM | gTalk)
Skype: omriceren
Social Networking: Facebook | Friendster | LinkedIn | MySpace | Twitter

Our Sponsors

Approbation