How can Sweden fairly prosecute Assange when they don't prosecute GW Bush?

[Watanabe]

He's guilty "from a moral point of view" for war crimes?

That is not the way it works.

As for morality, Saddam had on average 26,000 of his citizens summarily executed every year. That means that if Saddam had been left in power 260,000 Iraqis would have died by his hands from 2003 to now.

Is it moral to let that happen?

Why morally guilty is a strange concept?
And please provide the link that Saddam was killing 26000 people / year at the beginning of 2000s
And, if Saddam was a bad guy, why then supporting him in the 80s?

 

[The Don]

Make a public statement that GWB(*) is guilty (at least, from a moral point of view) of some 200000+ deaths

(*) along with all the people not denouncing an immoral war, including members of this forum and of my family

Please bear in mind that I was anti the Iraq war and campaigned against it before the war and in the early months of the war. Please bear in mind that I felt that the evidence for WMD was incredibly weak. Please bear in mind that I think that going to war for the purposes of regime change is not a good idea (not least because you have no idea who will be in power 20 years later). Please also bear in mind that I feel that I feel the handling of post-war Iraq was very bad indeed.

Bearing all of that in mind I still do not think that the war was immoral. I think that those people who support the war did so to get rid of a horrible tyrant and to free the Iraqi people. So no matter how poorly executed it was, i cannot see how it can be described as immoral.

 

[The Don]

And, if Saddam was a bad guy, why then supporting him in the 80s?

Did you not read the various reasons why ?

Various reasons have been proposed but it seems to come down to maintaining the balance of power in the region and/or that Iran was even worse as far as the US was concerned.

 

[erwinl]

Make a public statement that GWB is guilty (at least, freom a moral point of view) of some 200000+ deaths




I never spoke about being incompetent to prosecute Assange
They certainly are.
The suspect is that they are very much biased.
Why?
As they did not say much and do much against muych worse artocities, such as GWB` s invasion of Iraq



The suspicion is the same about Sweden` prosecuting Assange

That's not a prosecution.
On the one hand you lambast the Swedish government for not prosecuting GWB (while still prosecuting Assange), but on the other hand you don't want them to actually prosecute.
That's a bit of a no win situation for the Swedish government isn't it?

 

[Travis]

Why morally guilty is a strange concept?
And please provide the link that Saddam was killing 26000 people / year at the beginning of 2000s

186,000 massacred between 1986-1989.

http://hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq501/events_anfal.html
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/irq-article_6-eng
​

230,000 massacred in the aftermath of the failed conquest of Kuwait and defeat at the hand of coalition forces.

From the wiki:
The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels killed countless Ba'athist officials in many southern cities. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery and helicopters, and many historical and religious structures in the south were deliberately targeted under orders from Saddam Hussein.[14] Saddam's security forces entered the cities, often using women and children as human shields, where they detained and summarily executed or "disappeared" thousands of people at random in a policy of collective responsibility. Many suspects were tortured, raped or burned alive.[27] There were several unconfirmed reports of chemical warfare attacks, including of a nerve agent being used during the assault on Basra. Following an investigation, the United Nations (UN) found that there was no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons to repress the uprisings, but did not rule out the possibility that Iraq could have used phosgene gas which would not have been detectable after the attack.[20] According to the U.S. government's Iraq Survey Group, Iraqi military did in fact use the nerve agent sarin, as well as non-lethal CS gas, on a massive scale when "dozens" of improvised helicopter bombing sorties were flown against rebels in Karbala and the surrounding areas in March 1991; evidence of apparent mustard gas attacks have been also reported in the areas of Najaf and Karbala by the U.S. forces that have been stationed there at the time.[28] On April 5, the government announced "the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage and rioting in all towns of Iraq."[29] On that same day, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 688 condemning the Iraqi government's oppression of the Kurds and requiring Iraq to respect the human rights of its citizens.[20]


Many of the people killed were buried in mass graves.[14] Several mass graves containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.[33] Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered by 2006 in the three years since the American-led invasion, the majority were in the South, including one located south of Baghdad that is believed to hold as many as 10,000 victims.[34]​

That is 416,000 in just those two campaigns of mass murder. Divide that by the 17 year interval and you get about 25,000 a year.

According to this NY Times article the real number of total victims might be around a million civilians murdered. We'll never know for sure because his death squads tended to exterminate not just entire families but entire villages. Leaving no one behind to even remember that the dead once lived.

And, if Saddam was a bad guy, why then supporting him in the 80s?

Well, first off he wasn't that bad then. Almost all of the atrocities I have cited came after that. At that time he seemed a better option than the completely insane theocrats in Tehran.

Also, as others note, no one wanted him to be powerful. They just didn't want the Iranians to be more powerful.

But it is ultimately irrelevant. It doesn't matter who was allied to who before the war. It was eventually decided he was a monster and that is all that matters.

Do you dispute the eventual conclusion that he was a genocidal monster? If not then why this obsession with those that supported him during the very early days of his rule before he went insane and murdered loads of people?

 

[TjW]

My personal opinion is that Assange would receive a fair trial in Sweden and there is no chance whatsoever that he will be extradited.

And I think the bolded is exactly what he's afraid of.

 

[Hellbound]

Deleted-missed a page or so on the thread.

 

[Crossbow]

You keep saying "George Bush", as if the US was a Bush dictatorship. You really should say "the US government", because that's who brought us to war in Iraq. The government is Bush, the Congress, and the People of the United States who elected them and who they represent.

You cannot hold a single person responsible for the actions of a democratic state.

Please actually read the post you quoted and you will see how incorrect your statement is.

Thanks.

 

[zooterkin]

Friendly reminder; the topic of the thread appears at the top of the page. How can Sweden fairly prosecute Assange when they don't prosecute GW Bush?

If you think a post violates the MA in any way, please use the report button to notify the mod team, rather than mentioning it in the thread.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin

 

[Darth Rotor]

... the USA simply does not have the resources to set the world to rights.

Agreed. (How often does that happen ... you and I agree?

Therefore, often the best thing that the USA can do is watch, wait, set a good example, and be ready to help out when the time is right.

Uh, that bolded part is both tricky, and open to immense (not to mention subjective) differences in judgment.

As a basic tenet, however, I agree.

 

[Watanabe]

186,000 massacred between 1986-1989.

This was not when the US went after Saddam in the 2000s
This is when the US supported Saddam in the 80s.

 

[Watanabe]

That's not a prosecution.
On the one hand you lambast the Swedish government for not prosecuting GWB (while still prosecuting Assange), but on the other hand you don't want them to actually prosecute.
That's a bit of a no win situation for the Swedish government isn't it?

You like to play around, do not you?
I have asked why the Swedisn Government did nothing more than a short mild statement of condemnation against the US when they invaded Iraq

 

[Watanabe]

So no matter how poorly executed it was, i cannot see how it can be described as immoral.

Because it caused the unnecessary deaths of 200000+ people, if this is not enough for you.
And I believe all the people (including myself, unfortunately) who stayed silent at that time are co-responsible of those deaths.
At least, I have learned the lesson and changed, some other people as I can see did not learn. And still remain guilty

 

[Watanabe]

Did you not read the various reasons why ?

Various reasons have been proposed but it seems to come down to maintaining the balance of power in the region and/or that Iran was even worse as far as the US was concerned.

It is the utmost irrational and unfounded idea that Iran was even worse than Saddam.
It has no basis in reality whatsoever, considering the genocides of the Kurds by Saddam in the 80s.
As for the balance of power, you should also support the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact then rape of Poland in WWII that also was done to keep the balance of power

 

[Watanabe]

Well, first off he wasn't that bad then.

Err.. for you this is not bad enough (at a time when the US supported Saddam)

186,000 massacred between 1986-1989.

Almost all of the atrocities I have cited came after that. At that time he seemed a better option than the completely insane theocrats in Tehran.

Good.
If you whitewash the support to a genocidal dictator on the basis that you did not like the people of Tehran (who were not invading anyone) you then become guilty as well of what Saddam did.

 

[BStrong]

This question is a variation of one of the oldest accusation that every cop hears at some point in their career:

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

The fallacy here is that whatever the problem the citizen in question has found themselves in, somehow, somewhere, there is a more important statute being violated by some other individual that should be enforced before the citizen in question gets cited/arrested/whatever for.

There's a related version that CHP officers get to hear on a fairly regular basis, the driver that's been stopped who points out passing drivers who (in the stopped driver's pov) are speeding and demands to know why the CHP officer isn't stopping them instead of...

Yeah, it's infantile and never results in a diversion of attention on the part of the LEO away from the violation at hand, but it is what it is.

WRT Assange, it's my understanding that sexual assault is taken seriously in Sweden, and other than his prominence, this isn't an unusual prosecution.

WRT prosecuting Bush, first they'd need to have jurisdiction. To the best of my knowledge, Bush isn't accused of violating Swedish law on Swedish soil, so that first hurdle might not be overcome.

 

[WildCat]

Please actually read the post you quoted and you will see how incorrect your statement is.

Thanks.

I read it again, and stand by my statement. You said George Bush can be charged for launching a "war of aggression".

Perhaps you worded it poorly if you now apparently don't think he can be?

 

[Travis]

Err.. for you this is not bad enough (at a time when the US supported Saddam)

How can you say that? If I had been in charge of things that alone would have been enough.

Good.
If you whitewash the support to a genocidal dictator on the basis that you did not like the people of Tehran (who were not invading anyone) you then become guilty as well of what Saddam did.

How does that work?

I did not give any support to Saddam to massacre innocent Kurds. Nor did my countries government ever do so that I'm aware of.

 

[Watanabe]

How can you say that? If I had been in charge of things that alone would have been enough.




How does that work?

I did not give any support to Saddam to massacre innocent Kurds. Nor did my countries government ever do so that I'm aware of.

Please study history, then

U.S. DOCUMENTS SHOW EMBRACE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN IN EARLY 1980s
DESPITE CHEMICAL WEAPONS, EXTERNAL AGGRESSION, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

Fear of Iraq Collapse in Iran-Iraq War Motivated Reagan Administration Support;
U.S. Goals Were Access to Oil, Projection of Power, and Protection of Allies;
Rumsfeld Failed to Raise Chemical Weapons Issue in Personal Meeting with Saddam

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm

 

[Watanabe]

WRT prosecuting Bush, first they'd need to have jurisdiction. To the best of my knowledge, Bush isn't accused of violating Swedish law on Swedish soil, so that first hurdle might not be overcome.

They need to have jurisdiction to severe military relationshiop with NATO?
Or to stop diplomatic activity with the US?
Or to say that GWB is a bad person?
Or to stop official visits to the US?