GUEST 16 Dec 03 - 11:40 AM

"One of the top Pentagon media whores for NBC here in the US said that it has always been the Pentagon and administration plan to publicly humiliate Saddam if he was captured alive."

Why do you think they took that stance? What do you think was the reasoning behind that decision?

As to it being, "...a pretty blatant violation of the Geneva convention, regardless of the fact that Saddam was the leader of the nation. His official status is still prisoner of war, and the Bush administration admitted that officially yesterday."

Brings up pretty interesting point in relation to past history, by declaring him a prisoner of war, they have in actual fact demoted him. Your sentence above should have read, "particularly due to" instead of, "regardless of". Because I think if memory serves me correctly convention pre-dating Geneva by at least a couple of hundred years (possibly more) has precluded the leaders of nations being brought to trial and executed.

Some examples from History;

Napoleon Bonaparte
After his defeat at Waterloo, tried to throw himself on the mercy of the Prince Regent, advice at the time was not to let him set foot on British soil, where he would have recourse to English Law. He was packed off to St.Helena and exile, no trial, no embarassing precedent.

Kaiser Bill
Allowed to flee to Holland to live out his years in peace.

Mussolini
The problem did not arise as he was murdered by his own people and saved the allies from setting an embarassing precedent.

Hitler
Committed suicide and saved the allies from setting an embarassing precedent.

Idi Amin
Allowed to flee into exile

The Shah of Iran
Allowed to flee into exile

Charles Taylor
Allowed to flee into exile

I do not believe that the standing of the US is at an all time low - far from it.

And Saddam's latest television appearance did make him look bad, maybe not in your eyes, but in the eyes of those whose viewing this was specifically targeted at it made him look very bad indeed, irrespective of what they might say in public.

Whenever I read a paragraph such as your last ("what their people feel and believe", world opinion and vox populi) I remember one thing from recent history - Kosovo

Left vox populi - there would not be one single ethnic Albanian left alive in Kosovo, and Slobodan Milosevic would still be President of Serbia (by the way he is only facing trial now because he was run out of office first).