Dear Graham, to be perfectly honest, I felt sorry for Sadaam, and took no personal joy in his grisly death. May God indeed have mercy on his soul, yes, but Gods mercy is based on His revealed self. If I might point to the words of our Lord and the very first word of the 'good' news..the Gospel is.. 'repent' ...for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Sadaam had the chance to say something like "I now commit my soul into the hands of Almighty God, may He forgive me of my sins" I probably would not have even written my other piece. But because he claimed specifically that "Mohammed is the Messenger of God".... I take issue with this.

Paul was red hot on 'those preaching another gospel' even to the point of saying "Let them be eternally condemned" (Galatians 1) so, it is no light thing to mess with the Word of Salvation in Gods eyes.

Its nice to hear of you sharing in fellowship 'as' part of the Church at the place of worship... I hope and pray that they will proclaim the Gospel there, and call on one and all, individual and national, to repentance and humble worship.

I don't subscribe to the view 'One God, many roads' as I find this contrary to scripture. There are many paths to Christ, but only one way to God, and that is indeed our Lord and Saviour. Outside of scripture, we are simply speculating.

C.J. I note that you seek to use even Sadaams death to connect your Great Satan figure the USA to various crimes, but while you have a point, you fail to point to your 'good guy' who will bring us all to Utopia. Hmmm would it be International Socialism ? (choke) or worse 'Bob Brown' ?

freeranger "You can take any way you like CR. You obviously want to live in a dream. "

the whimp speaks

Boaz: "C.J. I note that you seek to use even Sadaams death to connect your Great Satan figure the USA to various crimes, but while you have a point, you fail to point to your 'good guy' who will bring us all to Utopia. Hmmm would it be International Socialism ? (choke) or worse 'Bob Brown' ? "

Only those who suffer from religiously-inspired delusions would refer to the USA as the "Great Satan". I certainly didn't.

Similarly, the need for an imagined Utopia and 'good guy' to follow is also characteristic of those who don't have sufficient moral and intellectual resources to deal with the world rationally. As far as I'm aware "international socialism" is now largely restricted to the naive fantasies of a handful of wide-eyed uni students and their feral hangers-on.

Certainly, I don't imagine that Bob Brown (or any other Green parliamentarian) would want to be associated with the credulous ideology of "international socialism", since they invariably take any opportunity to distinguish themselves from the remnant wannabe "trotskyist" elements who try to hijack the Green movement to their doomed cause.

I hold no brief for Saddam but his army was beaten, he was found in a hole in the ground, he had some sort of a farsical trial and then hung by the neck.
He was a defeated person, family dead or scattered. I do not know but was he any worse than any other totalitarian leader? Did he do worse than others?
Better had they put a bullet in his brain when he was found.
It is a dark victory.

"...but Gods mercy is based on His revealed self."
Posted by BOAZ_David, Monday, 1 January 2007 8:09:27 AM

I thought that Jesus' prayer on the Cross, 'Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.' established that Christian forgiveness and mercy operated irrespective of the ignorance or revelation of the recepient.

CR, I doubt this will do any good because the only information you want to believe comes straight from the Pentagon. It doesn’t really matter what you or I believe, in the ultimate it will be a judge who will decide the guilt or innocence of war criminals (if they are allowed). There are many international lawyers who are trying to get a hearing against US officials. Donald Rumsfeld’s crimes are more than the war of aggression in Iraq. Lawyers claim evidence that he participated in the highest levels of decision-making allowing the extrajudicial execution of several people. This breaches the Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime. You may not acknowledge the authenticity of the material, but in his book Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh described the special-access program (SAP) established by Bush. It authorized the Defence Department to set up a team of Special Forces to operate outside the confines of international law and assassinate anyone considered a high-value Al Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world. Rumsfeld expanded SAP into Iraq in August 2003.
Rumsfeld sanctioned torture and degrading treatment, which are also breaches of the Geneva Convention. Rumsfeld authorised the interrogation and torture of a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, at Guantánamo in late 2002. Rumsfeld was given weekly updates on the progress of the interrogation. As Commander in Chief George W Bush was also aware of the interrogation techniques.
If they were not responsible for war crimes, Bush would hardly have taken steps to protect officials in his administration from prosecution in the International Criminal Court. All I am suggesting is that if the rule of law is supposedly what underpins our civilisation – how can you or anyone else justify a double standard