Most Evil - Bush or Saddam

[lligrd]

I once thought Saddam was the most evil man in the world. I recall, many years ago, watching a video of him in a conference calling people's names out and having them removed, one by one to be executed. It was horrifying. God, how I hated him after watching that. I actually used to dream of ways to kill him. He was right next to Hitler in my book of evil. Never would I have thought that anyone could supplant Saddam in the role of the second most evil person of all time and yet Bush has managed to. At least, Saddam did manage to do some good for his country, Bush -I sure can't think of anything, can you?

[EST]

1. If "most evil" has anything to do with the inherent capacity to do

the greatest damage, it's bush-hands down.

[MonkeyFunk]

2. I don't think it's a question of evil

I think the word "evil" is almost meaningless. It's used to mean people who do bad things with which I disagree.

Doing bad things isn't always evil per se.

War is a bad thing, but it's not always evil to do so. Like pornography, we define "evil" as "I know it when I see it."

That being said, Saddam did bad things that are very very hard to justify. For me, there is no justification. It was direct, immediate and blatant.

Bush? Meh... I don't agree with a lot of people here who think he's motivated by the desire to kill a lot of people for sexual satisfaction or some other reasons. I think he's a guy who wants very desperately to be an admired leader, and has failed miserably.

Can we measure evil purely by results? Who killed the most? Then we have to list Stalin as the most evil man who ever lived. But to me, any true evil has to come from people who truly enjoy their crimes. It's not a mindset I can understand, but evidently, it exists.

But if I had to choose, I'd say Saddam was more evil. He was certainly more ruthless, and I think ruthlessness is often conflated with evil here.

[lligrd]

5. I Think Bush Is Led By The Motivation To Prove Himself Better

than his Daddy and doesn't mind how many peolple have to die for his ludicrous dream. Not sure what Saddam's otives were but at least he had a better pretext of cause than Bush has for his killings.

[MonkeyFunk]

11. I agree

as far as I'm not a psychologist, but that seems to be the most reasonable explanation to me.

As to pretext for killing, I honestly don't think people consider the issues in that way.

We have lost a lot of people in worthy wars. Those who died, and those who commanded them, are historical heroes today. We've also lost a lot of people in petty wars, led by people who WANT to be historical heroes.

Bush is a pissant. A nobody. A true schmuck. By virtue of a fortuitous birth, he got some power, and he's fucked it all up.

But I will still maintain, against the popular wave here, that he's not evil. He doesn't enjoy this war. He just believes in it.

That makes him dumb, not evil.

And we should be very careful in the future not to let dumb people become President.

[Selatius]

3. Bush did some good.

He gave tax cuts to Wall Street, and he allowed the oil companies to write our energy policy. Actually, that was probably Dick Cheney's doing with the Energy Taskforce, but you get the picture.

On second thought, perhaps your attention is misdirected. Maybe Cheney is even worse than Bush, since I get the impression Bush is little more than a stooge of Cheney.

[lligrd]

12. Cheney Would Have Been My First Choice

if he had the power. I am not sure if being the string puller should count or not. If so, a lot of other could come into play too.

[MonkeyFunk]

4. one niggling point...

In a comparison between two things, it should be "more evil", not "most evil".

[lligrd]

8. True - But I Did Have Hitler In Mind Too

So give me a break. And it is late and cold out here.

[MonkeyFunk]

13. It's cold here

too. I apologize for being a pedant.

But if you knew pedants, you'd know we can't help it. :D

[krispos42]

6. Well, Bush hasn't gassed anybody yet

But he does have hundreds of thousands of dead on his hands, both directly and indirectly. 300,000 Kurds dies under Saddam's ordered gas attack in one instance alone. I doubt forces commanded by Bush have killed that many.

However, we're responsible for unleashing a civil war in Iraq. Between the direct deaths caused by US military action and the civil-war-related deaths, we're talking somewhere in the 700,000 range.

Doubtless there are many more deaths that Saddam indirectly caused with the routine use of his secret police, the damming of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (which destroyed the fishing areas of many Shia villagers, resulting in incredible hardship and starvation, and the 8-year war with Iran.

It's a tough call. But Saddam is dead. Bush still has up to two more years to cause the deaths of a lot of people.

[lligrd]

18. Bush still has up to two more years

UGH!!!

[SammyWinstonJack]

26. That we know of anyway. nt

[sniffa]

39. bush wouLd have gassed peopLe had

texas had the gas chamber, and not LI.

[yurbud]

7. you would need a formula to assign value to intent, potential harm, and actual harm caused

[lligrd]

20. Okay But I Will Need Some Help

Given: I = intent P = potential harm and A = actual harm, what is the equation?

[yurbud]

55. I(P+A) but I can't think of a way to make this come out with Bush being nicer

[Cocoa]

9. watch "Saddam -- America's best enemy"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7676437862218318121&q=saddam+enemy&hl=en

Excellent account of the relationship between the U.S. and Saddam's career, including of course that episode you mention with the purges.

[lligrd]

17. Saved It To Watch Later

Don't need extra fodder for dreams tonight.

[yurbud]

10. It's unfair, like comparing Bush to Hitler. One was a war hero, great orator, self-made man

and the other was Bush.

As bad as Saddam was, no one would call him a wuss. And if Bush was on his way to the gallows, he would have pissed himself, been shreiking like a banshee, and alternatively threatening, bribing, and begging right up to the drop.

[lligrd]

16. You Have A Good Point

and as much as I despise Bushh, even I don't want to witness his pathetic response to death. I think life in prison would do - can't guarantee that this would prevent the screaming like a Banshee though.

[Vidar]

44. Well said.

[malaise]

14. Where did you see that video?

Seriously!

[lligrd]

19. On TV - A documentary

probably PBS. And it was horrifying - actual footage of them being taken out of the meeting one by one as their names were slowly called. Didn't show the executions just the removals from the "meeting". And these were people in his administration.

[Cocoa]

21. at the 18:30 point in this video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7676437862218318121&q=saddam+enemy&hl=en

his purges in response to the Iranian revolution, which he feared would spread to Iraq.

[malaise]

22. Thanks to both of you

I'll watch later.

[Nimrod2005]

15. Bush is, BY FAR.....nt

[ellisonz]

23. Saddam.

:hide:

[Raine]

56. I agree nt

[MathEducation]

24. GW Bush and malignant egophrenia...

Perhaps evil is best represented in the human situation in the form of unprovoked hatred against and coupled with an aggressive impulse to cause harm to another person or group. Such hatred can be aroused from within the individual or group through jealousy, wrong teachings or due to unexplained extra-personal forces.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.shtml

Malignant egophrenia, unrecognized and misdiagnosed until now, has wreaked havoc all throughout human history, and is at the very root of our current world crisis. By recognizing the nature of this collective psychosis, we snap out of being part of it.

[Name removed]

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[LynnTheDem]

30. What did Saddam do for his country, you ask?

A lot.

And if you read up on this fact, you'd discover it is, in fact, fact.

[Name removed]

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[LynnTheDem]

36. No problem.

Was he vicious? Yep.

Would I want him as a leader? Hell no.

Did he do any good for his county? Yep.

I can't link on this computer (have to type out in full which is a PITA) so can give you further links tonight if you truly want them;

-Under Hussein, Iraq had more PhDs than any other nation in the world; education was free and open to all.

-Hussein won humanitarian awards for his education programs.

-Iraqi women had the most freedoms of any ME nation.

-Hussein was for secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization and suppressed the very Shia militias that are killing our troops in Iraq today.

-Under Hussein, Iraq's social services were unprecedented in the ME.

-Under Hussein, Iraq had one of the best (and free) medical services of any nation and in fact was rated a first-world service.

Much of the above info can be found here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

Iraqis are WORSE OFF NOW than they were under Saddam Hussein. And that's a fact.

And other facts the US "media" and bush regime never bother to mention;

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3135341

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3780745

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3801741

[Name removed]

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[sniffa]

40. contrary to popuLar beLief

mussoLin actuaLLy did not make the trains run on time.

[LynnTheDem]

46. FACT; Iraqis are WORSE OFF NOW than they were under Hussein.

That is a FACT. In many ways. In most ways. In pretty much all ways.

Life under Hussein was BETTER than it is now.

That's a FACT.

[Name removed]

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[LynnTheDem]

47. Iraqis are WORSE OFF NOW than they were under Hussein.

That is a FACT.

"Freedom" is sure as fuck NOTHING to do with bush's illegal immoral invasion of Iraq.

Or have you been sleeping all this time?

[jmowreader]

34. That's a loaded question

Besides the best medical system in the Middle East, sexually-integrated schools, a fairly decent public works system (at least until Bush 41 imposed the post-Desert Storm sanctions and it all fell apart), Christians and women in his government, the closest divide between rich and poor of any oil-producing nation in that area, the lowest terrorist population of any country in the Middle East, and a legal system not directly extracted from the Koran, what the fuck DID Saddam do for his country?

If you can get past the fact that he really liked murdering, torturing and raping people who pissed him off, he wasn't that bad a leader.

Saddam was really creative in his tortures too. One of his favorites was to pick someone who pissed him off (it didn't take much), arrest him and his wife, throw them in a special jail cell, then put their baby in a basket just out of arm's reach of the cell and let them watch it starve to death.

Saddam Hussein was evil beyond the ability of modern man to describe him. We can still describe how evil Bush is.

[Dutch]

27. Saddam...but Bush is in charge of a far more powerful country,

and is therefore far more dangerous than Saddam was.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. That anyone is even bothering to ask this is an indictment of their grasp of reality.

The answer is, of course, Saddam, by an unimaginably vast margin. If you have any doubt of this, imagine a parallel universe where Bush had come to power in Iraq, and Saddam in America, and each had ruled the way they have in reality.

I am aware that DUers love to hate Bush, and that the fact that he hated Saddam Hussein makes them disinclined to agree with him, but this kind of ludicrous comparison serves no-one except the right wing, and certainly doesn't do anything to help anyone understand anything.

[helderheid]

35. WELL SAID

:applause:

[LynnTheDem]

29. George W. bUsh won the coveted 2006 Worst Villian award.

Beat the pants off OBL and Hussein.

So I'll stand by the majority and say bush. He's worse than Hussein by a long shot.

[Tektonik]

32. who cares

they were both evil fucks, one's gone, and hopefully the other isn't far behind

[bdamomma]

33. bush and his cabal

[demrabble]

41. Bush....By A Long Shot

Bush is much more evil than Saddam ever was.

Bush has brought nothing but war and destruction and he has destroyed our rights.

[Name removed]

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[Marr]

42. Both were/are essentially tools of the same power center, so I

can't really draw much of a disctinction between them, morally. Hussein was the Iraqi expression of the same ideal Bush stands for: authoritarianism.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

45. I don't know who's more mentally depraved

but I do know that Bush and his policies have resulted in more evil than Saddam's did.

[SanCristobal]

59. Have they really?

Saddam's policies resulted in the death of well over a million people, and very possibly upwards of two million. The Iran-Iraq War and Gulf War were both the result of Hussein's aggression. The current war can arguably be included in this list. Saddam's government brutally repressed the Iraqi population and likely killed over 100,000 of it's own citizens.

When Bush goes before Congress and reads of the names of those congressmen to be dragged out and killed, someone start this thread. Until that happens stop making everyone on this site look like an apologist fool in complete ignorance of the brutal reality Hussein forced onto three nations.

[MrSlayer]

48. Saddam second most evil ever? Ridiculous.

Saddam didn't even come close to killing millions of people. Stalin killed almost three times the amount Hitler did. Mao in China killed even more than Stalin. Pol Pot killed millions. Bush has killed hundreds of thousands. In the grand scheme of things Saddam was a small fry.

Bush has outkilled Saddam by a very large margin in a much shorter amount of time.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

50. I think you need to rethink that.

Nearly all the deaths that are attributed to Bush are people who have been killed in Iraq not by Americans or their allies, but by people hostile to America.

The logic goes that, while they're not working for or at the desire of Bush, it was his actions that made their's inevitable, and so he is responsible.

Precisely the same argument could be applied to Saddam Hussein, however. He bears at least as much responsibility for the mess Iraq is currently in - it might well have disintegrated this way on his death even without American intervention, unless foreign powers had intervened to stabilise it in some way.

[MrSlayer]

51. Really? So "Shock and Awe" was by Iraqis?

Many thousands were killed by the relentless bombing at the beginning and the aftermath of it. No power, no food, no potable water, no medical help all are the fault of the PNAC neo-cons. I think you have attribute all of the deaths since the start of the conflict to Bush since he and his cronies are the ones who set all of these events in motion. If Saddam had been left in power and Iraq was not invaded the sectarian violence would have never happened. Saddam was not a nice guy by any stretch but he is not to blame for the deaths and the fiasco that is raging in his former country. Even if he had died of natural causes sometime in the future there was structure in place for a relatively smooth transition of power to one of his sons or another higher up in the Baath party.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

52. The Americans killed low tens of thousands directly.

The hundreds of thousands of deaths Bush has been accused of are the result of the damage caused by the subsequent sectarian violence, both directly and as indirectly through destroying and preventing the repair of infrastructure.

Like most wars, the number of people killed *in* it has been negligable compared with the number of people who have died *as a result* of it. "Shock and awe" was really not the problem - the actual fighting of the Iraqi army and the removal of Saddam was the one part of the operation that went reasonably well.

[shadowknows69]

49. Up until Bush said that Iraqis owe us gratitude for destroying their country

I would have said Saddam, but he can't do evil anymore. Bush is just getting started.

[lonestarnot]

53. Two peas from the same pod, equally evil.

[Marnieworld]

54. Why must you write for Limbaugh? eom

[frazzledmom]

57. Agreed... threads like this do nothing

except bring more scorn to DU. Tomorrow on all the righty talk shows they'll be talking about the Bush haters on DU who love Saddam and hate Bush. Saddam was a piece of shit who was given a chance to become a martyr thanks to the incompetence of the Bush administration. Bush is just a piece of shit.

[Ahpook]

58. Fuck is this?

A reality show?

We have a grave problem in this country. Actually, this is a global problem.

Who is the best guitarist?

Who is the best band?

Who is the biggest whore in Hollywood?

See you guys on the 27th