Saddam's Verdict
I know Saddam was a bad guy, and he probably needs to be punished for his actions. There’s no question about that, but I have three major problems with the latest trial that prevent me from celebrating it.
1. It was clearly an October surprise meant to influence the midterm elections. The trial/verdict was scheduled to take place in mid-October and it was postponed. Why? Why do it just two days before the midterm elections? There’s absolutely no reason for this type of timing. It could have waited another week just to ensure that no suspicions arose. But now Bush is trying to show American voters that Iraq has some successes and remind them of how much of a bad guy Saddam was. This is so highly politicized it’s not even funny.
2. This was by no means a fair trial. Most international legal experts agree. This trial was 100% showmanship. There was little, if any, formal evidence provided. Saddam was never formally indicted. There is not supposed to be bias in the courtroom. There was insurmountable bias against Saddam Hussein. Any verdict from such a trial is totally illegitimate and should be disregarded. Try him abroad or give him a fair trial not supervised by the US occupational regime and its lackeys.
“The problem really is that this tribunal has not shown itself to be fair and impartial — not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards,” said Sonya Sceats, an international law expert at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London.
Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Malaysian-based International Movement for a Just World, also voiced concerns that Saddam’s trial “violated many established norms of international jurisprudence.”
3. I would not oppose giving Saddam the death penalty, but by hanging is totally inhumane. Even the Vatican and EU Council on Human Rights agree. Hanging is a barbaric and painful death, and if whoever hangs Saddam is guilty of whatever he’s guilty of.
Isn’t there some sort of statute of limitations whereby crimes conducted 20 years ago can’t be tried? Furthermore, if Saddam is going to be guilty for crimes committed by his soldiers against Shi’ites from a town that posed a threat to Saddam’s reign (Dubail was targeted because some of its citizens had plotted to assasinate Saddam) then why isn’t George W Bush culpable for the atrocities committed by American soldiers in Haditha and Abu Ghraib, among other places? Why isn’t Bush held responsible for every dead civilian at the hands of an American soldiers, just as Saddam is held responsiblef or every dead civilians at the hands of his henchmen?
Has anyone else noticed that everything Saddam is being put on trial for occurred with the blessing of the Reagan administration back in the 1980s? They gave him the weapons, finances, and intelligence to fight a proxy war against Iran. It was amidst this proxy war that he encountere disloyal elements of the Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish minorities and dealt with them. I totally condemtn Saddam’s actions in Halabja and the use of torture in his jails and the disgusting atrocities committed against civilians in other parts of Iraq, but please, let’s have a fair trial.
The oppressed have become the oppressors. Story of the world.
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“then why isn’t George W Bush culpable for the atrocities committed by American soldiers in Haditha and Abu Ghraib, among other places?”
Because he did not order these atrocities to be done.
In contrast to the default assumption of many being American doesn’t make you automatically guilty. You still have to give the order, like Saddam did.
Your “international legal experts” appear to be idiots. But appeal to authority is a fallacy anyway. Can you explain in your own words where exactly the trial failed and why you so easily dismiss the Iraqi government and their judges as a show?
You have very little respect for the elected government of Iraq, that has been apparent for a while. May I ask why? Can it be that you assume that since the elections only happened due to the American invasion, you take it as read that there must be something fishy about it?
“This was by no means a fair trial.”
Indeed. The man murdered hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites and Kurds, started several wars that killed over a million people. His handling of Iraq in the 1990s caused millions of children to die in hospitals because he couldn’t be bothered to allow medicine that the UN tried to deliver to be delivered.
There could not have been a fair trial for such an animal! Did you even look at the photographs of the Kurdish victims; at the pictures of the mass graves uncovered after the invasion? Did you ever read the stories of Saddam’s victims? I did. I have no sympathy for the man. And he deserves nothing. A show trial would have been too good for him, everything would have been too good for him.
As for George Bush, may G-d bless him. I myself grew up in a country the Americans attacked and liberated, and I know how well it can work out if one doesn’t hate the Americans. Hate never works, anyway.
“Has anyone else noticed that everything Saddam is being put on trial for occurred with the blessing of the Reagan administration back in the 1980s?”
Yes. And if George Bush had not deposed him now, Saddam’s current crimes would have been committed during the Bush administration in the 2000s. There is no pleasing some people.
“They gave him the weapons, finances, and intelligence to fight a proxy war against Iran.”
If you had done your research you would know that the US were a very minor source of weapons for Iraq. They were not even statistically relevant.
France, China, and Russia were Saddam’s sources. The Americans had nothing to do with it. (In fact, the Reagan administration got into trouble for selling arms to Iran during the war.)
But SOMEHOW this must have been America’s fault, right?
“arms deals”
noun, plural
A magical way for nationalist dictators to be armed and supported by the United States and end up with Russian and French weapons. This is not considered odd.
“then why isn’t George W Bush culpable for the atrocities committed by American soldiers in Haditha and Abu Ghraib, among other places?â€
Sorry, but I have to ask… did it even occur to you for a moment that whether somebody is culpable has anything at all to do with whether he has actually committed the crime?
For example, Saddam ORDERED his troops to murder. George Bush did not, if only, and I work on the George Bush is evil angle here, because it is bad publicity.
In short, is the question above a joke, or did you really not understand the difference between ordering atrocities and punishing soldiers who commit them without orders?
And did it occur to you that murdering hundreds of thousands, or so many that you need mass graves to get rid of the bodies (it is not easy vanishing thousands of bodies, that’s why the Nazis needed furnaces) is not quite the same as the odd murder?
“Can you explain in your own words where exactly the trial failed and why you so easily dismiss the Iraqi government and their judges as a show?”
For one thing the chief judge resigned for going to easy on the defense and was replaced not only with an Iraqi who had opposed Saddam, but one Halabja (poision gas was used to kill thousands of Kurds there) no less!
Also Defence lawyers were assinated (they were not safe in Iraq), and the defendants were not allowed lawyers of their choice.
Then there are the witnesses, the Judge suddenly decided
“You’ve presented 62 witnesses. If that’s not enough to present your case, then 100 won’t work,”
Not that he didn’t say “you may only have 62 witnesses” he merely forbade the last 38 or so from testifying, do you really think those 62 are the 62 best witnesses? The defence was prevented form making it’s case.
Also, the prosecution presented evidence in court that had not been provided for the defence beforehand, a very serious issue.
This is all particularly galling in that it is superfluous, he would have been convicted in a fair trial almost certainly, so why make it a fake one?
Saddam’s trial was your typical third world backward trial and anything that comes out of it is basically not justice, but a political agenda for those who were prosecuting him. This trial was a joke… if this had happened in Canada or the US in a way it had, the judge would have thrown out the case.
That was so true on Iraq. Keep spreading the turth and the ignorant will have to stop and think. That’s if there capable.