Robert Scheer: A Monster of Our Creation

[marmar]

Robert Scheer: A Monster of Our Creation


Posted on Jan 2, 2007


By Robert Scheer

Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush’s claim it was “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy.”

Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam’s own evil propaganda ever did.

In the most generous interpretation, the frantic killing of Saddam abetted by the United States was the third act in a morality play of misplaced vengeance for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks— in which the first act was the invasion of Iraq, based on trumped-up lies linking it to al-Qaida, and the second was the killing of the tyrant’s sons, whose bloody corpses were hypocritically displayed to the world like war scalps.

At worst, the handling of Saddam is just another example of an Imperial America under President Bush that recognizes no boundaries of national sovereignty or any restraint of international law. A nation that posed no threat to U.S. security was conquered for a range of base motives, from oil plunder to industrial profits to naked political gain. Of course, these are the same rationales that despots always use to explain their murderous wars, such as Saddam’s genocidal invasion of Iran and greedy occupation of Kuwait.

The president says the execution was warranted because Saddam received a fair trial even after Bush decided to bypass an international tribunal designed to handle such trials of national rulers and instead turn Saddam over to Iraq’s dominant partisan faction in the midst of a nascent civil war. While Saddam’s guilt of “crimes against humanity” may have been accurate, it was not, in fact, established by his trial, which was pushed through even as his lawyers were being assassinated. This, quite opposite to the spirit of the Nuremberg war crime trials (established by the United States but not repeated today by President Bush), where the accused had competent and unintimidated attorneys, free to make a complete case. .....(more)

The complete article is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070102_robert_scheer_a_monster_of_our_creation/

[pberq]

1. Yes, Robert Scheer tells it like it is. K&R

[marmar]

2. He always does.

:yourock:

[Briar]

3. an act of barbarism

as it would have been even if the super-efficient US army had carried out the state murder. Not that executions in America have been free of gruesome and ghoulish incompetence and unaccompanied by savage expressions of satisfied revenge. Although it is hard for the US to comdemn what happened without exposing its own barbarity, the hypocrisy of the UK is colossal. We have theoretically abolished that inhuman punishment - yet our leaders have found themselves incapable of condemning it (Prescott criticised the manner, not the execution itself) when it is carried out by a government which is supposedly our ally and our creation.

[BadGimp]

4. A Simple Problem Solving guide I use..

..this seems a fitting 1,000th DU post :)