Salon : Imagining Saddam's trial

[Manix]

<snip>

It's a good bet that, despite their apparent elation, many U.S. leaders wanted Saddam found dead, not captured alive. As they ponder the consequences they're probably increasingly upset that the disheveled fallen dictator wasn't riddled by a hail of bullets, blown up by a grenade, or self-dispatched by cyanide capsule when all seemed lost.

Instead, prominent Americans could find themselves playing a role in what may be a very long, drawn-out and embarrassing trial. Imagine, for instance, seeing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, and a parade of CIA directors and secretaries of state called as witnesses -- for the defense. Not to mention a clutch of headmen from other Western and Middle Eastern countries. This may be exactly what Saddam now craves: the chance to publicly implicate other leaders and countries in his own brutal past. It won't be difficult.


<snip>

Saddam and his attorneys might begin with footage shot back on Dec. 20, 1983, by an official Iraqi television crew when Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad as special envoy from President Ronald Reagan. Saddam, wearing a pistol on his hip, already had established himself as a brutal dictator -- as Newsweek put it, "a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon." According to the official note taker at the meeting, Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad" to the murderous tyrant.

At the time, of course, America's chief concern was Iran and its Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom Iraq had gone to war. And so, over the next five years, until the conflict finally ended, the United States supplied Saddam with economic aid and such nifty items as a computerized database for his interior ministry, satellite military intelligence, tanks and cluster bombs, deadly bacteriological samples, and the very helicopters that were used by Saddam to spew poison gas over his own Kurd citizens. And when those atrocities finally became known, the Reagan administration also lobbied to prevent any strong congressional condemnation of the Iraqi dictator.


<snip>

As for Saddam's quest for a nuclear weapon, the former dictator will point out that, if weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East are a concern, they exist in Israel and Pakistan as well. Maybe here the French could be brought forward to testify how they helped both Iraq and Israel with nuclear facilities. A host of other suppliers in the WMD field, from Germany, Italy, the U.K and the U.S., would be subpoenaed. And Saddam's lawyers might want to investigate the old charges that Vice President Dick Cheney's firm, Halliburton, violated sanctions against Iraq and provided it with oil-industry equipment. (Cheney, it will be recalled, lobbied to end U.S. sanctions against Iraq while he headed Halliburton, arguing they hurt companies like his more than dictators like Saddam.)


http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/12/16/saddam_on_trial/index.html

[Bhaisahab]

1. oh boy oh boy!

man it would be so cool if that's what saddam's game is. he's goin down, but he should take down the rest of the harlots with him.
arabs are all over saddam for his cowardice, but maybe saddam is a smart cookie. why should the bush family get a free pass while he stews in hell?
i hope saddam effects regime change in america.

[harrison]

2. This will never happen. The puppet government of our government

will put Saddam on trial in a few weeks, find him guilty and execute him. And that will be the end of Saddam. And the selected President will stand up and say that the Iraqi people wanted this.

[ClintonTyree]

3. There are many days.............

and many ways to break a man mentally and physically between now and then. I'm sure the Iraqi's (with minimal prodding from US forces) will use each and every one of them on Saddam before the start of any "trial". The Saddam we see (if he's seen at all) at that trial will be a man that has no doubt had his testacles hot wired a few times, and that would be on the good days. Not that that's a bad thing, the guy deserves it. However, Saddam will be a shell of his former self at the time of the trial.