http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/062507.html The Iraq-gate Cover-up Continues
By Robert Parry
June 25, 2007
In another show trial for Saddam Hussein’s compatriots – followed by more death sentences – an unnoted success for George W. Bush was how the U.S. press corps has continued to avert its eyes from the role of Westerners, including Bush’s father, in aiding and abetting Hussein’s murderous regime.
Major U.S. newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, reported on the June 24 death sentences meted out to Ali Hassan al-Majeed and two other senior Hussein aides without a single mention of the American role in helping arm and protect the Iraqi regime in the 1980s.
A special Iraqi tribunal handed down the death sentences after a tainted legal process that saw Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki oust the original chief judge for making comments viewed as favorable to the defense. The defendants also were denied the opportunity to call witnesses because of security concerns.
The prospect of real justice was impaired, too, when Maliki rushed Hussein to the gallows on Dec. 30, 2006, eliminating the possibility that the former dictator might offer explosive testimony, including how his regime got the chemical weapons that were deployed against Iranian troops and their Iraqi Kurdish allies during the Iran-Iraq War.
So, when the special tribunal resumed in January 2007, the prosecution could play an incriminating tape recording of Hussein discussing chemical weapons without the risk of him fingering U.S. officials or other Westerners.
Because of the hasty execution, Iraqi judges couldn’t turn to Hussein and question him about the tape’s authenticity or its context. An obvious follow-up would have been how Hussein had obtained the poisons that allegedly killed tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds.
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