Reply #12: Race to the gallows: Behind the shabby trial and execution of Saddam Hussein

[Say_What]

Race to the gallows:

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If there is one thing one would have thought the United States and its local allies in Iraq could get right it would be dealing with Saddam Hussein. The copious evidence documenting the dictator's crimes against humanity, including mass murder and the waging of wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait , provided an ideal opportunity for an exemplary exercise in the rule of law. Instead, like everything else involving the U.S. misadventure in Iraq , the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein was a botched, shabby, affair that is more likely to generate violence and division than to serve as a shining example of justice.

What went wrong with Saddam's case is a microcosm of what is wrong with the American intervention in Iraq . The same unilateralism and contempt for international law and world opinion that led the Bush administration to defy the UN Security Council and wage an illegal war also set the stage for the debacle that the Saddam trial became. It was what motivated the rejection of an international tribunal as the proper venue for trying a former head of state accused of crimes of historical proportions and international dimensions. Instead, in order to maintain absolute control and to be able to impose the death penalty, which would have been precluded in a trail involving an international court, the United States and its Iraqi allies engineered the creation of an Iraqi tribunal to try the former dictator.

The credibility of such a court, organized under occupation by a government with dubious legitimacy, a government which itself is the product of an unlawful war, is limited at best. The conduct of the trial and the climate surrounding it, marked as it was by the murder of defense attorneys, the replacement of judges, and an atmosphere that at times seemed on the verge of descending into chaos and farce, decreased the credibility of the proceedings even further.

Moreover, the charges that ultimately led to the conviction and execution of Saddam involved crimes that pale in comparison to the former Iraqi ruler's many truly heinous acts. As a result, there will be no opportunity for justice and closure regarding the gassing of the Kurds, the aggression against Iran that resulted in more than a million deaths, the invasion of Kuwait , or many other crimes much worse than those of which Saddam was found guilty.

This makes clear that justice was never the main point; the point was to get rid of Saddam--quickly and without having to acknowledge the complicity of past U.S. administrations with the Saddam regime at the time it was committing its worse atrocities.

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