http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/opinion/06mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=sloginThe Saddam Hussein Verdict Published: November 6, 2006
Saddam Hussein’s horrendous crimes deserve exemplary punishment. During his own dictatorship, that would have meant a gruesome death, after a staged trial or no trial.
In an Iraq fully liberated from his evil thrall, it might have been something very different — an exemplary exercise in the rule of law, aimed at holding Mr. Hussein fully acountable, but also at healing and educating a nation he so ruthlessly divided.
Regrettably, yesterday’s sentence to death by hanging in a case involving the execution of 148 Shiites in the 1980s fell somewhere short of that goal. Mr. Hussein got a fairer trial than he ever would have allowed in his courts. But Iraq got neither the full justice nor the full fairness it deserved. President Bush overreached in calling the trial “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.”
From the beginning, the now dominant Shiite and Kurdish politicians have been determined to use Mr. Hussein’s trial and punishment to further their own political ends, as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has continued to do in recent days.
Mr. Hussein, as expected, repeatedly tried to mock the proceedings.
More seriously, powerful politicians regularly tried to influence the outcome, judges were not allowed to rule impartially, and defense lawyers were denied security measures and documents they needed. - snip -
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