He’s back. Iraq’s currently imprisoned former president has dictated an open letter through his chief lawyer in which he assures the Iraqi people that “victory is at hand” and calls for their magnanimity towards each other despite recent internecine political differences.
He called on Iraqi Sunnis forgive even those informants who helped the US to track down and kill his two sons, in 2003.
Meanwhile, officials in the “Iraqi” (actually US-dominated) Special Tribunal that has been trying Saddam on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity say that the judges there might deliver the first set of verdicts– on charges related to the killing of 148 Shiites in Dujail in 1982– on November 5.
It is quite possible that, as prosecutors have requested, Saddam might receive a death sentence in that trial. One unresolved question is whether the court will stay “execution” of that sentence long enough to allow completion of the second trial to which he and a group of associates are being subjected– the one involving charges of genocide for his part in the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1989.
I would guess that Saddam may have decided to issue his “open letter” now because he fears being silenced fairly soon– either by the imposition of the death penalty, or by imposition of strict restraints on his ability to communicate with his lawyer.
By the way, I’ve just been going through some of my old posts– both here on JWN and on Transitional Justice Forum– on the Saddam trial. Here are some of the more informative ones:
- December 17, 2003
June 30, 2004
September 27, 2005
October 18, 2005
October 19, 2005
November 10, 2005
December 22, 2005 (a)
December 22, 2005 (b)
January 29, 2006
February 16, 2006
It is true that, as noted in several of the posts above, there have been many procedural problems with the trial of Saddam Hussein– starting, as Nehal Bhuta noted in a comment on that December 2003 post of mine, with the illegal arrogation by the US occupying power of the “right” to control the whole trial process. But still, this man who is responsible for having launched two brutal wars of external aggression and is credibly accused of having committed genocide and crimes against humanity at home has nonetheless been afforded some form of a semi-open trial process and the dignity of enjoying minimally acceptable conditions of confinement… Whereas right now, in Guantanamo, there languish hundreds of prisoners taken from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world by the US, who have been held in quite inhumane conditions– some of them for nearly five years now– and have not had the benefit of anything like a credible trial…
You could say, “that’s life”? No, I think you should say that is how politics and the untrameled exercise of power by the strong over the weak always tend to work…
I did think to myself that he might usefully be sentenced to sorting out the mess for the rest of his natural life.
“I did think to myself that he might usefully be sentenced to sorting out the mess for the rest of his natural life.”
This is an appropriate sentence for Bush & co.
In a way Hussein’s trial reminds me of an ironic episode in “Slaughterhouse Five” where in the middle of the vast carnage of Dresden a looter is executed for stealing a teapot.
I think part of the reason Hussein gets a relatively normal trial and the Guantanamo prisoners don’t is that Bush is confident of convicting Hussein but not the others.
What is going on in the trial of Saddam Hussein is the mirror image of the situation in the US. We holding SH personally responsible for every act of violence commited by his regime. Yet he did not personally execute the masses of Shiia or Kurds. Other humans pulled the triggers, released the gas, tortured and raped. Hundreds, if not thousands of Iraqis executed and mutilated other Iraqis.
Yet, in the US, when cases of torture, rape and murder of Iraqis are exposed, we insist that it ia merely a “few bad apples” who are out of line, and the leaders are completely guilt-free.
Are we in the Looking-Glass World, or are the hapless Iraqis?
Are we in the Looking-Glass World?
Equating the Bush Administration, however deplorable some of its policies may be, with the Saddam regime not only cheapens the discourse but tells far more about the poster than about American conduct.
I agree that one cannot reasonably compare the regime of a united Iraq under Saddam Hussein (which often served America’s purposes) with the regime of a disintegrating Iraq under George W. Bush (which seems mostly to serve Iran’s and Israel’s purposes). The American individual in the unfair comparison — despite his avowal that “a higher father” directs his disastrous decisions — has, by his own admission, “lowered expectations” too far for any such equation. Say what we will of the secular Baathist Saddam Hussein, at least he never said that “GAWD” made him do those awful things of which he stands accused by a crusading Calvinist zealot whose own personal deity will apparently excuse, if not rejoice in, just about anything — no standards of equivalent measurement need apply.
at least he never said that “GAWD” made him do those awful things
No, the one claiming that he talks to God is the other mofo next to Iraq:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6055834.stm
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly delivered a scathing attack on US President George W Bush, saying he is inspired by Satan.
Speaking to a group of supporters, Mr Ahmadinejad said he himself had inspirational links to God, Iranian media reports.
Helena
This is possibly only tangentially connected.
However I suspect it is relevant to the discussion of the leaving of Iraq.
It is a description of the reaction to French treatment of their loyalists in Algeria.
http://www.jordantimes.com/wed/news/news8.htm
It is worth a read particularly by those young enough to have to do business in the future between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
In a way Hussein’s trial reminds me of an ironic episode in “Slaughterhouse Five” where in the middle of the vast carnage of Dresden a looter is executed for stealing a teapot.
Right, because Hussein crimes are akin to teapot theft. Well put.
at least he never said that “GAWD” made him do those awful things
Actually he has, many times. eg “We are believers. We believe in what he decides. There is no value for any life without imam, without faith. ” He also inscribed the Iraqi flag with a religious slogan, and had a Koran written in his own blood.
“Equating the Bush Administration, however deplorable some of its policies may be, with the Saddam regime not only cheapens the discourse but tells far more about the poster than about American conduct.”
More Iraqis have died under Bush than under Saddam. And the way things are going, someday we can say that more PEOPLE died under Bush than Saddam – but we are not there YET.
More Iraqis have died under Bush than under Saddam.
Saddam bears responsibility for each of the million or so deaths caused by sanctions. He’s responsible for every death in the Iran-Iraq war, and the invasion of Kuwait. He’s responsible for everyone killed by the genocidal Anfal campaign. He’s killed far more Iraqis than George Bush, even accepting at face value the [totally implausible] figures proposed by the latest Lancet study. Maybe in reality-based blog-land all this stuff is akin to teapot theft?