When All Else Fails...
Riverbend

… Execute the dictator. It’s that simple. When American troops are being killed by the dozen, when the country you are occupying is threatening to break up into smaller countries, when you have militias and death squads roaming the streets and you’ve put a group of Mullahs in power- execute the dictator. Everyone expected this verdict from the very first day of the trial. There was a brief interlude when, with the first judge, it was thought that it might actually be a coherent trial where Iraqis could hear explanations and see what happened. That was soon over with the prosecution’s first false witness. Events that followed were so ridiculous; it’s difficult to believe them even now. The sound would suddenly disappear when the defense or one of the defendants got up to speak. We would hear the witnesses but no one could see them- hidden behind a curtain, their voices were changed. People who were supposed to have been dead in the Dujail incident were found to be very alive. Judge after judge was brought in because the ones in court were seen as too fair. They didn’t instantly condemn the defendants (even if only for the sake of the media). The piece de resistance was the final judge they brought in. His reputation vies only that of Chalabi- a well-known thief and murderer who ran away to Iran to escape not political condemnation, but his father’s wrath after he stole from the restaurant his father ran. So we all knew the outcome upfront (Maliki was on television 24 hours before the verdict telling people not to ‘rejoice too much’). I think what surprises me right now is the utter stupidity of the current Iraqi government. The timing is ridiculous- immediately before the congressional elections? How very convenient for Bush. Iraq, today, is at its very worst since the invasion and the beginning occupation. April 2003 is looking like a honeymoon month today. Is it really the time to execute Saddam?

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A Guilty Verdict on America, as Well
Justice and Hypocrisy
by Robert Fisk

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas--along with the British, of course--yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day. Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict--nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope--don't we?--to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam. Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and--yes, in Fallujah of all places--his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

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The ISG farce, Part 2
by Pat Lang

I haven't changed my mind about the likelihood of a major change in American policy in Iraq. The "decider" ain't got it in him. What do people think he is going to "decide?" To withdraw from Iraq? If he does that, then he will be seen for all time as a failed president. He knows that. Is he going to accept giving Syria and Iran a direct stake in the outcome in Iraq? His position on Iran is public and well known. More failure on his part will be perceived if he lets the Persians play the role that they want. Syria? Hah!! Hah!! Hah!! What we should hope for is that he has no more compunction about abandoning his "game face" vis a vis the "evildoers" than he has announced with regard to the Democrats whom he was denouncing as akin to traitors a week ago. Most amazing of all is the "newsy" hysteria being generated by the 24/7 broadcast media over the ISG/SECDEF business. In recent years it has become evident that the cable news outfits have become generators of mass hysteria. They bring in their tub thumping anchors, their "experts," their favorite print news people, their favorite congress people and among themselves conduct an orgy of mutual intellectual masturbarion that starts with rumor and quickly becomes self sustaining. The Baker/ISG thing is just the latest, and will not be the last example. The same press people were deeply complicit in building war hysteria before we entered Iraq. These are the same folks who now eagerly agree with each other that "no one" could have known.

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