Saddam Hussein's Legal Farce Begins

There are a few terms for legal charades: kangaroo court, show trial, and now, Saddam Hussein's trial. By whatever name one calls it, it is a political event masquerading as a legal case. That makes for poor law and worse politics. In the end, the revenge of the Iraqi people will be visited on the former dictator, but Mussolini's fate had a great deal more honesty to it.

The ridiculous "arraignment" foreshadowed the events that are likely to drag on for months (in a similar case, Slobodon Milosevic has been on trial for two and a half years, and one of the judges has died). Saddam Hussein received a document laying out his rights and the charges -- he refused to sign it. He insisted that he was entitled to be called "president" of Iraq. He said that President Bush is the real criminal. He said that he had heard about the gassing of Kurds in Halabja on TV, rather than ordering it. When told that he could have a court-appointed lawyer if he couldn't afford one, he replied that the Americans said he had millions in Geneva, so he could probably afford one.

However, the farce was not merely an episode of "Saddam the Clown" show. The initial pictures from the courtroom had no sound. The poor CNN pool reporter was grilled by his colleagues in a way few politicians could withstand regarding not only what happened, but what Arabic word was used. Eventually, the sound (no doubt having been vetted for acceptability by those who ordered it omitted from the first release) did hit the media. This raises the question of whether, in future, the sound record will not appear when certain "sensitive" subject arise.

What might those be? There is the entire matter of the Iran-Iraq war. Since one of the charges involves this war of aggression, a perfectly sound and reasonable defense seeking mitigation might be to ask who helped him arm his military, how arms purchases got funded, and did that aid prolong the killing. The picture below might be useful evidence for the defense.

At Nuremberg, the Nazi hierarchy maintained that the Allies weren't in a position to pass judgment on them because the Allies had committed the same sorts of crimes -- tu quo que in legalese. General Jodl had demanded various documents from the Allies related to their war crimes (e.g., Dresden), and in the end, the prosecution had to persuade the judges (who as members of Allied governments, probably didn't need much persuading) to reject the argument.

In Baghdad, things might just be trickier, since the judges are Iraqi and since they just might want to embarrass the Americans and British to prove their independence from the occupation forces that exist de facto if not de jure. Worse for the Yanks and Limeys, the argument won't be "you did the same," but rather, "you helped me do it." Perhaps it isn't too late to the former Iraqi president to be shot while trying to escape.







© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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