print“As repugnant as it was, [Saddam’s] hasty hanging was far less offensive —and certainly not illegal —than the legal proceedings that preceded it.
Saddam’s trial did not even qualify as a show trial. Justice coming out of terror-riddled Iraq better resembles the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (or Mike Nifong’s in Durham County). Masquerading as a court of law, the Iraqi, US-sponsored, Tribunal is more like the French Revolutionary Assembly, meting justice by popular demand…”
The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily column, “No Due Process for a Despot,” in which, in addition to explaining why Saddam was not accorded due process (as well as why we should care), I offer a plausible explanation as to why the US did not object to Saddam’s “hasty hanging.” (With thanks to my daughter for her original suggestion.)
In regard to your theory as to the real reason for the hasty hanging–I am reminded of a joke I heard a while back.
Question: Why is Rumsfeld so sure he can prove that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?
Answer: He kept the reciepts.
Our hypocrisy has no bounds. We are desperately doing everything it takes to justify the assassination of this “monster”, while, In just over 3 years, we have killed and done more harm to Iraq than this guy did in 25 years. Enough of this “holier than thou” nonsense.
“Future trials would have recorded for posterity how the US succored Saddam at his most monstrous. Hence the hasty hanging.”
Why the Machiavellian analysis? Four days ago you put your finger on a far more likely reason for Saddam’s hasty hanging:
“Violence in Iraq is rising and is going to continue to rise no matter what. As the idio-experts have discovered, violence in Iraq is a certain thing.”
Yes, Saddam’s hasty hanging spared us two or three years of Ramsey Clark wannabees ranting on a world stage against the alleged war crimes of the United States. No matter. There are still the written rants of Clark, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for posterity to rely on.
[I think you misunderstood which idio-experts I meant. I certainly did not mean to impugn pundits, like myself, who warned about what would transpire if we, immorally and illegally, invaded a country that had done us no harm. Although they are silent now, I think we know who the treason twits are. However, if Clark etc. said what I said about this war ahead of time, as they did, they certainly don’t qualify as idio-experts. If you gauge reality correctly, how can you be described as an idiot? Only to an ideologue you’d be an idiot.—ILANA]
I understand that a trial of Saddam that included charging him with all of his chemical mass murders against marsh arabs, shi’ites, kurds etc would expose American and western support for him at the time. However, overall i believe that a trial for saddam for any of his crimes was pointless and succeeded only in providing him with a platform for his views. It helped to divide the post war Iraq (something that didn’t need any help!) Churchill said that if Hitler had not killed himself he should have simply been shot. [The Hitler equals Saddam rhetoric is dubious; it’s a “Hannity inanity,” to quote myself, but your point is well taken] I think that Iraq would have benenfitted from an end to its tyrant that matched Ceacescu of Romania – simple and quick. There was no need for a trial for the dictator of a country – he was the law when in charge and there was no denying his crimes.
Regarding the “controversy” about Saddam Hussein’s hanging…
The guy was a mass-murdering thug. He was held in comfortable custody for 3 years by the US, who caught him (and who evinced no rush to kill him, but could have at any time) until, after a long elaborate trial an Iraqi court sentenced him, and the Iraqi Prime Minister ordered the sentence to be carried out forthwith. Considering Hussein’s hundreds of loyal lunatic gunmen and bombers out in the country, who thought nothing of shooting up a bakery or incinerating a market in a “gesture of support” for the noble prisoner, that decision not to delay was not irrational.
So, at the time of his execution, his guards taunted him. Awwwwwwwwwwwww, the injustice, the pain of it all!! Can’t we get a better quality of hangman nowadays? What has happened to the hangman labor-market, where we’re reduced to hiring talkative teasers who can’t resist poking fun at their client? And one of them even had the gall to record the proceedings on his cellphone! Where has the professionalism of this great calling gone? Where can we find some hangmen of good old-fashioned solemnity and menace?
[This is the new vision of American justice and its role in the world, and it appropriates the language of the free market for what is a 100% collectivist, centrally planned endeavor.]
You WERE correct when you asserted, “this was not even a show trial,” but not in the way you thought. Here is how defendants tetify at a REAL show trial:
http://art-bin.com/art/omosc20m.html#1
Vyshinsky: What appraisal should be given of the articles and statements you wrote in 1933, in which you expressed loyalty to the Party? Deception?
Kamenev: No, worse than deception.
Vyshinsky: Perfidy?
Kamenev: Worse.
Vyshinsky: Worse than deception, worse than perfidy – find the word. Treason?
Kamenev: You have found it.
Vyshinsky: Accused Zinoviev, do you confirm this?
Zinoviev: Yes.
Vyshinsky: Treason, perfidy, double-dealing?
Zinoviev: Yes.
Proceeding to explain the motives of his conduct, the accused Kamenev declares:
“I can admit only one thing: that having set ourselves the monstrously criminal aim of disorganizing the government of the land of socialism, we resorted to methods of struggle which in our opinion suited this aim and which are as low and as vile as the aim which we set before ourselves.”
in the further process of the examination the accused Kamenev still more clearly and definitely speaks of that which guided the Zinovievites in their activities.
Vyshinsky: Consequently, your struggle against the leaders of the Party and the government was guided by motives of a personal base character – by the thirst for personal power?
Kamenev: Yes, by the thirst for power of our group.
Vyshinsky: Don’t you think that this has nothing in common with social ideals?
Kamenev: It has as much in common as revolution has with counter-revolution.
Vyshinsky: That is, you are on the side of counter-revolution?
Kamenev: Yes.
Vyshinsky: Consequently, you clearly perceive that you are flighting against socialism?
Kamenev: We clearly perseive that we are fighting against the leaders of the Party and of the government who are leading the country to socialism.
Vyshinsky: Thereby you are fighting socialism as well, aren’t you?
Kamenev: You are drawing the conclusion of an historian and prosecutor.
Our government was in bed with Saddam for years. The founding fathers warned us about entangled alliances that our government has and continues to produce. Yes indeed dead men tell no tales.
I don’t really know about enough about the specifics of the trial, but given its length–and the fact that it was continuing for other matters- I could not for the life of me figure out how his appeal could have gone so fast.
I don’t agree with 18-year appeals like we have here–but an appeal process lasting less than a month?
Also, Christopher Hitchens is saying that men from Sadr’s “Madhi’s Army” took Saddam from the dock and were the executioners. [The audacity; that guy loved the war, but now picks at its less-than-perfect “execution,” as other neocons do]
This stinks to high heaven.
[The audacity; that guy loved the war, but now picks at its less-than-perfect “execution,” as other neocons do]
Christoper Hitchens is a neo-con? I always thought that he was some kind of Communist–like a Trotsky. [Yes to both your comments. Many neocons were indeed former Trotskyites–that is their genesis. See “Dumb and Dirty Neocon Artists“]
I read your link. Average Americans like me have had the wool pulled over our eyes!
So Hussein kills a few thousand with weapons provided by us, and he is a mass-murderer. In just three years, we exterminate 400.000 innocent Iraqies and they are irrelevant?