DNA Evidence May Be Key in Saddam Trial

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- Saddam Hussein has already been convicted in the court of international public opinion for crimes against the Iraqi people, but more will be needed to get a guilty verdict from an Iraqi court -- and DNA evidence may be the key.

Analysts say prosecutors should have ample evidence when Saddam goes to trial, pointing to dramatic advances in DNA technology as a prosecutorial tool in recent years. They say DNA will help to clearly establish the identity of many of Saddam's victims who ended up in the country's mass graves.

The process has been used widely in the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, where DNA has helped identify about 7,000 missing victims of the war there a decade ago -- and helped the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in pursuing perpetrators.

Identifying victims is a grisly business. Their remains must be carefully exhumed, and the bones ground to extract the genetic code. Blood samplings help match the victim and the family. All this permits a dignified burial of long-lost loved ones and helps grieving families achieve closure.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-iraq-dna-evidence,0,4843244.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[Cooley Hurd]

1. But what if many are Gulf War 1 vets?

Will they charge Saddam for their murder because he started GW1? (Even though he was invited to invade Kuwait by April Gillespie, US Ambassador to Iraq in 1990).

I'm not sure of the angle the prosecution will take in this. A better use of this science would be to exhume Kurdish victims of the 1988 gas attack to see what kind of gas killed them (Iranian or Iraqi gas?:shrug:).

[RC]

2. What? Inject facts & doubt in Saddam's trial?

Have a real trial?
Everyone knows he personally flew both planes into the towers.

[Benhurst]

3. The evidence doesn't matter. It's a show trial for the American

people, who can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast as they watch Fox News. Off with his head! Long live The Leader!

[LynnTheDem]

4. That's "6 impossible and CONTRADICTORY things before brekkie"

Such as

-"we're liberating Iraq should be nuked into a glass parking lot"

-"we're invading Iraq because of WMD don't matter"

-"we've found the WMD must be hidden in Syria"

And so on.