Legal lynching of Saddam Hussein begins in Iraq

[IndianaGreen]

Legal lynching of Saddam Hussein begins in Iraq
By James Cogan
19 October 2005

The trial of Saddam Hussein that begins today in Baghdad, under the auspices of the US-created Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT) and the US-sponsored Iraqi government, is a legal travesty. No credibility can be given to the prosecution of the former Iraqi head of state by a puppet court and client administration that exist only due to the illegal and predatory invasion of Iraq by US imperialism and the continued presence of more than 150,000 American and other foreign troops.

Hussein and his Baathist regime have many crimes against the Iraqi people to answer for. However, the proceedings starting today are nothing but a show trial designed to have the former dictator quickly sentenced to death and executed. The aim is not justice, but to obscure the complicity of the United States, Britain and other major powers in many of Hussein’s atrocities.

Today Hussein is being prosecuted only for 19 charges relating to the massacre of some 150 people in the village of Dujail in 1982. The murders followed a failed assassination attempt on the Baathist leader by alleged members of the Shiite fundamentalist Da’awa organisation—the party of the current Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The Dujail massacre has been carefully chosen, instead of other Baathist crimes that were encouraged or sanctioned by the major powers. These include the slaughter of Iraqi Communist Party members in 1979; the murder of thousands of Shiites in the lead-up to the 1980 US-backed Iraqi invasion of Iran; the use of Western-supplied chemical weapons against Iranian troops and civilians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war; the pogroms against the Kurdish population in the late 1980s; and the butchery of tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds following the 1991 Gulf War.

It is no secret that the prosecution of Hussein has been crafted to prevent any repetition of the ongoing trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in the UN-run International Criminal Tribunal, where he is facing 66 charges of war crimes and genocide allegedly committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/huss-o19.shtml

[xray s]

1. isn't it obvious?

this picture sure won't be entered as defense exhibit A;

[HEyHEY]

2. I hope they do lynch him

[applegrove]

3. He was a monster. He did so much in the way of killing innocents that

they can find enough to linch him - without getting into anything embarrassing for the U.S.

He did all that stuff. At least Iraqis may get a chance to heal & understand each other a bit better. Oh - and they may understand themselves better.

[IndianaGreen]

4. and who encouraged him to go to war against Iran, or got him WMD?

Hint: Reagan Administration.

Saddam should hang after a fair trial, which he won't get from the puppet Iraqi government, but American officials should hang with him as well.

I will point out that Bush has killed a third as many Iraqi civilians as Saddam did in 30 years. Now, who is the real monster?

[applegrove]

5. Oh yes they did. But Saddam did so much else - that they can try him

for that. I agree wholeheartedly that the US used him to get at the Ayatollah. They'll always claim they were afraid of communism at the time. It simply isn't realistic to think any country in the world has the guts to start setting precedents for when superpowers attacked during their cold wars. That isn't going to happen. All we have is history and nobody on these boards or in the rest of the world is forgetting that. Why the neocons were so desperate to "redo" Iraq. Cause their policy of "oh the middle east is not ready for democracy we have to back the strong men" went so wrong and made a nice little cradle of Islamofacists to try one thing (attacking their own people) and then another (attacking people other than their own people - which they do now all across the world).

Take a step back. And say to yourself "not going to happen". Plus the Iraqis do not need that. They need to come to terms with what Saddam did to them.

[demobrit]

7. How Many World leaders have committed war crimes?

Lincoln , for laying waste to the south .
Truman , for Killing Japanese civilians at Hiroshema and Nagasaki
Churchill , for fire bombing German cities ie Dresden
Bush , Clinton and Bush junior for killing Iraqi civilians since 1991
Nixon for fire bombing Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities .
We could go on and on and on .
Where do we stop?
War crimes trials are just an instrument of the victor over the vanquished.

[applegrove]

9. Lincoln, in the end, was fighting for the freedom of millions of americans

That meant less rape, torture, kidnapping, slavery, and a whole host of other crimes. The people in WWII too. What - did you want a hundred more battalions on U.S. soldiers to head towards Japan? Cause that is what it would have taken to defeat the Japanesse. As it was - one nuclear bomb was not enough to convince the Japanese to "go into life with a new philosophy other than xenophobic war in asia".

As to the Kuwaiti war - that was very hard on many people outside of Kuwait.

I have not heard of the US creating war crimes in Iraq. Though not showing up with enough troops to actually win the peace comes pretty close.

Yes the neocons fooled themselves into war - they wanted it - they looked for excuses. And more than anything they wanted to create precedent for pre-emptive aggressive war.

You lost me at Lincoln.

[demobrit]

6. Will he be hanged?

Even if found guilty a deal will be struck maybe to put Saddam in exile to passify the Sunnies

[Neil Lisst]

8. He deserves to be hung, but he deserves to be tried MORE

The purpose of the trial is to put on trial his years of evil. But that is not what the US overlords want, which is why Saddam is getting tried for a 1982 rampage. That is safely before he can talk about Reagan, Bush, or Rummy in the 1980s.

[Gatchaman]

10. I'm no fan of Saddam Hussein

but I do think it's funny that they are trying him over such obscure crimes. Maybe these are the only things he's done that cannot be somehow tied to US agression in the region.

I guess if they tried him for the same reasons * invaded Iraq, he would be acquitted.