"Saddam's guilty verdict applies to America"

[zengrifter]

Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well
Published: 06 November 2006 | UK Independent

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.

...more - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle1959051.ece

[zengrifter]

Bush and Blair Have Forfeited the Moral Authority to Hang Saddam
The verdict on the former Iraqi dictator is just, but everything stinks about the process by which it has been reached

by Max Hastings

There can be no doubt about the moral justice of yesterday's Baghdad tribunal judgment on Saddam Hussein. He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, chiefly Kurds and Shias, and arguably for many more killed in the Iran-Iraq war.

Yet it is quite another matter whether it is right or politically prudent to execute him, after the shambles of a trial that he has undergone. Washington was always determined that Saddam should die - but at the hands of his own people rather than those of Americans. George Bush's handling of this issue restores one's respect for Pontius Pilate. The president has achieved the almost impossible feat of generating some sympathy for Saddam, at least in Muslim societies.

The Iraqi judicial system is incapable of conducting a plausible hearing. Instead it staged a farce: judges changed, defence lawyers murdered, interminable rambling orations from prosecutors and defendants. Bush should have got some old Soviets to advise the locals about how to run a proper show trial.

...more - http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1106-21.htm

[zengrifter]

Saddam judge ejects former US A-G

November 05, 2006 09:59pm
Article from: Reuters

THE judge presiding over the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others on charges of crimes against humanity ejected former US attorney general Ramsey Clark from the court today for insulting the tribunal.

Mr Clark, who heads an international team of lawyers involved in the defence, was ejected at the start of a hearing at which Saddam and two aides were convicted and sentenced to death.

The judge, Raouf Abdul Rahman, ejected Mr Clark because he had sent a memo to Abdul Rahman including the accusation that the tribunal was making “a mockery of justice”.

The judge told him in Arabic: “No, you are the mockery ... get him out, out.”

Abdul Rahman then shouted in English: “Out! Out!”

“You come from America and ridicule the Iraqi people,” he said.

Mr Clark had earlier said the trial was politically influenced, and that if Saddam were sentenced to death, it would be “victors' justice”.