Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well (Saddam)

[Greeby]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1959051.ece

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.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.-snip-

[LynnTheDem]

1. But in fact he was sentenced for signing execution orders for 148 Iraqis

convicted by the Republican Court for their failed assassination attempt on Hussein.

Why is even good media like the Indy-UK failing to realize this fact? No "gas", no "Anfal", no "war crimes".

Hussein was only tried & convicted & condemned for signing the execution orders of 148 Iraqis his court had found guilty.

That our "media" tries to give the false impression Hussein was found guilty for "gassing his own people" and "mass-graving hundreds of thousands" is understandable; our "media" is shit.

[Demeter]

3. That Trial Resumes Next Week

He's still on the hook for the gassing charges.

What I want is commutation to life in prison in return for spilling the goods on Bush pere et fils, so they can be fitted with hempen neckties of their own. Then they could be commutated to life in prison if they spill the goods on their cronies, financeers, and masters.

[civildisoBDence]

7. "Hempen neckties..." Wouldn't that be priceless?

The champions of the oil and petrochemical industries hung with hemp!! Ha ha!!

Newsprism

[Raster]

6. I predict no charges will go forward that will allow Saddam to implicate

the US, Bush1, bushco* or bush*. This show trial is carefully crafted and staged, featuring a cast of well chosen Iraqi characters. The actual charges themselves have been sanitized to leave no contaminating effect. Saddam is not a stupid man. If someone brings up poisonous gas, he probably has the receipt stashed away indicating who supplied it.

If bushco* were indeed serious about dealing with Saddam's "war crimes," they would have sent him to The Hague. But then they might have been asked to stick around and answer some very difficult questions.

[acmavm]

2. The only people who don't (or refuse) to see the insanity

in this verdict are Saddam's enablers. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they see. Maybe they just don't give a f**k.

[USA_1]

4. Turkey Killed Kurds

... but no one has been put on trial for those murders.

How much longer will Turkish Kurds have to wait before justice is given them for what they have suffered?

[LynnTheDem]

5. Kurds kill(ed) Kurds.

Ask the 2 Kurd warlords, Talabani and Barzani.

Both past buddies & allies of Hussein.

Both responsible for more Kurd deaths than Iraq, Iran & Turkey combined.

But never mind, I'm sure the US govt will bring those facts to public notice when they decide some day to demonize the Kurds.

[progressivebydesign]

8. Surprised the US hasn't ordered at hit on Saddam while in custody.

Dead men tell no tales. right?

[Demeter]

9. I'm Sure That's Plan B

Just in case Plan A (fake a trial and railroad an execution) fails or is thwarted by a jailbreak or a carriage of justice.