It is a book review. What you quote refers clearly to Al-Ani and not me. I fail to see any logic in how you could leap to the conclusion of “apparent approval” by me.

I agree with much of what you and kahar are saying, but your focus on Saddam Hussein and his alleged crimes are completely off base. The review is not about that, as a straightforward reading will adduce.

I wrote (as you can see above): “Al-Ani does not focus on whether Hussein was a good man or bad man. He is focused on adherence to the norms of law and justice.”

So naturally, the review will be about how Al-Ani sees the “norms of law and justice” applied in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

“Ask HIS victims if his execution was an “injustice.””
That wasn’t aimed at you, but at the original article. I apologise for not making that clear. What I meant is that his sentence was fully deserved; it was not an injustice TO HIM. Of course the trial was a joke & a propaganda exercise conducted in the context of a criminal & genocidal occupation.

I agree with you almost completely. As I said, what I am arguing with is the defence of Saddam & the Ba’ath as “victims of imperialism” & “defiers of imperialism” when in reality they were a set of fascists who loyally served imperialism until it turned against them.

For example:
“As for life under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Al-Ani asserts that Iraqis were safe as long as they did not cross the “red line”; that is, they did not act or conspire against the Ba’ath Party or state.”
Is this 1 of the “plethora of rationales” & “fastidious conclusions” that the book is so full of? It’s a strange thing to see quoted with apparent approval by the editor of a site calling itself DISSIDENT Voice.

The article is about the trial, the point of a trial is to expose the truth and the true perpetrators of the crimes (US/UK), so that they don’t go on doing the same thing as they are still and as they have been for a century, not to lynch the monkey (who holds all the evidence to convict his masters) which brings no joy to anyone and changes absolutely nothing.

And this: “and I’m not apologetic about not being terribly concerned about whether the Ba’athists or the Shia are a better or worse political party in Iraq.” Eh?? Shia/sunna this is all BS nonsense created in 2004 by the barbarians invaders to create animosity and a cover for genocide, a formula they use everywhere they invade. The Baathis were both Sunna and Shia, ditto for the communists, the Qasim government and all previous.

OK I’ll ask myself and my relatives for you JN… Well the answer is as previously, as I am not a bloodthirsty knumbskull, I and every Iraqi are entitled to the right to have the guilty exposed and brought to justice, puppets like Saddam held enoromous evidence against his handlers, the real mass murderers, namely the US and UK. The trial was a sham and an insult to Iraqis and gave us no justice but just replaced the old puppet with a new and far worse version. The UK and US have not loosened their stranglehold over Iraq for a century and without ridding Iraq of these barbarians there will never be any justice no matter how many puppets are executed. The US/UK installed Saddam in power, maintained him and protected him and then when his usefulness was expired they killed.

The book is written by a member of the Ba’ath party, a lawyer for Saddam Hussien’s defence. Therefore, he presumably is trying to defend Saddam Hussien, his party & his regime? So don’t give me sarcasm about no one saying he was “a great guy.”

Now, I haven’t actually read the book so I can’t comment on it’s actual content. The review, however, is pretty dubious. It repeatedly blurs the line between “victims of imperialism” & Saddam Hussien, an instrument of imperialism & a mass-murdering fascist in his own right.

As I said, a lot of the critiscism of the West is true (EG: the US was founded on genocide & is still doing it today). What I am objecting to is the apologetics for Saddam & the Ba’ath. This is the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools: to defend 1 mass-murderer while opposing another. Ask the Iranians if Saddam Hussien was anti-imperialist. Ask HIS victims if his execution was an “injustice.”

To state the obvious 1 more time: none of this justifies the invasion or the sanctions & bombing that preceded it. Those are equally criminal & evil, & the guilty deserve the same fate as Saddam.

But despite this development, the real political struggle was not between the secular Communists and the religious Shi’ite opposition, but between the two main secular forces, the Communists and the Ba’athists – a struggle which also reflected the Sunni-Shi’ite divide as the Ba’ath Party was overwhelmingly a Sunni-dominated party. After a failed assassination attempt in 1959 against Qasim (in which Saddam Hussein participated), most of the Ba’athist leaders fled the country. As a result the Communists emerged even stronger. Qasim carried out anti-American and anti corporate policies, like Mossadeq in Iran, as starting the process of nationalizing foreign oil companies in Iraq, withdrawing Iraq from the US-initiated right-wing Baghdad Pact (where US-puppet state ,Pakistan, was a member) and decriminalizing the Iraqi Communist Party. Therefore, he was popular among the population, but he was deeply hated by the western powers, mainly US and Britain. Thus, they wanted him to be eliminated.
In February of 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim and Saddam’s Ba’ath Party came to power for the first time. Saddam returned from exile in Egypt and took up the key post as head of Iraq’s secret service. The CIA then provided the new Iraqi regime with the names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and organizers. Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies were soon dead in a CIA operation of mass murder carried out by the CIA’s close friends in Iraq.
In addition to the 149 officially executed, about 5,000 are killed in the terror, many buried alive in mass graves. Others believe more than 5000 were killed.
This has been confirmed by different sources. For example, Qasim’s foreign minister later told two analysts that:
{the Iraqi Foreign Ministry had information of complicity between the Ba’ath and the CIA. In many cases the CIA supplied the Ba’ath with the names of individual communists, some of whom were taken from their homes and murdered.}
King Hussein told a similar story to the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Heikal:
{I know for a fact that what happened in Iraq on 8 February was supported by American intelligence … Many meetings were held between the Ba’ath Party and American intelligence – the most critical ones in Kuwait. Did you know that on 8 February, the day of the coup in Baghdad, there was a secret radio broadcast directed toward Iraq that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of Communists there so that they could be seized and executed.}
http://www.iiwds.com/said_aburish/a_lostvictories.htm

The book, “A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite” by Said K. Aburish, also describes how the CIA, Saddam and other members of the Baath party collaborated to bring about the coup, murdering more than 5,000 people in the process. The United States went on to help Saddam win the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970629/ai_n14102154
Regarding the trial of Saddam, Al-Ani is right when he says:

{ Al-Ani’s analysis of the trial of Hussein is based in a system of entrenched injustice imposed by the imperialist, occidental world.}

However, I disagree when the following biased sentence circulate around because it is not based on facts but, as a former Ba’athist, on hatred against Iran where was number one enemy among Ba’athists and they wanted nothing but Iran destruction at any cost.

{The Tribunal made events occuring in the town of Dujail, a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Da’wah Party, the first case to be tried against Saddam Hussein and his top officials. In 1982, assassins from Dujail ambushed Hussein’s motorcade.}
The fact is that Iran was against the way Saddam’s trial was designed because it basically was controlled by imperialists and Zionists who designed and executed its operation to have a speedy trial to control peoples emotion to close the case quickly so they can hide their own crimes against humanity in Iraq, Iran, and the region.
Today we are witnessing the cooperation of Zionism and many Arab head of States such as Saudi Arabia and its extension, ‘journalists’ who support themselves on Saudis’ petrodollar, spreading lies and cooperate with Israel against Iran and trying to set the international stage for a military strike on Iran.
Iranians were writing and protesting the same thing on Dujail as Al-Ani was. Thus, the following statement is biased:

[The Tribunal made events occurring in the town of Dujail, a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Da’wah Party, the first case to be tried against Saddam Hussein and his top officials.]

In fact the Iranian newspapers were printing Mr. Al-Ani’s protest against Dujail. The following quote shows this fact:
کشتار دجيل در آغاز محاکمه صدام حسين، بلافاصله اين سؤال را پيش می کشد که اين پرونده چه
چه ويژگيهايی دارد که در اولويت رسيدگی به اتهامات بلندبالای رهبر پيشين عراق قرار گرفته است

The above line asked: “What are the special characteristics of Dujail massacred where deserves to be at the top of the list?”
http://azadebe.blogfa.com/8407.aspx

Iranian government wanted the court consider Saddam Hussein invasion of Iran where killed thousands of Iranians by chemical weapon received from the brutal West. But no success.
However, the agenda of the trial and its execution were controlled by no one except the occupiers. Iranian wanted an International organization to take charge of this trial to expose crimes of the powers involved but it didn’t go anywhere. The occupiers were interested in a speedy trial to hide their own crimes against humanity.
Michael Scharf, was one of the agent of imperialist and Zionist who was deeply involved in this trial. He is the director of the Frederick Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. He worked in the State Department during the administrations of both George H.W. Bush, as well as Bill Clinton. His debate over Saddam’s trial with ABDUL HAQ AL-ANI at Democracy Now is very interesting in exposing the power behind this trial.
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/12/15/justice_in_baghdad_a_debate_between

The occupiers were also involved in staging a show to fool illiterate people to believe that Iraqi people where solely responsible for the down fall of statute of Saddam Hussein, but the following video exposes American imperialism and Zionism involvement in staging the show.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/90237

If you have further problems understanding what I have said, I encourage you to open your mind, investigate further, investigate the forgotten and disappeared of Iraq for it is dangerous and immoral to just take the unsubstantiated words of a Baathi genocider as fact.

Yet you choose to go from my paraphrase.

Al-Ani writes, “The Arab Communists have never been able to accommodate their recognition of the imperially-created racist state of Israel at the expense of uprooting hundreds of thousands of innocent impoverished aspiring Arabs, which may be partly due to the extent of Jewish influence in the international communist movement.”

If you have further problems understanding Al-Ani’s arguments, I encourage you to open your mind and read his book, then where you disagree, write a rebuttal based on substantiated facts rather than ad hominem.

Al-Ani delves into the Ba’athist history in the book. He holds that Arab Communists lost favor due to their adherence to Moscow and Jewish Communists who backed the formation of Israel. Ba’athists opposed the formation of Israel.

Al-Ani writes that the Ba’ath party represented for him everything he aspiring towards: “full independence from foreign domination, equal distribution of wealth among the impoverished Arabs and above all the union of the nation …” But he is a former party member and criticizes the party for what it became.

As for Al-Ani’s take on history, he writes of a Communist wave of terrorizing and killing that preceeded the killing of Communists.

As a final comment, Al-Ani finds, “Contrary to what is frequently argued – that the Ba’athists came to power with the help of the CIA – it is my belief that the opposite is true. The Ba’athists used the CIA to come to power …”

For further context, read the book and get a first-hand account.

“Al-Ani gives an Arab perspective on the Ba’ath Party.. and its importance to the citizens of Iraq..”

This is BS nonsense, the Baath party was installed in a bloody coup coordinated by MI6 and CIA overthrowing and murdering popular leader Abdl Karim Qasim. The Baath then mass murdered thousands of communist party members and anyone related to them, anyone active, and any supporter of Qasim and in fact anyone whom they saw as a possible potential threat of any form. As if the Baath were not bad enough we then have Baath Party chief interrogator and torturer Saddam taking over leadership of the party in a coup backed by the CIA. None of this could have been achieved without the full support of the MI6 and CIA. It is disgusting and an insult to Iraqis to suggest that Al Ani’s view is typical of an Arab perspective. That is simply a lie. You cannot take the words of a Baath Party member as representative of the ordinary people. I cannot express how disgusting that is.