Saddam’s Mock Trial  
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 22, 2005



 

“It was the most wonderful thing I’ve seen in my life. He’s a man who never surrenders. He’s a hero, and he will remain a hero.”

-- Saddam’s daughter, Raghad

How do you turn one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century into a folk hero?

That’s a question only the Bush public relations team can answer, but they seem to be doing a first-rate job.

So far, the greatly anticipated trial has been so botched up the only one looking half way decent is Saddam. He marched into the courtroom like Saladin and started barking out answers like he was still in charge.

“You know me,” Saddam bellowed, “I’m the president of Iraq.”

Yes, he is, and like him or not, he has more right to that office than proconsuls Garner, Bremer, or the puppet of choice, al-Jaafari.

What right does Bush have to impose his Texas-style justice on Iraq? Bush was appointed by a panel of five rogue judges and an army of defective voting machines; that’s even less legitimacy than the bearded man in the dock.    

I’m not a fan of Saddam Hussein, and I’m ready to accept any of the horrific things that are said about him. But anyone who saw his performance in court yesterday must have marveled at his guts. He’s obviously been drugged, tortured, and abused for nearly two years and yet the eyes were shifting like a cat, the voice was still steady and deep, and the demeanor was still firm and resolute.

Would Bush have stood the pressure that well?

Not without Karen Hughes tucking in his shirttails and Rove whispering sweet nothings into his hidden earpiece.

The Saddam trial goes way beyond any humanitarian interest in bringing a ruthless despot to justice. The Bush team wants to use the trial as an object lesson for other world leaders who are thinking of straying from the neocon pathway. They want a public forum for berating Washington’s adversaries and disgracing them in front of their people. That’s why they doped up Saddam and tossed him down the spider hole (as one of the soldiers involved in the arrest later admitted). It wasn’t enough to simply take him into custody, he had to be exposed as a coward, cringing before his American overlords who would then show him mercy by allowing him access to the legal system.

Unfortunately, they’ve hit a snag with Saddam. He may be a cold-blooded tyrant, but he’s no coward. Unlike Bush, he didn’t join the Champagne Unit of the Republican Guards to avoid fighting, and he probably wouldn’t have skedaddled on Air Force One if the capital was under attack. And, he wasn’t catapulted to the Oval Office on his Daddy’s coattails. He scratched and clawed his way to the top of the political ant heap by breaking a lot of arms and killing scores of innocent people.

He built his dictatorship the old fashion way: he earned it.

Whatever the Bush administration hoped to achieve by this fiasco, it failed quite spectacularly. The chilling image of Saddam can still strike fear into the hearts of enemies and embolden friends in the resistance to fight even harder. It was pure stupidity to put him back in the spotlight.

BBC commentators said that the trial was intended to “de-legitimize” Saddam and, thereby, elevate the stature of the new constitution.

Huh?

Is that it: out with the old, in with the new? Just like the sign hanging over Abu Ghraib: “Under New Management”?

Most of the Iraqis got the constitution too late to even read the bloody thing and only voted according to the directions of their tribal elders or religious leaders.

Democracy?

How about electricity? How about water, sewage and security?

Even the Shi’ites had it better under Saddam than Bush; at least there was food, gas, jobs, and state assistance.

Now what? 100,000 dead, 300,000 injured, 25 million traumatized with no end in sight? And Bush thinks that his phony, mock trial will lift the people’s spirits?

Who does he think he’s kidding?

Iraq is in a shambles. The Iraqis don’t need another public humiliation to add to their misery.

These people are not fools. They can see through this comic opera, this White House burlesque. They know the trial has about as much credibility as a Bush tele-videoconference. After all, no one in Abu Ghraib has even been charged with a crime, let alone tried in court. So why pretend a butcher like Saddam deserves justice when thousands of innocent Iraqis languish hopelessly behind bars? Iraq is governed by the iron fist of the occupier not the rule of law. Why not just skip the baloney and dispatch him to his immortal reward?

So far, the proceedings haven’t even met the minimal standards for a fair trial. The defense has been prevented from seeing Saddam, they don’t have a clear grasp of the charges against him, and they’ve been kept from interviewing witnesses. In other words, the process is a complete fraud.

On top of that, the only charges filed against the ex-despot are for the deaths of 143 men from the town of Dujail following an assassination attempt in 1982. Heck, that’s 13 less than the number of men Bush put to death as Governor of Texas!

Are we really expected to take this seriously?

How can Saddam’s crimes in 1982 compete with the illegal invasion of a defenseless country and the subsequent destruction of Iraqi society? Bush’s attack on Iraq was the “supreme crime” according to the Nuremburg Tribunal. The judges ruled that unprovoked aggression differs “only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” That means that if we plan to hold Saddam accountable, we’d better save a place in the dock for Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Rice.

Bush should cut his losses and forget about the trial. Nothing good can come of it. If Saddam goes to the gallows, he’ll be elevated as a martyr and fire up even greater resistance. The whole deal is a “lose-lose” situation for the administration.

The only way Bush can win public support for the trial is if he insists that Saddam be treated with justice and mercy. That might just inspire hope for the future and soften hearts to the ongoing American presence. But, as we all know, there’s no chance of that.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Other Articles by Mike Whitney

* Escorting Judy to the Gallows
* Miller’s Confession: The Last Gasp Before the Indictments
* The Iraqi Constitution: A Cynical Cover for Partition
* Can Attacks on Oil Facilities Lead to Peace?
* George Bush and the Four Horsemen
* Bunker Days with Reichsführer George
* Martial Law and the Advent of the Supreme Executive
* The Evil of Torture and the Power of Non-Violence
* Why Not Torture Judith Miller?
* The Occupation of New Orleans
* Brownie's Comic Opera
* Apartheid Justice in America: Krugal vs. Padilla  
* The Impending Cakewalk in Iran
* Farewell to the Democratic PartyBunker Days with Reichsführer George
* Basra: Another Milestone in the War on Terror
* The Inevitable War with Iran
* Let Them Die Or Let Them Go
* Who’s Blowing Up Iraq?
* The Second American Revolution
* Hurricane Hugo at the UN
* Tal Afar: Crackdown in the Sunni Heartland
* John Roberts’ Role in the Guantanamo Hunger Strike
* Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty
* Rodney King in New Orleans
* Rehnquist Paved the Way for the Imperial Presidency
* The New Orleans Looters Are the Bush Progeny
* The Devastating Impact of Hurricane George
* “Transformation”: How Rumsfeld Smashed the National Guard
* The Lords of War
* Robertson’s Fatwah: “A Whole Lotta Smitin’ Goin’ On”
* Turning Cindy Sheehan’s Victory Into Defeat 
* “My Son Died for Nothing”
* "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair’s First Trophy
* Greenspan’s Role in the Housing Bubble
* Failing in Iraq
* Revving Up World War III
* Pretty Hot in Crawford, Pretty Hot in Hell
* Straight-Shootin’ George Galloway
* “Operation Community Shield”: Comrade Chertoff’s Preemptive Crackdown
* Kristallnacht: What Happens When the Public Says Nothing? 
* Burying Blair: Post-Mortem for the British PM
* “Withdrawal” from Iraq?: Forget About It
* The Globalization of State Terror
* Tom Friedman: Fabricating the Roots of Terror
* Doomsday: The Final Months of the “Housing Bubble”
* John Roberts and the National Security State
* Guantanamo: the Calculus of Human Misery
* Did Greenspan Know About the London Bombings Two Days Before?
* Another Casualty in Rumsfeld’s Information War
* Genesis of an American Gestapo
* Bush's Orgy of Carnage
* Goodbye to Sandra Day O’ Connor . . . and Good Riddance
* The Rumsfeld Solution: “Liberating Iraq, One Journalist at a Time”
* Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag
* "Up in Smoke": Bush Flops in Prime Time
* More Rumsfeld Lies About Insurgent Meetings
* Incinerating Iraqis: The Napalm Cover-Up
* Guantanamo: The New-World Icon
* The Bush Radio Address: More Delusional Blather While Iraq Bleeds
* The Friedman Solution: Reinstate the Draft
* Body Slamming the 4th Amendment
* Operation Desperation: Rumsfeld’s Baghdad Fiasco
* The EU Constitution: Don’t Believe the BS
* Protecting the Plutocrats
* What Was Laura Bush Doing at the Al Aqsa Mosque?
* Free Jose Padilla!
* Alberto Gonzales’ Kristallnacht: Purges for a Safer America
* Tom Friedman: The Imperial Chronicler
* Gods, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw
* A Tentative Strategy for Ending the War
* The Specter of Violence in America
* Free Speech in the Crosshairs
* Why America Needs to be Defeated in Iraq
* More Madness at the Bush News Conference
* Ratzinger’s Plan to Hide the Pedophiles
* Let’s Let Atheists Back into Politics
* Pope Ratzinger: More “Pie-in-the-Sky” for the Struggling Masses
* The Purveyors of Violence: The NY Times in Falluja
* Screw You, Paul Volker!
* Pope TV and the New World Media
* The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think
* Destroy Abu Ghraib!
* Terri Schiavo and the Battered Judiciary
* Railroading Moussaoui
* The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars
* “Economic Meltdown” -- Sorry, but We’re Toast
* John Bolton and the Road to Tehran
* Clearing the Way for the American Police State
* Challenging the Language of Violence
* Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
* Crushing the UN for a Stronger America
* Europe to Bush: “Hands Off Iran”?
* The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
* Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington’s Plan
* Washington’s Plan to Foment Civil War in Iraq
* Condi’s Euro-Tour
* Folksy Tom Friedman and New Age Imperialism
* Government Without Consent
* The Desperate State of the Union
* Iraq’s Election Fiasco
* Boarding Up the “Window of Opportunity”
* KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
* Bush’s Grand Plan: Incite Civil War
* Pink Slips at CBS

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