They'll likely drag it out for four months
Quote of note:
No one will be fooled by the claim that we are merely acceding to the demands of the new Iraqi government, since its leader, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has long been on the CIA payroll and was essentially appointed to his post by the U.S.
Even a Tyrant Is Entitled to Due Process
Hussein's trial is shaping up as just U.S. theatrics.
July 6, 2004
Has anyone noticed that the charges leveled last week against Saddam Hussein bore no relation to the reasons offered by President Bush for his preemptive invasion of Iraq? Not a word about Hussein being linked to terrorist attacks on the United States or having weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to our nation's security.
That is because after seven months of interrogation, the United States appears to have learned nothing from Hussein or any other source in the world that supports the president's decision to go to war. Washington turned Hussein over to the Iraqis without charging its infamous prisoner of war with any of these crimes. And even the Iraqis did not charge him with being behind the insurgency that almost daily claims American lives.
It's a travesty, if you think about it. The fact is that the United States, which holds itself up as the exemplar of democracy for the entire Middle East, held Hussein in captivity for seven months, virtually incommunicado, without access to lawyers of his choosing and without charging him with a crime or releasing him at the end of the occupation, as required by the Geneva Convention. If the U.S. believes, as most of the world does, that Hussein committed crimes against humanity, then he is entitled to the same international standards of due process that the U.S. and its allies applied to top Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. It is well established in such cases that justice will not be served by turning Hussein over to be tried by his former political rivals or his victims.
