Post by Moses on Jun 8, 2005 12:33:31 GMT -5
Wed, Jun. 08, 2005
IRAQ
Saddam's trial to cement his history
TOM TEEPEN
This is going to be a show trial, and for once that's a good thing.[/i][/b]
Fighting through a bloody and so far relentless insurgency and trying to cobble together something like a country out of what is more like an ethnic scrum, the Iraqi government is nonetheless moving toward finally putting Saddam Hussein on trial.
The government says the trial could begin as early as two months from now. Five other high officials of the unhorsed government have been referred for trial, too, and still more are awaiting that distinction.
With the old tyrant's day in court at long last palpably approaching, his prosecutors must be the envy of prosecutors everywhere. Saddam is the dreamboat defendant, as far as prosecutors go. Forget innocent until proved guilty.
This is going to be a show trial, and for once that's a good thing.
The real business of the trial will be not so much to put a smoking gun in his hands. The whole country was a smoking gun and it was his baby, completely, and anyway Iraq's thick layer of Ba'athist Party bureaucracy may have kept his fingerprint off the gun butt.
The trial's important work will be to perfect the record of Saddam's crimes in such detail and so panoramically that even Muslim militants who might want to tout him as an anti-American hero won't want the guilt by association.
The mass murders of Shiites and Kurds, the summary executions of thousands of opponents (often, just imagined opponents), the attempt to steal Kuwait and the routine torture for sport practiced by his government, even by his family, ought to do the trick. The court, however, will have to be careful not to let the trial seem like an act of Shiite revenge against the Sunni.
We've heard so often that the situation in Iraq has turned the corner that either optimism there is unwarranted or else we are working our way around an octagon. You have to hesitate, then, to assume that Saddam's trial, inevitable conviction and execution - Iraq has reinstated the death penalty just for the occasion - will produce a marked change in the short run.
But basically, it will finally do something like justice. Beyond that, his successful conviction should help to credit the new Iraq government with its citizens. It will establish the government as a workable means to broadly credited ends.
President Bush must be especially delighted at the prospect. He took the nation into this unnecessary war on dubious rationales and cooked evidence and that decision will forever be in dispute. But Saddam's final comeuppance will definitively end a monstrous government of the most wanton cruelty.
That is the one point where all of us who are clamoring and clattering around the arguments over the war can rally in common satisfaction.
Saddam's trial can't fully redeem Bush's decision, as even Saddam's fall did not. There were other means to that certainly welcome end. But it will stand as the one seriously ameliorating benefit whose desirability is beyond question.
Contact Teepen, a columnist for Cox Newspapers, at teepencolumn@coxnews.com.
© 2005 The Sun News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.myrtlebeachonline.com
IRAQ
Saddam's trial to cement his history
TOM TEEPEN
This is going to be a show trial, and for once that's a good thing.[/i][/b]
Fighting through a bloody and so far relentless insurgency and trying to cobble together something like a country out of what is more like an ethnic scrum, the Iraqi government is nonetheless moving toward finally putting Saddam Hussein on trial.
The government says the trial could begin as early as two months from now. Five other high officials of the unhorsed government have been referred for trial, too, and still more are awaiting that distinction.
With the old tyrant's day in court at long last palpably approaching, his prosecutors must be the envy of prosecutors everywhere. Saddam is the dreamboat defendant, as far as prosecutors go. Forget innocent until proved guilty.
This is going to be a show trial, and for once that's a good thing.
The real business of the trial will be not so much to put a smoking gun in his hands. The whole country was a smoking gun and it was his baby, completely, and anyway Iraq's thick layer of Ba'athist Party bureaucracy may have kept his fingerprint off the gun butt.
The trial's important work will be to perfect the record of Saddam's crimes in such detail and so panoramically that even Muslim militants who might want to tout him as an anti-American hero won't want the guilt by association.
The mass murders of Shiites and Kurds, the summary executions of thousands of opponents (often, just imagined opponents), the attempt to steal Kuwait and the routine torture for sport practiced by his government, even by his family, ought to do the trick. The court, however, will have to be careful not to let the trial seem like an act of Shiite revenge against the Sunni.
We've heard so often that the situation in Iraq has turned the corner that either optimism there is unwarranted or else we are working our way around an octagon. You have to hesitate, then, to assume that Saddam's trial, inevitable conviction and execution - Iraq has reinstated the death penalty just for the occasion - will produce a marked change in the short run.
But basically, it will finally do something like justice. Beyond that, his successful conviction should help to credit the new Iraq government with its citizens. It will establish the government as a workable means to broadly credited ends.
President Bush must be especially delighted at the prospect. He took the nation into this unnecessary war on dubious rationales and cooked evidence and that decision will forever be in dispute. But Saddam's final comeuppance will definitively end a monstrous government of the most wanton cruelty.
That is the one point where all of us who are clamoring and clattering around the arguments over the war can rally in common satisfaction.
Saddam's trial can't fully redeem Bush's decision, as even Saddam's fall did not. There were other means to that certainly welcome end. But it will stand as the one seriously ameliorating benefit whose desirability is beyond question.
Contact Teepen, a columnist for Cox Newspapers, at teepencolumn@coxnews.com.
© 2005 The Sun News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.myrtlebeachonline.com