Instead of Hussein's crimes being on trial, he has succeeded in putting the new regime on trial. The lead story of every court session has been his demeanor, his defiance, his imperiousness. The evidence brought against him by his hapless victims -- testimony mangled in translation and electronic voice alteration -- made the back pages at best.Painful. Terrible.
"This has become a platform for Saddam to show himself as a caged lion when really he was a mouse in a hole," said Vice President Ghazi Yawar. "I don't know who is the genius who is producing this farce. It's a political process. It's a comedy show."
December 9, 2005
"The bungling of the trial of Saddam Hussein."
Charles Krauthammer:
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8 comments:
I don't know who is the genius who is producing this farce. It's a political process.
And what exactly led you to think it would be anything but that?
I agaree with jonathan that saddam should have been shot upon being discovered in his rat hole. I read where Iraqi law allows a defendent to not be present at his trial if he/she so chooses. Iraqis are glued to their tv sets, much like we were during the Watergate hearings. Talk about high drama...
nice post. I have a post up about Saddam as well. You and your readers should check it out.
This is one of the rare times I disagree with the Hammer.
It's already been established that Saddam is a toothless lion. His Baathist party has been dismantled, the minority Sunnis are powerless and had no alternative but join the rush toward democracy.
Neighboring Arab countries haven't come to his aid. Lebanon is free and Syria will probably have a regime chance in the near future.
Rather than projecting power, he looks like exactly what he is, a deranged powerless man screaming impotent profanities.
Of course Iraqis are glued to their TV sets. He's loomed large over their lives for decades and now they can't get enough of seeing him sitting in a cage ranting and raving, but without the power to terrorize their lives.
The defendants are following the playbook, polished after a century of practice by the left, for destroying terrorist trials. (I did lots of research on this for a screenplay about Andreas Baader).
I guess the Iraqis just don't have the history behind them to be able to handle the situation.
I blame the media for this.
Oh come on, if you blame the media for this, then you will be letting the Clinton's off the hook.
Puhleaze!
I just hope, for his sake, that he doesn't realize that we don't take him seriously at all.
Hmm, dictator, torturer, rapist, killer of thousands, tried to develop WMDs, paid off suicide bombers.
You should take him more seriously.
I wish Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bush had taken their war more seriously. It is clear they thought that was a big goof.
"It's what the current media does for a living. Prop up dictators so they can trash Bush."
I don't think that's really what's going on here. Dictators have been mugging for the camera for generations, and Milosevic did pretty much the same thing after the latest silly thing in the Balkans.
The biggest effect here, I'd guess, also has nothing to do with Bush; it is to undermine the dignity of the Iraqi court that's sitting in judgment on him. One reason not to send him to the ICC (or some other trumped up international court) was that Milosevic made monkeys of them all, and continues to make monkeys of them all. An Iraqi court, one would have hoped, would be more effective -- more driven -- to deliberate seriously, present and publicise evidence of past crimes, and then give the verdict (almost inevitably death). Alas, Hussein has made monkeys of them too. And for the Iraqi people, that is inauspicious.
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