Who's Not On Trial With Saddam

By Jack Random

The grand spectacle of justice begins in Baghdad today, the trial of the millennium, the mother of all trials, with the outcome as certain as the next disaster, the next casualty of war, or the next imperial occupation.

The accused will rise to face his accusers: Saddam Hussein, how do you plead?

What promises to be a morality play of epic proportions may only deliver a carnival sideshow. The questions immediately rise: How did the Iraqi authorities arrive at this charge? Will Saddam be allowed to speak freely and openly in his defense? Will he be lucid or dazed? Will he rise to the occasion like the larger-than-life despot who ruled with an iron fist for twenty-four years, or will he play the passive martyr, resigned to his fate? Will he confront those who give testimony against him? Will testimony be admitted that was obtained by torture?

Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, administered a reign of terror that included gassing the Kurds, using chemical weapons in the war against Iran, gunning down the Shiites, destroying towns and villages, detaining, torturing and killing political opponents, and invading his neighbors, including Kuwait. By all objective accounts, the reign of Saddam was brutal and inhumane.

He stands accused of ordering the death of 140 men from the town Dujail and exiling their families to a desert camp, in retaliation for an attempted assassination in 1982.

How did the authorities arrive at this charge? First and foremost, it predates the Gulf War. The American president's father will not be called to testify. Former commanders Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf will not take the stand. Second, they have found a charge that does not admit American involvement or complicity. Had they chosen almost any other atrocity they would have risked making a star witness for the defense of the current Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld.

It is well documented that the American government supplied (or allowed private corporations to supply) the necessary components of chemical weapons for Saddam to use against Iran. It is widely known that the Reagan administration raised no objection to the gassing of the Kurds and protected the Iraqi potentate from United Nations condemnation. It is also well known that the elder Bush administration delivered implied consent for the incursion into Kuwait before ordering his counter-invasion in 1991. It is likewise a matter of public record that General Schwarzkopf explicitly approved Saddam's use of helicopter gun ships in the slaughter of Shiites who rose up at the urging of the American president.

Why not try Saddam for tax evasion? Why not release him in the middle of Kurdistan? Why not parade him through the streets of Baghdad before allowing him to roam the halls of Abu Ghraib prison?

It would serve justice as well as the current trial but neither would serve the truth. It is not justice that is at risk in the trial of Saddam; it is history. It is the greater truth of America's steadfast complicity in the crimes of a tyrant.

America will not allow the Iraqi people, the American people, or the people of the world to see the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The facts of the current case, should they ever be aired, are nevertheless of great interest and magnitude. Simply stated, Saddam reaped disproportionate retribution from a community that was home to a conspiracy of assassination. He did what any tyrant would do. Indeed, he did what a despot must do to rule a nation as divided as Iraq.

On Sunday, as the excitement of the referendum wound down, a bomb exploded in Ramadi, killing five American soldiers. On Monday, the American military struck back. Fighter jets killed an estimated 70-75 presumed terrorists. Civilian authorities in Ramadi claimed more than half were innocent civilians, including women and children.

It is not the first time the occupying forces have sought disproportionate retribution. The killing and public display of five mercenaries in Falluja was answered by the annihilation of that city. It is, in fact, American policy. Indeed, it is the policy of any occupying force that must depend on fear to maintain its authority. It was the policy in Tikrit, Mosul and the towns and villages of the Anbar province.

Disproportionate retribution is the policy of all tyrants and occupations: If you kill one of ours, we will kill twenty of yours. If you kill one of our commanders, we will wipe entire communities off the face of the earth. If you even think about killing our leaders, we will lay your land to waste.

How ironic that Saddam should be charged with a crime that Americans are currently engaged in.