Friday, December 19, 2003
Trial Tribulation
Raise your hand if you believed before last Saturday that Saddam Hussein would ever be found. Keep your hands up if you believed before last Saturday that he would let himself be taken alive, and forego the blaze of martyr's glory that would ensure him the equivalent of sainthood in the Arab world for the next thousand years. None of the hands remaining up belong to Bush Administration officials, I'll bet. But now that they've got him, they say there's going to be a trial. From Asia Times, Pepe Escobar speculates on what might come out at the trial. Escobar's summary of Saddam's various adventures with American assistance and/or encouragement makes it hard to believe such a trial will ever actually happen. Nobody in the administration wants to see this stuff come out.
And they may not have to. Wesley Clark is testifying in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic this week, but the State Department demanded and received several conditions before permitting him to testify. His testimony must be in closed session, and the U.S. is allowed to edit the transcript after the session is over. Also, Clark will not be required to submit to cross-examination by Milosevic, who is acting as his own attorney. All of this is presumably being done to keep embarrassing details about past U.S. dealings with the former Yugoslavian leader from coming out. So it's a sure thing that key sections of Saddam's trial could likewise be kept secret.
Then again, here's another possibility. If Saddam is to be tried by an Iraqi court, there will be no need to document his international crimes, no need to talk about his WMD program (or lack of one) or support (or non-support) for Al Qaeda. There will be plenty of ordinary Iraqi crimes in which he was involved--murders, beatings, kidnappings--for which he could be convicted thousands of times over. So many, in fact, that the gassing of the Kurds (done with the full knowledge of the United States) need not come up at all.
But even if the worst happens for the administration--the whole sordid tale comes out--it's clear that they possess sufficient stones to simply to deny the truth of it despite the evidence. They're already rewriting history to airbrush their mistakes.
And finally this morning, an odd little tale has sailed under the radar this week. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reportedly told Fox News she wonders whether the U.S. has already snagged Osama bin Laden and if Bush waiting for the best political moment to bring him out. The comment, reportedly made in a green room before a broadcast, was tongue-in-cheek, Albright says, although Fox talking head Mort Kondracke says he's pretty sure she was serious.
No big deal, Mort. Mrs. Albright has only learned the same lesson the rest of us have--that with the Bush crowd, you can't rule anything out.
Raise your hand if you believed before last Saturday that Saddam Hussein would ever be found. Keep your hands up if you believed before last Saturday that he would let himself be taken alive, and forego the blaze of martyr's glory that would ensure him the equivalent of sainthood in the Arab world for the next thousand years. None of the hands remaining up belong to Bush Administration officials, I'll bet. But now that they've got him, they say there's going to be a trial. From Asia Times, Pepe Escobar speculates on what might come out at the trial. Escobar's summary of Saddam's various adventures with American assistance and/or encouragement makes it hard to believe such a trial will ever actually happen. Nobody in the administration wants to see this stuff come out.
And they may not have to. Wesley Clark is testifying in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic this week, but the State Department demanded and received several conditions before permitting him to testify. His testimony must be in closed session, and the U.S. is allowed to edit the transcript after the session is over. Also, Clark will not be required to submit to cross-examination by Milosevic, who is acting as his own attorney. All of this is presumably being done to keep embarrassing details about past U.S. dealings with the former Yugoslavian leader from coming out. So it's a sure thing that key sections of Saddam's trial could likewise be kept secret.
Then again, here's another possibility. If Saddam is to be tried by an Iraqi court, there will be no need to document his international crimes, no need to talk about his WMD program (or lack of one) or support (or non-support) for Al Qaeda. There will be plenty of ordinary Iraqi crimes in which he was involved--murders, beatings, kidnappings--for which he could be convicted thousands of times over. So many, in fact, that the gassing of the Kurds (done with the full knowledge of the United States) need not come up at all.
But even if the worst happens for the administration--the whole sordid tale comes out--it's clear that they possess sufficient stones to simply to deny the truth of it despite the evidence. They're already rewriting history to airbrush their mistakes.
And finally this morning, an odd little tale has sailed under the radar this week. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reportedly told Fox News she wonders whether the U.S. has already snagged Osama bin Laden and if Bush waiting for the best political moment to bring him out. The comment, reportedly made in a green room before a broadcast, was tongue-in-cheek, Albright says, although Fox talking head Mort Kondracke says he's pretty sure she was serious.
No big deal, Mort. Mrs. Albright has only learned the same lesson the rest of us have--that with the Bush crowd, you can't rule anything out.
