THE WAGES OF GITMOPHOBIA

Better Alive Than Dead: The killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein is
considered a victory in the eyes of Americans. But a better victory would have been if they were alive and brought to justice. (SANDRA MACKEY, 7/24/03, NY Times)

The killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, is a tactical victory for the American occupation of Iraq. But it is not a strategic one. By not capturing these odious symbols of the old regime alive and putting them on display, the American occupation authority has denied itself the chance to give absolute proof of their demise to a society that rejects authority and thrives on conspiracy theory. It has also lost an opportunity to give Iraqis a chance to purge their bitterness, and satisfy a deep-seated need for revenge, by confronting their tormentors in court.

In the abstract Ms Mackey may have a point, but in the real world, where "civil libertarians" are fiercely fighting every attempt to administer justice to the extremists we've captured--like Zaccarias Moussaoui, John Walker Lindh, and the gangs at Guatanamo Bay--it has become dangerous to risk bringing such evil-doers into the formal justice system, where the process soon descends into farce. It's only too easy to imagine various Leftists groiups--and Democratic presidential candidates--insisting that the Saddam boys be allowed to call George Bush Sr., Donald Rumsfeld, and others to testify about trivia like American support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Better just to end it with a bullet.

MORE:
Ashcroft's Folly: How the attorney general lost the Moussaoui trial before it began. (Dahlia Lithwick, July 24, 2003, Slate)

Moussaoui--intent on defending himself--undid the government by using transparency and due process to embarrass the prosecution and allegedly compromise national security. The man refused to go quietly, insisting on challenging the evidence against him and exercising his full range of rights as a criminal defendant. The prosecution--applying a broad new theory of conspiracy law--didn't help matters by filing an indictment shot through with circumstantial evidence and unsupported speculation. And so Moussaoui, considered nuttier than a Snickers bar when this trial began almost a year ago, suddenly looks like a Jeremiah. His ongoing contention--that the proceedings are nothing more than a "death show trial" jiggered to result in his execution--suddenly looks to be true.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 24, 2003 11:38 AM