DO DEAD MEN CARE ABOUT APPEARANCES?:

This was a guilty verdict on America as well (Robert Fisk, 06 November 2006, Independent)

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

Mr. Fisk, as always misses the point: the difference that matters is that we're going to hang Saddam for what he did. We obviously look better than his corpse.

MORE:
Saddam's trial a challenge from the start (Jim Michaels, 11/06/06, USA TODAY)

The trial faced daunting challenges. The streets of Baghdad have grown more violent. Defense attorneys were targeted outside the courtroom, and judges struggled to maintain order inside. Iraqis had no modern tradition of an independent judiciary, but insisted on holding the trial within their borders.

Despite this, some legal experts say the tribunal managed to conduct a reasonably fair trial. Dozens of witnesses were heard, and more than 1,000 pages of evidence were entered into the record.

"I don't think it was a miscarriage of justice," said Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Reserve University law school in Cleveland who helped train the judges.

Nothing better becomes the Left than their insistence that Saddam isn't receiving justice.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 6, 2006 7:54 AM