ON SADDAM'S EXECUTION

From the Progressive:

Amnesty International cited “the grave nature of the flaws,” which included the following:

“The court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defense lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial,” it said. “Saddam Hussein was also denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest, and complaints by his lawyers throughout the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been adequately answered by the tribunal.”

Nor were they adequately answered by the appeals court.

“The execution appeared a foregone conclusion, once the original verdict was pronounced, with the Appeals Court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process,” said Smart.

Click here for the rest.

Yes to all the above, and more, if you click through to the article. While it's pretty damned obvious that Saddam was a brutal dictator, it is a deeply ingrained American value that even the most heinous figures deserve a fair day in court--indeed, this goes back, at least, to when founding father John Adams bravely risked a damaged reputation to defend the British soldiers who fired into the crowd during the Boston Massacre. That Hussein did not receive a fair trial is as plain and clear as the fact that he was guilty. I mean, he wasn't even allowed to present his best defense, that the vast majority of his crimes against humanity were given the green light by the US State Department. Hell, we even gave him more weapons to do it better. Furthermore, the fact that no mistrial was declared, despite that three of his lawyers were murdered during the trial, is a miscarriage of justice in and of itself.

I'm not absolutely sure what all this means, or what the eventual ramifications for Iraq will be, but, given that the US government was calling the shots all the way through, I'm pretty certain that it can't be good. For that matter, if our government can make a joke-trial overseas, you can bet your booty that they can the same thing here.

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