- The show trial of Saddam Hussein was drawn out until
two days before the midterm US elections. The death sentence imposed on
the former Iraqi president may help the deluded band of Bush supporters
find victory in the defeat that Bush has met in Iraq and motivate them
to support the beleaguered Republicans on November 7.
-
- But Saddam's sentence will do nothing for reconciliation
and peace among Iraq's Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. In Iraq the sentence
is seen by all parties as revenge for the years of Sunni rule. Saddam's
sentence is perfectly timed to drive the rising sectarian conflict, which
is already causing 100 or more Iraqi deaths per day, over the brink into
full scale civil war. Indeed, one could conclude that the real purpose
of the sentence is to achieve the neoconservative goal of a dismembered
and impotent Iraq.
-
- Saddam was sentenced to death because 148 Shiites were
killed in 1982 in the Iraqi government's response to an attempted assassination
of Saddam. We have no way of knowing how many, if any, of the 148 were
involved in the assassination attempt, or whether the botched attempt was
a "black ops" event to enable the police to settle local scores
or to take out potential trouble-makers. The killings, however, do not
fit the propaganda picture of Saddam gratuitously killing people for the
fun of it.
-
- Now that the Bush administration has adopted the torture
and detention practices of Saddam's regime, one wonders what would be the
fate of Americans accused of an assassination plot against a US president?
-
- Saddam's trial itself is suspect. The most qualified
lawyer in the courtroom, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was
ejected from the trial for handing Judge Abdul-Rahman a memo in which he
said the trial was a "travesty" of law. I am confident that Ramsey
Clark has more integrity than Abdul-Rahman. But, to get to the main point,
let us assume that Saddam is guilty as charged and that his death so serves
the cause of justice that it is worth heightened sectarian conflict and
even full-fledged civil war.
-
- What did Saddam do that Bush, and Cheney, and Rumsfeld,
and Blair have not done?
-
- If Saddam can be sentenced to death for his responsibility
in the killing of 148 Shiites, what about Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Blair's
responsibility for the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians slaughtered
by Bush's invasion of Iraq? This massive carnage is the direct consequence
of an illegal invasion--a war crime in itself for which Nazi leaders were
sentenced to death--that was based on lies and deception. Bush himself
admits that 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. Iraq Body Count puts
the civilian deaths at between 45,000 and 50,000. The recent Johns Hopkins
University study published in the peer-reviewed British medical journal,
The Lancet (11 Oct, 2006), puts the Iraqi civilian deaths caused by Bush's
invasion as high as 655,000.
-
- What does the world think of American hypocrisy when
the US government, drowning in the blood of tens of thousands of its innocent
victims, cries "justice" as the president of Iraq is sentenced
to death for killing 148 people for trying to assassinate him?
-
- The verdict against Saddam was influenced by the propaganda
of mass graves uncovered by the US-led invasion and seized upon as justification
for that illegal invasion. However, as various experts have pointed out,
the graves are those of war dead from the Iraq-Iran war. The US government
has responsibility for these deaths also, as Washington gave aid to both
sides in the bloody conflict that is believed to have claimed as many as
one million lives.
-
- Now that Saddam Hussein has been held accountable for
his crimes, can we look forward to accountability for George W. Bush, Tony
Blair, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Bolton, Kenneth Adelman,
Michael Rubin, Eliot Cohen, and their propagandists in the media, such
as Billy Kristol, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert Kagan, David Frum, the Wall
St Journal editorial writers, the editors of National Review and the New
York Times, and the Fox "News" talking heads? Will accountability
be extended to the conservative foundations and think tanks that financed
the neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party and Bush administration?
-
- Now that the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
have ended in defeat, those most responsible for the destruction of those
two countries, tens of thousands of deaths, and a bill for US taxpayers
in excess of $2 trillion (according to Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph
Stiglitz) are running from any responsibility.
-
- Richard Perle, the principle instigator of the illegal
invasions, declared to Vanity Fair (Nov. 3, 2006): "Huge mistakes
were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives,
who had almost no voice in what happened." "At the end of the
day," Perle told ABC News' Karen Mooney (Nov. 4, 2006), "you
have to hold the president responsible."
-
- Kenneth Adelman, who promised us a "cakewalk war,"
now puts all the blame on Rumsfeld: "He certainly fooled me"
(Vanity Fair, Nov. 3).
-
- The neoconservatives, of course, are trying to escape
blame for the defeat of their strategy by accusing Bush and Rumsfeld of
incompetent implementation. Will the neoconservatives escape responsibility
for launching the wars that have turned the United States into a war criminal
abroad and a police state at home?
-
-
- Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate
Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor
of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including
The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous
academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University
and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He
has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress
on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service
Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal
of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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