The trial of the "Butcher of Baghdad" could prove equally embarrassing
for an administration in the middle of a re-election campaign.

Weapons of mass destruction and human rights?

Past U.S. governments embraced Saddam for oil and for their own
strategic purposes even as his armies were using chemical weapons
against Iranians and his own people.

According to declassified U.S. documents, Donald Rumsfeld, a special
envoy under President Ronald Reagan, visited Saddam in Baghdad in 1983
but made no mention of chemical weapons, despite his insistence to the
contrary last year in a CNN interview.

In 1990, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) told Saddam that he sympathized
with his complaints that the Western media were exaggerating his mass
murders.

Threatening his neighbors?

Days before Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. ambassador, April
Glaspie, met with Saddam as he was massing forces along the Kuwaiti
border.

She told him James Baker, secretary of state in the first Bush
administration, wanted to make it clear that the United States took no
position on Arab-Arab disputes such as his border dispute with Kuwait.

Tacit U.S. consent for the invasion?

Saddam apparently thought so.

Saddam's trial also could produce embarrassing information about
America's new Iraqi allies, for one of Saddam's most sinister gifts
was his ability to make nearly every Iraqi complicit in his own
oppression.

An estimated 1 million Iraqis were tied in with Saddam's regime or
party, and few of the country's 26 million people were able to survive
without cooperating with his regime in some form or another.

To his Iraqi and American accusers alike -- as well as all the major
Western countries that did business with him -- he will pose one
question, according to Baram, a professor at the University of Haifa
in Israel.

"He will say, 'You supported me when you knew what I was doing. Why
are you putting me on trial now?' "

Throughout his autocratic rule, Saddam saw himself as immortal -- one
who, however rejected and mocked, would rise again and triumph.

If U.S. officials are to avoid being subjected to a catalog of their
dalliances with a dictator, they must hope that imprisonment will
vanquish his messianic streak once and for all.

Saddam may view his trial as a final chance to assure his place among
the pantheon of great Arab leaders.

Speaking with reporters before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March,
former CIA Director James Woolsey said that even in defeat, Saddam
would "definitely try to wreak maximum destruction."

If that is the case now, Saddam's walk to the firing squad and
martyrdom may be a Pyrrhic final victory.

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 12/21/03
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/21irtrial.html

Saddam to portray America as accomplice

By CRAIG NELSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer


It is a smart bet that Saddam Hussein will be convicted and executed
when a special Iraqi court tries him next year on charges that are
expected to include murder and crimes against humanity.

But while the longtime dictator is in captivity, he may not be subdued
for long.

In ensuring that an Iraqi court gives Saddam a fair and open trial,
the Bush administration is likely to hand the former Iraqi leader an
opportunity to put America and its allies on trial for their knowledge
of his tyranny, if not their complicity.

In short, get ready for the Mother of All Legal Battles.

"The trial will be the trial of the age. We will uncover a lot of
secrets concerning heads of states, prime ministers and
parliamentarians, intellectuals and others both from Arab states,
regional states and Western countries," Muwaffaq al-Rubaiye, a member
of the Iraqi Governing Council, said last week.

As that trial unfolds, U.S. officials may wish the 66-year-old Saddam
had decided to go down fighting, as his two sons did five months ago.

_______________________________________________________

I'm sure the Bushies can arrange some form of Saddamicide before he
spills the beans on the American right wing.

Harry