Saddam's legal defense strategy

black_jack

Saddam's legal defense strategy, is following an interesting line, leaving aside the tedious posturing about refuting the court's right to try him, his legal defense is essentially not to deny that the crimes occured, but rather that as they were commited by the recognised head of state aganist his own people, and he was legally intitled to commit these acts. The opposite of the Milosevic defense in other words.

Many of the crimes occured not only when Iraq was a legally recognised as a state by the UN with Saddam as it's leader as we know many of these crimes occured when Saddam was being courted by the coalition forces, we all know that the infamous Rumsfield photo took place days before he gassed the Kurds.

Yes he killed and oppressed the Kurds and Sunni's in 88 and 91 respectively, but they were in revolution at this time, and doesn't a leader have the right to mantain national unity? In fact the US executed Tim McVey for commiting a terrorist act againist his own government, for seperatist reasons. Many respected nations, The US, France, Britain to name some of the less extreme examples, supposed, civilised states, have all commited punative acts of collective punishment on either their own soil or occupied territories in the past few decades.

Yes Saddam has signed countless execution orders for innocent men women and children, yet Bush has signed more execution orders than any other recent US Governor and several of those people executed have later had the case aganist them either thrown into doubt, the mental capability of the guilty party challenged , or indeed had the conviction quashed, all too late, of course. The obvious response is that the Governor was not aware of their innocence at the time, but that is cold comfort to the deceased families.

There are obviously difference, naturally I'm not condoning his regime, or suggesting his many crimes aren't henious, but what differentiations him from the leaders of other countries that have commited reprenhisble acts? Time? Scale? Are we to supposed to think that it's not the crime but the scale of the crimen that is the issue? Is it the reverse of Stalin's pithy "one death is a tradegy, 1 million a statistic?" That we ignore the occasional smaller war crime by a Western power, and focus on the litany by another?

To put it another way is it the scale and volume of Saddam's crimes that make him a reprehenisble villian? And that misdeeds of the same nature, but smaller scale by the west's leaders can be ignored? In realpolitik terms the answer is yes, obviously.

But it is interesting to see how far Saddam will go with this defense strategy, and how far the court will allow him to go with it. If he spends time justifying his actions as those of a recognised head of state and draws parrallels to the actions of western states; the people who kept him and power and put him on trial.

Pompey Magnus

black_jack wrote:

There are obviously difference, naturally I'm not condoning his regime, or suggesting his many crimes aren't henious, but what differentiations him from the leaders of other countries that have commited reprenhisble acts? Time? Scale? Are we to supposed to think that it's not the crime but the scale of the crimen that is the issue? Is it the reverse of Stalin's pithy "one death is a tradegy, 1 million a statistic?" That we ignore the occasional smaller war crime by a Western power, and focus on the litany by another?

I find it ironic that Saddam Hussein is tried on the charges of killing 143 Shia in Dujail in 1982 in which a convoy in which he was travelling was attacked and I think 10 of his bodyguards were killed whilst this very week America bombed two villages in Ramadi killing 70 where 5 US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, eye witnesses claiming the victims were civilians.

Retribution from Saddam for killing 10 bodyguards = 143 civilians: 1 bodyguard = 14.3 civilians
Retribution from USA for killing 5 US soldiers = 70 civilians: 1 US soldier = 14 civilians.

Evidently the fine line between a war crime and acceptable force is 0.3 of a civilian.

bonkey

but what differentiations him from the leaders of other countries that have commited reprenhisble acts? Time? Scale?

Nope.

Who won, and who lost.

Nothing more, nothing less.

jc