January 11, 2007 at 08:28:45

Justice Denied

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By Jerry West (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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As a result of the Gulf War, the period of sanctions that followed, and the current war started based on false pretenses, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and those maimed and those rendered homeless beyond counting. Who is to blame, and who are the criminals?

A kangaroo court has condemned, and an American puppet government has hanged, Saddam Hussein. And they hanged him not for his many crimes against humanity, but for the execution of 144 people in 1982, during a war, who were accused of plotting to kill him. Does this make sense? Is it a worse crime than the thousands that he killed in 1963 at the behest of the US government? Is it worse than the thousands gassed while the US stood by and covered for him?

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and brutal in a brutal world. But his crimes are also those of the United States that used and encouraged that brutality to further its own goals. With the death of Saddam the cases against him of the far more grievous crimes will vanish from the docket, cases that the US certainly does not want to see investigated and exposed to the full extent.

The tragedy of Saddam Hussein is not that he was hanged, but that he was made a scapegoat to protect others far more guilty than himself. There are people in the west at the highest levels of government who should have been standing on the scaffold beside him with nooses also about their necks. Justice has not been served, it has been denied.

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Jerry West grew up on a farm in California and is currently Editor and Publisher of THE RECORD newspaper in Gold River, BC. Graduate with Honors and graduate school, UC Berkeley. Vietnam veteran and Former Sgt. USMC

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