Regardless of whether the "fix" was in - both in its predetermined outcome or its timing (just two days before Americans go to the polls) -- justice prevailed today in, of all places, Iraq, when a court convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity for the revenge killings of 148 people in the Shiite city of Dujail in 1982.
As reported by Hamza Hendawi of the Associated Press, "The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its slaughter of 6 million Jews in the World War II Holocaust."
Yet, few Americas probably know that Article 6 of the Nuremberg Tribunal's Charter listed "Crimes against Peace; namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging war of aggression" as its first and foremost crime. Count Two indicted the Nazis for actual crimes against peace. Count Three indicted them for "War Crimes," including the ill treatment of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners of war (such as have occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in our recent past). "Crimes Against Humanity" was relegated to Count Four.
Thus, notwithstanding the justice meted out to Saddam today, Americans have at least two reasons to reflect while celebrating the outcome: (1) Saddam now has been convicted for crimes that occurred in 1982, just a year before Donald Rumsfeld, acting as an envoy for President Reagan, met and shook hands with him on December 20, 1983. Thus, Americans might ponder how it was that the Reagan administration found it suitable to offer military assistance to such an "evil" criminal.
(2) Much available evidence suggests that the Bush administration planned and prepared the initiation and waging of a war of aggression - the first and foremost crime spelled out in Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter - while "fixing" the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda's terrorists, in order to deceive both the American people and the U.S. Congress into supporting its illegal, immoral war.
Thus, if justice can be done in war-torn Iraq, it certainly must be done in the great United States of America (and perhaps in lapdog Tony Blair's Great Britain as well). But justice certainly won't be done, so long as Republicans remain in control of Congress.
Walter C. Uhler.com
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
it is sad that we do not mention that it was a cangaroo court, that both Saddam Hussein's children and his grandson were killed in the most brutal way and we showed their charred corpses on TV like we are some medieval barbarians, that his family is being hunted like animals and that our government shows to the whole world what do they do to the unwanted witnesses. I once wrote that if Saddam had really burned Kuwait, he would have been alive and well now. It will happen- the next one will burn Kuwait or whatever and really do it. We taught them the lesson and they learned. We are the losers. They are the gainers. We reap what we sow.
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Mark Sashine (47 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3360 comments)
on Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 5:43:46 PM
... because from what I can ascertain, the ruling regarding the Nazi's when the "pre-emptively" invaded Norway was declared an illegal act by the Nuremburg Court.
Let us hope that one day we will se Bush, Blair and Olmert, Rumsfeld, Rove and Cheney and the rest of the pack of criminals and war mongers get their deserved and fitting ends but lets make sure that we impoverish them first and give the money back to those it was stolen from...
