September 19, 2006, Junq justice
Abdullah al-Amiri, the chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial, was removed by the Iraqi government (that we prop up and otherwise control) for suggesting that Saddam "was not a dictator" during the trial. He has been reassigned to hear other cases.
You will recall that here in the United States, when judges attempt to administer justice impartially under the law without concern to popular outcry or political interference, our senators (particularly Texas Republicans) prefer to incite violence against them. In Iraq, they (hopefully) will only remove the judge from the case.
In the "new democratic Iraq," the judge is being replaced for having not pre-judged the case. The desired outcome, as pre-ordained by the Colonial Power who set up the system to try Hussein (where a number of his defense lawyers have already been killed), is, of course, conviction, and then, execution. (After all, if the death penalty wasn't an essential outcome, he could have been tried in the Hague or something.) As usual, the Bushmen can't even think of a decent p.r. angle: after Saddam is convicted (and he will be, of course), how could Saddam claim he didn't get a fair trial if one of the judges didn't even
think he was a dictator?
But a fair trial... that's just "September 10th thinking".
Just as "war on terror" detainees have been pre-ordained to be "terrorists", any process even arguably fair is just too much justice for these terrorists sayeth the Bushmen. Needless to say, the last thing the Bush Administration wants is anything remotely like a fair trial for Saddam, with even a possibility of anything less than a death sentence.
While, in the end, no one will shed a tear for Saddam, it would be nice if even the seemingly siimple task of trying a brutal tyrant for his crimes could be done without having to game the system, bend the rules of fairness, in short, cheat, in such a high profile case. Our international credibility and moral authority has been waning for a while. It would be nice to do things the right way, especially with the world watching... but I suppose the prevailing attitude is... why start now?
Comments
pretty wild
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