Sunday, December 31, 2006

A sordid affair


First off I refuse to call Saddam a tyrant or to judge him in the slightest. Its the favourite tactic of the Empire to demonise a leader as the devil incarnate and use this as a pretext to bomb and occupy entire countries. The media is always mobilised to blacken someone beyond redemption; to even accept it in the slightest is to give some kind of oxygen to the grotesque lies. So for instance, some will say the war was immoral or illegal, but then they backtrack in an effort to compromise and somehow better fit the media image that has been spun by saying, but Saddam was evil and the country is better off without him. Imagine if I were to go and rob a property, killing family members and executing the head of the household in an attempt to plunder the property. What kind of an excuse would it be to say: 'Oh he was evil and a tyrant'. That may well be, but thats hardly an excuse for the crimes I commited, and noone would have accepted that excuse as a reason for robbing the house and killing people, so why accept it after the event? Anyone that agreed with with the statement about the original occupant being evil would be to some extent playing down the original crime itself, and justifying the completely unjustifiable criminal act that occured. If you give the Empire an inch they take a mile, I refuse to retreat in the slightest, and will not parrot even 1% of their excuses or apologetics for their heinous acts.
'Dubya' issued a statement saying that Saddam's execution was "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime". If Saddam did any evil he will be judged by God for it. But an American show trial, after an immoral invasion, after a monstrous lie is not justice for anyone.
Bush thought that sleeping through the execution on his ranch would help to create the image that this was Iraqi justice, nothing could be further from the truth. America acted illegally according to their beloved international law (remember that the reason for half their invasions is to uphold it). Firstly occupying powers under international law are expressly prohibited from changing the judicial structures of occupied states. Secondly prisoners of war (and the Americans concede Saddam was one) are not allowed to be handed over for trial by their former enemies. Thirdly as a former head of state Saddam is afforded sovereign immunity to prosecution, and you cannot pass retrospective laws to counter this.
Created by Paul Bremer, the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court was never anything but a US-orchestrated puppet court. Violations of commonly accepted principles of law include (this is an incomplete list):
(i)American imposed censorship of court proceedings
(ii)Withholding of evidence from the defence
(iii)Forcible ejection from court of defence lawyers and the placing of defence lawyers under house arrest
(iv)Denial of defence counsel access to defendants
(v)Blatant lack of impartiality of court judges
(vi)Overt political interference in the selection of court officials and the prejudicing of the trial and trial outcome by statements made by invested political figures — including George W Bush — affirming progress towards, or demanding, execution
(vii)The replacement of four of the five originally selected court judges
(viii)Lack of equality of arms between the prosecution and the defence
(ix)Failure to ensure the security of the defence leading to the murder of three defence lawyers

Some trial when one judge resigns due to American interference, and the next is fired by the Americans. Saddam was executed after a 'trial' about the events surrounding the attempted assassination of him in a shiite town. America purposefully made sure that he was executed before much bigger issues such as the gassing of Kurds, the invasion of Iran and Kuwait could be investigated. Their complicity in supplying Saddam with weapons and encouragement would have been uncovered. Yet they use these alleged human rights abuses as reasons to depose him (in retrospect, since that wasnt the reason given at the time of the invasion). Yet Margaret Beckett, the British Foreign Secretary, claimed that Saddam had been "held to account".
The cherry on the mountainous cake of lies came after Saddams execution. Even in death they tried to smear him. Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said that Saddam went to the gallows quietly:
"He was very, very, broken." He said that Saddam turned to look at him. "He was frightened. It was clear in his face."
This moron clearly has the same respect for the general publics intelligence that Bliar does. Did he not consider that the video footage his government ordered shot would reveal the emptiness of his lies?
Saddam went to his death shouting: "God is great. The nation will be victorious. Palestine is Arab." Judge Moneer Haddad, one of the appeal court judges who had been invited to watch Saddam die said:
"he was not afraid of anyone, it was a terrifying scene. Saddam was in self-control. I was not expecting him to be like that".
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