Mideast Reaction in Saddam Verdict

it was a complete joke.. you might as well shot him when he came out of the spider hole.

It will do nothing but increase US resentment and increase the idea we are occupiers

What is a shame is that Hussein's crimes were clear. Proving the charges against him would have been "a cakewalk" in any court in the world, including those courts which are charged with prosecuting war crimes. By having Hussein's political enemies claim jurisdiction, and by doing everything they could to limit Hussein's ability to defend himself, the Iraqis have left themselves open to questions about the legitimacy of Hussein's trial which will never be satisfactorily answered. In the end, Hussein's fate would likely have been the same no matter who tried him (provided, of course, that a court wasn't assembled from former high-ranking members of his government), but the legitimacy of the verdict could have been made unassailable if the Iraqis had gone out of their way to assure that the trial was conducted under the proper jurisdiction and was completely fair and open.

I completely understand how, from time to time, a situation arises where the facts in a particular case are unclear, and that a government might want to "fudge" certain aspects of a trial in order to assure the "proper" outcome. I'm just saying that, in Hussein's case, there was absolutely no need for any aspect of the trial to be compromised in any way. Hussein could have been tried in the Hague. He could have been allowed whatever form of representation he wished. His defense team could have been granted whatever access they requested to Hussein and to witnesses and evidence. He could have been allowed to call whatever witnesses he wanted to call, to raise whatever issues he wanted to raise, and in any legitimate court in the world he would have been convicted. If there ever was a more clear-cut case, or one that stood a better chance of generating a guilty verdict under even the most restrictive of circumstances, it is this one.