So, it’s been age. So much has passed but I’ve tried largely to ignore it. Like a swine wallowing in my own filth, eyes placed barely above the muck line. Completely absorbed by the petty pursuits, the personal interests and desires that come all too easy to fulfill I’ve barely batted a scum encrusted eyelid.
Yet if there is one thing that can bring one such as me (A loudmouthed pig to some, a political analyst to a few, and a journalist to me alone) it is the sheer glory of being absolutely stonewall right about something… To call something so frighteningly accurately an age before it happens and to see it come to pass just the way you said. Is to predict not the future a godlike thing? And when you do it do you not want to tell the world?
So the rum is poured, the PC fired up for something other than entertainment and we go about sharing exactly what it is that was called – either in a bar to total strangers or to semi-literate friends who just nodded and pretended to understand – some time ago. But make no mistake that what is currently running over and over on all the twenty four our news channels and even inspired Fox news to drop their state of national alert bar one shade, is not coming as a shock to this souse.
As with all stories the ability to travel through time is essential and one that the storyteller can bestow upon the people paying attention…
December 2003 and Saddam Hussein is captured by American military. It is revealed that the aging former dictator has been hiding in an underground bunker for some time and has been living under atrocious conditions. Much is made of the capture and the images of Saddam Hussein, looking more like the wild man of Borneo, being subject to a medical exam are stamped upon the collective conscious of people throughout the world.
At this point it was speculated that Saddam would be brought before the Hague to be tried for his many war crimes in his tenure as initially US sponsored leader of Iraq, including the persecution and attempted genocide of the Kurdish people. And indeed this is how it should be. A truly international community should have a centralised and impartial court for world leaders accused of atrocities that bring shame and despair to people of all nations.
Yet it quickly became apparent that despite the infrastructure of Iraq being far from stable or even – as the US had hoped for – totally under the control of the West, the decision was made to have Saddam stand trial in Iraq for his crimes against Iraqi people. We were all reassured that the trial would be totally fair and impartial, that it would be carefully watched and monitored by the “responsible” West. After all, and as was trotted out by grey haired weasels in sharp suits, whatever Saddam had done he still had the right to a fair trial in a court of his peers.
Now let’s cut to a drunk and an audience of deaf ears:
“Bloody Fucking hell… They’re gonna feed him to the fucking wolves. A token gesture. We’ll give you five minutes alone with your tormentor and let you do whatever you want, and that’s our show of good will… You get it?”
People stared at me glassy eyed
“Don’t you see there’s only one outcome of this trial? The death penalty, maybe even with some of his own favoured gas, and no-one will give a fuck because it’s reasoned he deserves it. This totally over-rides the basic defining principles of international justice, that even in the lands of heaven Satan himself should receive a fair trial. Fucking whole trial will degenerate into a farcical pantomime.”
Some slack jawed morons got side tracked about a debate over whether victims should be able to have a say in punishment and sentencing of the criminals who have commited crimes against them, a truly foolish notion, and I went back to my drinking.
We can jump to July 2004 when Saddam makes his first appearance in front of the Iraqi courts after a period of “convalescence and co-operation” with the US government. In his statement he brands Bush and Blair to be the “real criminals” a point on which he was only partially right, because of course they are all a bunch of rotten-to-the-core bastards who ultimately should have been sharing cells on the same strip of prison ground.
The resulting trial is an absolute joke, the kind of weird twisted bullshit that could only happen in the kind of clown court circus that had been set up especially for this occasion. Walkouts by defence lawyers as accusations of a total lack of impartiality by the prosecution and indeed the court itself are ignored. Accusations that Saddam was beaten and tortured in US custody are ignored. No attempt made to protect witnesses coming forward for the defence, no anonymity for those who may want to volunteer something that would support or substantiate the claims of the ousted dictator. They would have to face potential assassination or mob justice if they wanted to come forward, the whole trial being televised to the degree where the judge himself was making statements direct to the cameras, wires strewn across the courtroom floor.
By February of this year Saddam and some of his co-defendants are enagaged in a hunger strike, quite easily one of the most unsuccessful and unremarkable types of this gesture that there ever has been. People simply did not care. Why the sudden shift in methods from the man himself? Well, the crux of the trial was focusing on the 1982 massacre of 148 civilians from Dujail, the prosecution claiming to have substantial evidence, including statements from people who were then in the employ of Saddam Hussein and documents signed by the man himself approving the atrocity.
1982 is an important year incidentally as it was a year that the US provided Iraq and Saddam Hussein with billions of dollars in “aid” to enable him to purchase weapons to war with Iran. Of course any notion that some of this money may have trickled down into the more genocidal activites of Saddam Hussein is nonsense, and to go as far as to say that such a relationship with the US may have instilled some kind of sense of political unaccountability and invincibility is also absolute rot. You see, there’s simply no way you could view the US government as co-conspirators of this terrible atrocity. Their hands were clean, and would be even more so once the Iraqi courts had decided to slit Saddams gizzard.
By June the prosecution have made it clear and public they will be gunning for, no pun intended, the death peanlty. They are now focusing on events in 1987-88, the time when Premier Hussein stepped up his anti-Kurdish offensive. The case against him is less cut and dry than what has been revealed in regards to the 1982 massacre in Dujail, yet a host of eye witness accounts are brought forward before the court. Guerilla soldiers who were exposed to the gas attacks, fathers who lost wives and children, mother still grieving… All these witnesses providing accounts that the media devoured and regurgitated wholesale as a testament to the evil of Hussein. Yet no-one actually stood and questioned the relevance of the testimony that had more in common with the slushy melodrama of a Hollywood courtroom based movie than the actual mechanics of due process.
All the while the media jumps on the petty outbursts of the main defendant as he refuses to sit down, abuses the judge, heckles the witnesses… Saddam is routinely removed from court and proceedings halted by a man who is only too happy to play up to his status as pantomime villain. What is all the more disconcerting is the apparent lack of control of the court, and indeed self control, by the presiding judge Rizgar Amin who seemed just as interested in establishing dominance over the accused as anything else. Something I expect to see from the tawdry Judge Judy but not from a trial of a former world leader.
Indeed, on one occasion he was chastised for being late by the judge despite the insistence that he was shackled at all times, something for the cameras as opposed to a realistic practicality. Was their any danger from a 62 year old man in ill health? Did Saddam even want to escape? I doubt it – He was relishing the spotlight way too much.
And so we come to it – the sentence of death on the 1982 massacre is passed less than 24 hours ago and the world reacts as if we should be surprised. The fact that there is still no sentence passed for his involvement in the Kurdish offensive, yet the witness testimony is still ringing in the ears of jurors, is just one of the many reasons why this trial has been a farce. Even Amnesty International, an organisation know for their work in assisting the victims of Hussein’s legacy, have come forward and spoken out about the trial. They are actually calling for the death penalty to be overturned at appeal.
Incredibly, despite his signature being on the legally binding documents that will enable a state approved execution of Saddam, the new president Jalal Talabani is opposed to the punishment and is so far as has been stated opposes the death penalty as uncivilised. Yet the Iraq Prime Minister – Nouri Malaki – Has said the sentence is what is required to close the book on the dark history of Iraq. I wonder just exactly where these separate agendas converge.
As riots break out in Saddam’s home town of Tikrit, the defence steals itself for what the world already knows to be an unsuccessful appeal. This will only take 3-4 weeks. No 15 year waiting periods on death row in this country. The bulk of their appeal will revolve around government interference in the trial itself and irregular trial methods, both of which have indeed taken place. Yet we can expect a, doubtlessly, televised execution of a Muslim former leader around about Christmas. Shades of Ceausescu.
Does Saddam deserve life imprisonment? Of course. But what is to be said of Western benevolence and justice when we turn those we oust over to the people with their ready knives sharpened for some mob justice. Forget the robes, the pomp, the ceremony. That is exactly what happened here. And no doubt George Bush, no stranger to executions as his time as governor in Texas will testify to, will have some popcorn ready and his whitehouse DVD recorder all good to go on the date that the man who “tried to kill” his “daddy” (Bushes words, not mine) is strung up by the neck until he twitches his last and pisses his pants.
The rope is hanging as a reminder to all the others out there that challenge the Western hegemony “fuck with us, and it could be round your neck” and nothing more. Told you.