Truth suppressed

Not many in the corporate media seem to have been willing to consider any of the harms associated with Saddam Hussein's execution (aside from valid general concerns about the death penalty itself). But Eric Margolis recognizes what's now been lost:

No one can accuse me of sympathy for Saddam or his fellow thugs who terrorized Iraq. But I was thoroughly disgusted and ashamed by the kangaroo court created and stage-managed by the U.S. that condemned Saddam.

It was a disgraceful farrago of Soviet-style show trial and judicial circus. Washington, which claimed to be bringing the fruits of democracy to the benighted Arab World, put on a sinister legal farce worthy of, ironically, Saddam's courts.

Iraq's deposed president, whom Osama bin Laden called "the worst Arab despot" should have faced real justice at an international legal tribunal like the UN Hague Court. That would have served warning to other despots who violated human rights and committed aggression.

The United States did right to hand over Serb tyrant Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague. But Saddam had to be silenced before he told the world about his long collusion with the United States. Dead men tell no tales...

Saddam should have faced trial for his unprovoked 1980 aggression against Iran that ended up causing one million dead and wounded.

But in this crime, Saddam was covertly backed by his principal accomplices, the U.S. and Britain. Donald Rumsfeld even went to Baghdad to offer Saddam arms, finance and intelligence. Hanging Saddam eliminated the main witness.

Of course, there are other crimes in Saddam's past equally deserving of a full trial aside from the Iran invasion. But it's beyond doubt that the rest of his would-be rap sheet - along with the U.S.' strategic contribution to it - will now likely be ignored in the longer term for lack of the highest-profile defendant and most important witness. Which only makes it all the more likely that the same pattern will repeat itself under new Saddam figures in Iraq and elsewhere in the future...with the U.S.' involvement once again getting glossed over in the final account.