Verdict of Saddam’s Trial:
A Guilty Verdict for George Bush & US Imperialism
By Ivan Drury
On November 5, Saddam Hussain was sentenced to
hang by a court in an Iraq occupied by around 150,000
US troops. The Prime Minister of the government
that oversees this court is headed by a man whose
friends and co-Dawa-party members were the ones
that Saddam has been condemned to death for
slaughtering. In an ‘incredible’ prediction, this Prime
Minister said, a month in advance of this sentencing,
“It won’t be long. An execution order on this criminal
despot and his criminal aides will be passed soon.”
Hanging judge in a victor’s court
Saddam Hussain was sentenced to hang by the same
sort of kangaroo court that he was convicted of setting
up against his attempted assassins back in 1982. This
court of the “new Iraq” disposed of three judges in
one year for not silencing Saddam, for being too
sympathetic to Saddam, and for being too mindful of
the rights of Saddam – respectively. This “liberated”
court oversaw the assassination of three defense lawyers,
and its “rule of law” guaranteed that Saddam went through
the last days of his trial without a lawyer at all (except for
the court-appointed lawyer, who he refused).
But make no mistake, this is not a legal case. This ridiculous
court was exactly the tool required for the ridiculous job. It
did not and does not matter what
the specific charges are against
Saddam. It does not matter what
evidence, what proof comes. The
trial of Saddam Hussain is not a
criminal trial. It is a ‘heel’-ing of
a dog. Sewed into the seams of
every “crime of Saddam Hussain”
are the characteristic markings
of American craftsmanship – and
an example must be made.
Saddam: a US weapon tried by
its master
“A former dictator feared
by millions, who killed his
own citizens without mercy
or justice, who waged wars
against neighboring countries,
has been brought to trial in his
own country - held accountable
in a court of law with ordinary
citizens bearing witness.”
- U.S. Ambassador to Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad, reacting to
Saddam’s sentencing
On the U.S. Law Library of
Congress website, there is a
summary of the trial of Saddam
Hussain. This is what it says:
“The international community has
repeatedly accused Saddam Hussein of war
crimes, genocide, and atrocities during his
reign in Iraq. Some of the allegations include
using poison gas against Iranians during
the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, dropping
chemical weapons on Halabja, which killed
up to 5,000 people, and committing crimes
against humanity and possibly genocide
against the Marsh Arabs and Shi’a Arabs
in southern Iraq, as well as against Iraqi
Kurds in northern Iraq.”
There, in one paragraph, is the summary
of the entire case against Saddam Hussain.
But each of these sentences swell like a
body fermenting in a cell. The art of the US
occupying forces in setting up the trial of
Saddam Hussain was three-fold:
1. To fertilize the myth that Saddam is the
root of all evil in Iraq, and that his removal
equals liberation for the Iraqi people.
2. To issue a warning to the temp-labour
office full of devils currently on CIA payroll
that they had better do their job well of
suppressing the people in their countries
and doing whatever they are told. This is
a message directed towards the likes of
Mubarak in Egypt, King Abdallah II in
Jordan, Musharraf in Pakistan, Faisal in
Saudi Arabia, and of course Prime Minister
Malaki in Iraq… and the rest.
3. To cover-up the role of the U.S. as the
motor-force in the various serial-crimes
of the Saddam Hussain regime, in order to
maintain purpose numbers one and two.
In order to accomplish all three of these
tricks at once, the US-court on the Euphrates
began by trying Saddam for the relatively
obscure, and relatively minor crime of
putting 142 men and boys to death in
response to an attempted assassination plot
that failed against him in 1982. While the
U.S. was undoubtedly aware of this crime
at the time, rather than say or do anything at
the time, they busied themselves arranging
the covert shipping of weapons to Saddam
to help him in his war against Iran… and
whatever else he needed them for at home.
Poison gas, genocide, and the price of
diplomatic relations with the US
Also in 1982, and also with the knowledge
of the U.S., there was a massive Kurdish
uprising in the Kurdish areas of Iraq,
Iran, and Syria. In all three countries, this
uprising was put down brutally, and tens
of thousands of Kurds were murdered. In
Iraq in particular, this uprising took on a
popular anti-government bent, as soldiers
left the battle lines within the Iranian
border and retreated to join the uprising
against their own government. In response
Saddam announced that all deserters from
the army would be immediately shot. In the
summer of 1983, this pronouncement was
carried out with a massive carpet bombing
murder of the tens of thousands of army
deserters who had taken refuge in Southern
Iraq. But rather than draw attention (and
investigation!) to this massacre carried out
with the direct material and political support
of the U.S., this first trial concentrated on the
execution of a group of relatively isolated
assassination-conspirators… even though
they both happened at the same time.
The famous 1988 massacre of 5,000 people
in the Kurdish city of Halabja, just after the
ceasefire with Iran, was carried out with
U.S. bombs from U.S. supplied planes and
helicopters. Just as they would again three
years later when the Iraqi army was in
retreat at the end of the 1991 U.S.-Gulf war,
the retreating soldiers became advancing
rebels and began a march on the presidential
palace. And just as they would at the end of
the 1991 US-Gulf war, the U.S. supported
Saddam’s brutal suppression of these
soldier-rebels, in the hope that they could
wash the rebellious spirit out of Iraq with
blood spilled by the hand of Saddam.
War crimes in the 1980-1988 war with
Iran
Saddam Hussain became the president of
Iraq in 1979… the same year that the U.S.
lost their contemporary-historic foothold of
‘influence’ in the Middle East to the Iranian
Revolution. In 1980, Saddam began an
eight-year-long war with Iran.
As the George Washington University
national security archive explains, “Initially,
Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but
was driven back within months. By mid-
1982, Iraq was on the defensive against
Iranian human-wave attacks.” The Saddam
push to overwhelm the newly independent
Iranian government was met by the force
of a people in motion, and a practically
unlimited volunteer army eager to defend
the revolution. People in Iran rightly saw
that behind Saddam’s invasion was a more
powerful ‘puppetmaster’ force. In response
to the Iranian counter-offensive, the U.S.
stepped up their support of Iraq. From the
beginning of the war, the U.S. had begun
preparations for a re-initiation of diplomatic
relations with Iraq – frozen since the 1967
Israeli war on the Middle East.
In February 1982, the U.S. State Department
removed Iraq from its list of “states supporting
international terrorism” and began selling
Saddam weapons. An immediate over-thetable
purchase of military helicopters was
followed by the covert shipping of millions
of dollars in howitzers, helicopters, bombs
and other weapons to Baghdad in 1982-83
through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and
Kuwait.
In February 1992, the LA Times
reported, “There was a conscious effort to
encourage third countries to ship U.S. arms
or acquiesce in shipments after the fact. It
was a policy of nods and winks.”
On January 1, 1984, The Washington Post
reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly
Persian Gulf nations that the defeat
of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with
Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S.
interests’ and has made several
moves to prevent that result.”
February 1984, upon gaining
intelligence that Iran may have
been planning a counter-invasion
of Iraq, the Iraqi government stated
ominously, “the invaders should
know that for every harmful insect
there is an insecticide capable
of annihilating it whatever the
number, and Iraq possesses this
annihilation insecticide.” No,
at that point in time, Saddam’s
“saber-rattling” didn’t rattle thenpresidential-
envoy-to-the-Middle-
East Donald Rumsfeld. He met
again with Saddam for the second
time in three months in late March.
The very same day that Rumsfeld
and Saddam were shaking hands
in Baghdad, a report went to the
United Nations that “mustard gas
laced with a nerve agent has been
used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-
month Persian Gulf War between
Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts
has concluded” But it should not
be surprising that Rumsfeld did
not cut off his talks with Saddam
at this news – he already knew.
In a U.S. State Department report
issued on March 5, 1984, the
U.S. acknowledged, “available
evidence indicates that Iraq has
used lethal chemical weapons.”
And, according to the New York
Times in 2002, even though
“senior officials of the Reagan
administration publicly condemned
Iraq’s employment
of mustard
gas, sarin,
VX and other
poisonous agents
… President
Reagan, vice
president George
Bush [Senior]
and senior
national security
aides never withdrew
their support for the highly
classified program in which
more than 60 officers of the
Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) were secretly providing
detailed information on Iranian
deployments, tactical planning for
battles, plans for air strikes and
bomb-damage assessments for
Iraq.”
The execution of a scapegoat
History is a ruthless judge. Not
always expedient… but ruthless
in the end. The U.S. used
Saddam Hussain as a tool
for its interests in the
Middle East, especially
in their attempt to regain
their pre-1979 position in
Iran and the Middle East.
With a package deal,
they bought and paid for
all of the repression that
Saddam had to carry out
at home to stay in power.
But Saddam failed to
do the job for the U.S.
in Iran… and that was
the beginning of his
downfall.
Faced with a world economic
crisis and the need to take control
over the Middle East from their
imperialist competitors in the
European Union and around the
world, the U.S. ruling class knew
that Saddam was not to be counted
on. The massive U.S. military
machine knocked Saddam’s
regime over as easily as they had
built it up – but they inherited the
resistance of the Iraqi people that
he had earned... to scale. For every
criminal war and war crime that
Saddam carried out, opposition
to him grew throughout Iraq, and
burst out of the ground in nearly
annual popular antigovernment
movements. The wars and war
crimes of the U.S. are, incredibly,
much more brutal, and widely felt
and resented. The result is that the
movement against them is even
more broad, more popular, and
constant.
The trial and conviction of
Saddam Hussain is not, as Bush
claims, “a milestone in the Iraqi
people’s efforts to replace the rule
of a tyrant with the rule of law,”
because the trial contained no “rule
of law” and had nothing to do with
the “efforts of the Iraqi people.” It
is a unilateral Nuremburg, a show
trial and execution of a scapegoat,
and it solves nothing – and that is
a crime.
Saddam Hussain was used by
the U.S., yes, but he was useful
because he was willing to carry
out any crime against oppressed
people in Iraq and the whole
Middle East for his own narrow
capitalist class interests. The
people of Iraq deserve to try
him for his crimes, alongside his
masters in Washington. His were
not the crimes of one man, and his
sentence should not be his alone
either.
The conviction of Saddam
Hussain is a conviction of U.S.
imperialism for crimes against the
Iraqi, Iranian, and Kurdish people.
History will make that clear. It’s a
shame that the sentence is not so
easily transferable.
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