Do we really want to try Saddam with an international tribunal?

The United States doesn't have sole rights to Saddam Hussein. Hell, they weren't even the ones who found him. Saddam Hussein should go before an international council and be tried for his crimes.

It would be awesome if he could be tried in Iraq, but the necessary judicial infrastructure isn't ready yet.

 

Bomb the Hague!!! What a bunch of pussi*s!!!

 

This reminds me of a Bil Hicks skit. "But he had a gun ..."

 

Do we really want a Saddam trial to drag on for two years.

The trail should not begin until Iraq is self ruled. Anything less than that would give the appearance of the USA delivering the justice.

The problem is that Iraq first set of free elections are slated for the fall of 2005. If Saddam is tried before then, the US and/or the UN will have say in the matter.

 

I initially thought he should be tried by Iraqis in the hopes that it would stimulate democratic institutions and unite the country to some degree, thus potentially salvaging one of the many offered reasons for the war. However, since we're apparently giving up on those ideas to make sure the changeover happens before the election and since my hopes weren't really based on anything more than hope, I see no reason to support the Iraqi trial position. If his crimes were as heinous as advertised and we don't really care about what kind of institutions get established in Iraq, then the proper venue for crimes against humanity is in an international proceeding.

 

I think he should be tried by the front line of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers...

(DAMNIT! My doctor warned me about Simpsons references in this forum....)

 

since we're apparently giving up on those ideas to make sure the changeover happens before the election

Wanna bet? GWB is pimping the "changeover" as something that it is not. I suspect there will not be a drastic change in the number of US troups befoe and after the changeover. I also find it apocryphal that the US will let the changeover Iraqi government write their constitution by themselves. Not going to happen. Would not be prudient.

 

Well if we put him on trial we would have to reveal he was our proxy in the Iran Iraq war and that we gave him WMD tech to use on Iranians (and which was further developed for use on Kurds) which Cheney then had the opportunity to bring up in one on one conversations with Saddam way back when but neglected to mention it for some reason. Not gonna happen.

 

I would try him with romesco sauce, home fries and a side salad.

 

That is patently untrue. We did not use him as a proxy, but in fact, we only supplied him with some intel and not the weaponry as some left-leaning posters here would allege. All of his weaponry is either French or Russian and all of his WMD equipment was of European origin.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm

<I>Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show.
</I>

http://www.sundayherald.com/print31710

<I>SEVENTEEN British companies who supplied Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, rocket and conventional weapons technology are to be investigated and could face prosecution following a Sunday Herald investigation.

One of the companies is Inter national Military Services, a part of the Ministry of Defence, which sold rocket technology to Iraq. The companies were named by Iraq in a 12,000 page dossier submitted to the UN in December. The Security Council agreed to US requests to censor 8000 pages -- including sections naming western businesses which aided Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme.

The five permanent members of the security council -- Britain, France, Russia, America and China -- are named as allowing companies to sell weapons technology to Iraq.

The dossier claims 24 US firms sold Iraq weapons. Hewlett-Packard sold nuclear and rocket technology; Dupont sold nuclear technology, and Eastman Kodak sold rocket capabilities. The dossier also says some '50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises conducted their arms business with Iraq from the US'.

It claims the US ministries of defence, energy, trade and agri culture, and the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, supplied Iraq with WMD technology.
</I>

 

Not like any right-leaning posters are ever biased or wrong.


The only news source that disputes that we supplied WMD to Iraq are *op-ed* pieces from WSJ and Fox news.

Feel free to correct any of the National Security archives quoted below.



I was partially wrong, it was Rumsfeld who gave Saddam the pat on the head for a good job with the WMD.



.....
Roger Schlueter The Belleville News-Democrat
Sunday 20 April 2003


Q. I have a friend trying to convince me that the United States was at least partially responsible for giving Saddam Hussein the weapons of mass destruction that we now have been fighting to destroy. Can he be right?
-- E.N. of Belleville

A. This likely will raise howls of protest from supporters of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., but your friend is essentially correct.

You don't have to dig deep to find that from 1982 to 1990 the United States supplied Iraq with not only conventional arms and cash but also chemical and biological materials, including the precursors for anthrax and botulism. It's another example of nations playing with fire when they form dangerous alliances.

In 1980, Iran and Iraq launched a horrendous eight-year war that would kill at least 1 million people. With the Ayatollah Khomeini controlling Iran, the U.S. feared a radical Islamic takeover of the region, so it began cozying up to Saddam -- you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

With Iran holding the upper hand in 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department's list of terrorist nations over congressional objections. A year later, the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive 114, which stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent the fall of Iraq.

Then, just before Christmas 1983, Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld -- yes, the current secretary of defense -- to Baghdad to discuss resuming official diplomatic relations with Saddam, relations that had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

On March 24, 1984, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad -- the same day United Press International reported that Iraqi soldiers had used mustard gas laced with a nerve agent on Iranian forces. That didn't seem to matter. Even though the State Department recognized on March 5, 1984, that "Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons" in violation of the Geneva accords, full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iraq were restored in November.



That opened the floodgates to aid from the United States. Once Iraq was off the terrorist list, conventional military sales resumed in December 1982. It is thought that U.S.-supplied helicopters were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5,000 Iraqis -- the same attack frequently cited the past few months as a reason to overthrow Saddam.

Once diplomatic relations were restored, the Department of Agriculture began offering guaranteed loans for food because shortages were causing discontent among the Iraqi people. This allowed Saddam to divert money to buy arms and "dual-use" items from not only the United States, but also West Germany, Italy, France, England and a host of others. Best guess is that U.S. taxpayers wound up paying $2 billion in bad Iraqi loans.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Bank Committee found that U.S. companies had been licensed by the Commerce Department to export a "witch's brew" of biological and chemical materials, including precursors of anthrax and botulism. The report also noted the exports included plans for chemical and biolgical warfare facilities and chemical warhead filling equipment.

Yet even after Saddam began gassing his own people in Northern Iraq, the flow of goods continued. In November 1989, Bush approved $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq in 1990, and from July 18, 1989, to Aug. 1, 1990, the U.S. approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales.

"Only on Aug. 2, 1990, did the Agriculture Department officially suspend the (loan) guarantees to Iraq -- the same day that Hussein's tanks and troops swept into Kuwait," a Los Angeles Times expose on Feb. 23, 1992, noted.

Postscript: According to a Washington Post story, when United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components and computers from American companies that were being used for military purposes.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)









http://www.robertscheer.com/

.S. to Hussein: WMD A-OK
New documents detail how Rumsfeld and Reagan let Iraq know it was just fine to keep using chemical weapons against Iran, Kurds

December 30, 2003 – Sometimes democracy works. Though the wheels of accountability often grind slowly, they also can grind fine, if lubricated by the hard work of free-thinking citizens. The latest example: the release of official documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that detail how the U.S. government under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush nurtured and supported Saddam Hussein despite his repeated use of chemical weapons.

The work of the National Security Archive, a dogged organization fighting for government transparency, has cast light on the trove of documents that depict in damning detail how the United States, working with U.S. corporations including Bechtel, cynically and secretly allied itself with Hussein's dictatorship. The evidence undermines the unctuous moral superiority with which the current American president, media and public now judge Hussein, a monster the U.S. actively helped create.

The documents make it clear that were the trial of Hussein to be held by an impartial world court, it would prove an embarrassing two-edged sword for the White House, calling into question the motives of U.S. foreign policy. If there were a complete investigation into those who aided and abetted Hussein's crimes against humanity, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State George Shultz would probably end up as material witnesses.

It was Rumsfeld and Shultz who told Hussein and his emissaries that U.S. statements generally condemning the use of chemical weapons would not interfere with relations between secular Iraq and the Reagan administration, which took Iraq off the terrorist-nations list and embraced Hussein as a bulwark against fundamentalist Iran. Ironically, the U.S supported Iraq when it possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and invaded it when it didn't.

It was 20 years ago when Shultz dropped in on a State Department meeting between his top aide and a high-ranking Hussein emissary. Back then the Iraqis, who were fighting a war with Iran, were our new best friends in the Mideast. Shultz wanted to make it crystal clear that U.S. criticism of the use of chemical weapons was just pablum for public consumption, meant as a restatement of a "long-standing policy, and not as a pro-Iranian/anti-Iraqi gesture," as State's Lawrence S. Eagleburger told Hussein's emissary. "Our desire and our actions to prevent an Iranian victory and to continue the progress of our bilateral relations remain undiminished," Eagleburger continued, according to the then highly classified transcript of the meeting.

The Shultz/Eagleburger meeting took place between two crucial visits by Rumsfeld, acting as a Reagan emissary, to Hussein to offer unconditional support for the Iraqi leader in his war with Iran. In the first meeting, in December 1983, Rumsfeld told Hussein that the United States would assist in building an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan. He made no mention of chemical weapons, even though U.S. intelligence only months earlier had confirmed that Iraq was using such illegal weapons almost daily against Iranians and Kurds.

That administration's eye was not on the carnage from chemical weapons but rather the profit to be obtained from the flow of oil. In a later meeting with an Iraqi representative, as recorded in the minutes, "Eagleburger explained that because of the participation of Bechtel in the Aqaba pipeline, the Secretary of State [Shultz] is keeping completely isolated from the issue. Iraq should understand that this does not imply a lack of high-level [U.S. government] interest." (Shultz had been chief executive of Bechtel before joining the Reagan administration and is currently a director of the company, which is signing contracts for work in Iraq as fast as U.S. taxes can be allocated.)

Minutes of that meeting and others in which the United States ignored Hussein's use of banned weapons while extending support to the dictator mock the moral high ground assumed by George W. Bush in defense of his invasion. If, as Bush II says, Hussein acted as a "Hitler" while "gassing his own people," during the 1980s, we were fully aware and implicitly approving, via economic and military aid, of his most nefarious deeds.

Hussein's crimes were committed on our watch, when he was a U.S. ally, and we knowingly looked the other way. But don't take my word for it; check out http://www.nsarchive.org .



Copyright © 2003 Robert Scheer




http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
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The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war [Document 24]. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against "Kurdish insurgents" as well [Document 25].

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After reading the posts by Major and Woofer, it seems you have an odd defintion of "intel." Perhaps this is a problem with the right in general. In this case, they labelled weapons as intel and in the run-up to the recent invasion, they labelled intel as weapons.