[Previous entry: "Haiti in Chains"] [Next entry: "The Nader/Dean 'Debate'"]

07/09/2004:

"Even a Tyrant is Entitled to Due Process"

by Robert Scheer The Nation
Has anyone noticed that the charges leveled last week against Saddam Hussein bore no relation to the reasons offered by President Bush for his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq? Not a word about Hussein being linked to terrorist attacks on the United States or having weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to our nation's security.

That is because after seven months of interrogation, the United States appears to have learned nothing from Hussein or any other source in the world that supports the Pazresident's decision to go to war. Washington turned Hussein over to the Iraqis without charging its infamous prisoner of war with any of these crimes. And even the Iraqis did not charge him with being behind the insurgency that almost daily claims American lives.

It's a travesty, if you think about it. The fact is that the United States, which holds itself up as the exemplar of democracy for the entire Middle East, held Hussein in captivity for seven months, virtually incommunicado, without access to lawyers of his choosing and without charging him with a crime or releasing him at the end of the occupation, as required by the Geneva Convention. If the United States believes, as most of the world does, that Hussein committed crimes against humanity, then he is entitled to the same international standards of due process that the United States and its allies applied to top Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. It is well established in such cases that justice will not be served by turning Hussein over to be tried by his former political rivals or his victims. full article