Is Saddam innocent?

moghrabi · Nov 12, 2005

Does anybody remember why we invaded Iraq? I'll admit that I kind of forgot myself. Was it terrorism? Was it revenge for 9/11? Was it that Saddam was a particularly evil dictator? Or did it have something to do with weapons of mass destruction?

The headlines lately, seem to imply the latter, at least in the liberal media. A lot of folks are outraged that no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Indeed, no WMD programs of any kind have been uncovered. And this week, the President basically admitted that we were wrong about all that. All we hear from the administration nowadays is that Saddam was a "dangerous man" in a "dangerous part of the world." Sorry about the "misinformation," but the ends justified the means.

I was curious, so I went back to last year's State of the Union message, when the President was laying out his case against Iraq. Here are a few quotes from the President that day.

"Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation...Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons -- not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities...Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack."

You should really go back and read the whole thing. There's no equivocation. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. This makes him dangerous, and this is why he must be removed. Bush's speech also included the now-ridiculed accusation that Saddam had ties to Al Queda. Even at the time, we all knew this was a lie. Saddam, after all, was a secular dictator. He had about as much in common with the Taliban as Dennis Kucinich has with the 900 club. For example, the Taliban wouldn't let women go to school. They wouldn't even let women learn to read or write. In Iraq under Saddam the universities were almost 50 percent female. But underlying this argument was the "fact" that what made Saddam dangerous was that he could supply Al Queda with WMDs.

We have to ask: how did this lie go on for so long? Before the Democrats pat themselves on the back so hard that they pass out, I'd like to remind them that Bill Clinton kept up brutal economic sanctions against Iraq for all eight years of his presidency, sanctions that led directly to the deaths (according to the UN) of 1 million Iraqi children. Why? Because Saddam refused to cooperate with weapons inspectors. Because Saddam refused to disarm. Because Saddam refused to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

So we were all wrong. If you're a Democrat, you caused the death of a million children because of a lie. If you're a Republican, you caused America to annex a sovereign nation and killed hundreds of American soldiers for a lie. Because Clinton didn't want to look weak on defense. Because Bush wanted to reassure Americans that we were still powerful after 9/11.

It is clear now that the only weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein ever had were the ones that America gave him. He used them against Iran, as instructed, and then turned them against the Kurds. America ignored him. In 1990, he invaded Kuwait, and we drove him out. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. Despite the fact that all the evidence now shows that he did just that, Saddam was deposed.

So it begs the question: Should Saddam be restored? What legitimate reason is there to not simply apologize to Saddam and restore him to power in Iraq? Certainly, Saddam was a brutal dictator. But he is innocent of the crimes he was accused of.

Editor's note: Look for Erik Swanson's column each Tuesday on the opinion pages.

http://www.tnhonline.com/media/pape...html?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.tnhonline.com

moghrabi · Nov 12, 2005

Saddam Suddenly Looks Innocent

by Jude Wanniski
by Jude Wanniski

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Memo To: Attorney General John Ashcroft
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Why is He Being Held at All?

I see in the papers, John, that our government has decided that we will maintain physical custody of Saddam Hussein even after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government. An anonymous official told Associated Press the reason is the Iraqis do not have a prison safe enough to hold Saddam, and I suppose there may be some concern that if the Iraqi interim government got their hands on him there may be no need for a “trial.” They might sooner have him “die of natural causes” in his cell rather than have him answer the charges of war crimes, which have yet to be brought against him. But I now wonder why he is being held at all?

If you think about it, 18 months ago Saddam Hussein was sitting in his office, the duly constituted president and prime minister of Iraq, minding his own business. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with Iraq and so did not formally recognize him as head of state. But most of the rest of the world did, and Iraq had a seat at the United Nations and in its proper rotation could even take a seat on the Security Council. It was at this point that President Bush decided Saddam had weapons of destruction and was conspiring with Al Qaeda to menace peace-loving nations like the United States. He took his assertions to the UN Security Council and the Council agreed by a 15-to-0 vote to demand Saddam permit UN inspectors back into Iraq to search for the WMD. If you followed the U.N. proceedings over the following months, you will find that Baghdad fully complied with every demand made upon it by the Security Council.

Even if you missed the TV coverage, if you read the papers carefully you would find no instance where Saddam thumbed his nose at the Council. When he read of accounts from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Powell that he was still hiding stuff from the inspectors that our CIA knew about, he said he would invite the CIA to come and look in every nook and cranny. Remember? And when the UN inspectors were given tips by the CIA on places to search for WMD, they did so and found no traces of WMD. Not a teensy weensy bit of evidence. So when President Bush asked the Security Council for a resolution backing a war with Iraq, the Council turned him down. The other members pointed out that U.N. diplomacy had indeed worked and that the inspectors could clean up the last bits and pieces in a few months and certify that Iraq was absolutely clean.

President Bush did have authorization from the U.S. Congress to go to war with Iraq to get his WMD, but the resolution required that before he committed troops he had to certify in letters to the House and Senate that diplomacy had failed. Mr. Bush sent such letters to the House and Senate two days before our generals led coalition troops into Iraq from Kuwait. Some members of Congress objected, but what could they do but sit back and wait for our troops to defeat the Iraqi army and then locate the hidden WMD?

As we now know, Saddam Hussein was telling the truth. He had no WMD, had in fact gotten rid of them in 1991 when the U.N. passed a resolution demanding that he do so. Well, the administration of which you are the chief legal officer then insisted the war was justified because of Al Qaeda connections to Saddam’s regime. We don’t need a permission slip from the UNSC if we see there is a potential threat from a government somewhere, anywhere, that might develop WMD and give them to Al Qaeda, who would then sneak them into the United States and cause catastrophic loss of life. But now we find Saddam was absolutely telling the truth that he had no contact with Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden and that the one overture that came from Al Qaeda to an Iraqi official several years ago, asking assistance from Baghdad, was rebuffed. Apparently our intelligence agencies knew all this, as the 9-11 Commission has since discovered, but the administration you serve chose to believe otherwise. The war went forward and the mission was accomplished, at least in its formal military phase. Estimates of the number of Iraqi military and militiamen killed in combat range as high as 60,000 and estimates of the collateral damage to civilians range from 16,000 to 35,000 deaths.

Saddam Hussein was eventually located in his spider hole and whisked away, put under lock and key in a secure prison, with the idea that he would eventually be turned over to a duly constituted court of law and tried as a war criminal. President Bush on many occasions has pointed out that Iraq is better off without Saddam because his regime was known to have used “torture and rape rooms” at Al Ghraib prison. Now you know President Bush did not order our military people to use those same rooms to rape and torture Iraqi “detainees.” He says so and I believe him. But I wonder if you have evidence that Saddam ordered the Iraqi state or local police to “torture and rape,” or might he also insist as Mr. Bush has that he was at the tippy top of the national government and if he had known what excesses were committed by local cops, he would have put a stop to it.

To tell you the truth, John, as far as I can recall, there have been no assertions of the “brutality” of Saddam’s regime from anyone but the Iraqi exiles associated with Ahmet Chalabi or those Kurds who fought on the Iranian side in the Iran/Iraq war. There are all kinds of anecdotes about Saddam doing dreadful things, entire books written about them, but the source of all of them is the same pool of people who have been feeding faked “evidence” of WMD and Al Qaeda connections to our government. Can it be that there is nothing that Saddam has done all these years that cannot be justified as the permissible acts of a head of state acting in defense of his people. Yes, he invaded Kuwait in 1990, but in retrospect that was a really easy war to justify, given the economic warfare being conducted against Iraq by the Emir of Kuwait. I mean easy in relation to now having to justify this American invasion and destruction of good chunks of Iraq, on false premises.

President Bush still has it in his head that Saddam tried to assassinate his father in 1993, but if you did the smallest bit of digging you would find this was a hoax perpetrated by the neo-cons. The President also has it in his head that Saddam committed genocide against the Kurds in 1988, killing tens of thousands of them with poison gas and/or machine guns. If you lifted a little pinky to get to the bottom of this story, you will find it is also made of neo-con whole cloth. I’m not making wild assertions, John, because I have spent countless hours on this subject and find no loopholes left. Just call Human Rights Watch and ask if they have yet found the mass graves of those tens of thousands of Kurds and they will sheepishly admit they are still looking.

I’ll have to admit there is no easy way out for the Bush administration in explaining how it could have been snookered from first to last about Saddam Hussein. I’m not suggesting you ask to meet with the President and tell him he should go on TV and tell the American people he made a Bigtime Boo-Boo. I’m only suggesting you go back to your law books and, for your own good, get a good grip on why Saddam Hussein is behind bars when it now turns out he doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong. You might then be in a better position to advise the President on how to proceed in the best way to avoid further Bigtime Boo-Boos.

June 24, 2004

Copyright © 2004 Jude Wanniski

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski6.html

peapod · Nov 12, 2005

Your going to have a hard time selling this one morghabi...everyone better be polite to each other in this thread!

moghrabi · Nov 12, 2005

Thanks peapod. I thought it is a bit interesting yet controversial.

I am not selling anything. It is someone's belief that I decided to post for debate.

Thanks for the warning, I'll be polite. But watch the others.

Ocean Breeze · Nov 12, 2005

well one thing SH is definately innocent of .........is about the WMD issue. He kept denying possession of them. Bush claimed he was lying and could not be trusted or believed.

as it turns out...... (well, we know how it is turning out.)

no one is condoning SH or giving him carte blanch "innocence" on his reign in power. But Given the circumstances one really wonders what the whole truth is....

what we do know is that we certainly CANNOT believe the bush regime. Outside sources of data are critically important now.

but the topic poses good food for thought. and OPEN discussion...........as well as running "what if " scenarios..

moghrabi · Nov 12, 2005

Thanks OB. I like to see someone from the neocon proving GWB's innocence.

As a matter of fact, Saddam was telling the truth about WMD, about his US OK'd his visit to Kuwait, about Kurdish mass graves, and about his relation with OBL.

He might've been a mean dictator but was more honest that our frecking thief.

Reverend Blair · Nov 12, 2005

Saddam was innocent of the things that Bush accused him of to justify the war. There is no doubt about that anymore. There is also no doubt that Bush is a war criminal as a result.

Saddam should be tried for his many crimes against humanity though. He is a nasty bastard who killed many, many people and tortured even more.

The thing is that Saddam's trial should take place in an international court under international laws and be heard by judges who know and understand international law. The biggest role the US should play in that trial is the role of co-defendant.

I'm all for bringing international criminals to justice. I just want the law applied evenly.

gopher · Nov 12, 2005

How can Saddam be tried in an Iraqi court when his actions were not crimes under the old law there?

Democracies do NOT allow ex-post facto laws!

missile · Nov 12, 2005

A number of his lawyers have been murdered,so there's little chance he'll be getting a decent defense. not that it matters,it's my understanding that there are plans to execute him right after the trial. Was he innocent of the charges brought against him? Of Course.

Reverend Blair · Nov 12, 2005

Another reason why he should be tried in international court. He may not have broken any Iraqi laws, but he did commit crimes against humanity. The US doesn't want that talked about though, because they are guilty of trying to cover it up, if not outright aiding and abetting.

missile · Nov 12, 2005

Right! He hasn't done anything that the US hasn't done more of.

missile · Nov 12, 2005

Speaking of genicide: The Apaches, Commanches,Arapaho ,all the Indian nations were systematically wiped out by the Americans.Saddam only killed 100,000 or so of his people. This makes him only a petty criminal in comparison.

Colpy · Nov 12, 2005

Missile said:

"
Right! He hasn't done anything that the US hasn't done more of.

Speaking of genicide: The Apaches, Commanches,Arapaho ,all the Indian nations were systematically wiped out by the Americans.Saddam only killed 100,000 or so of his people. This makes him only a petty criminal in comparison. "

Saddam murdered at (a conservative estimate) 300,000 of his own people. His torturers had a number of lovely practises, such as slowly dipping their charges into vats of acid, dismembering them, or (one of their favourites), bring in the suspect's children and dismembering the children in front of their parents.

Not that the kids were safe anyway. The children of the politically suspect were locked in childrens' prisons, no matter how young. They were left without food or water to die in their cells.

No that is not my imagination, or an invention of the right. It comes from an interview with the anti-war, ex Marine weapons inspector. What was his name? Ridder?

BTW, find me someone alive that was involved in the ISOLATED CASES of Indian genocide, and I would see him shot as well.

There were cases of genocide against the Indians, for instance when the US army issued women and Children blankets brought straight from a small pox isolation hospital, and the attack at Wounded Knee.

Most of the frontier Indians wars were very brutal, but the massacres took place on both sides. The circle of mass killings was cyclical, whites outraged by Indian tortures and murder killed every Indian they could find, which angered the Indians, who then engaged in more murder and torture. Hardly organized genocide.

If it had been genocide, there would be no survivors of the tribes you mentioned.

Genocide is a word that gets tossed around way too freely these days.

Colpy · Nov 12, 2005

Gopher said:

"How can Saddam be tried in an Iraqi court when his actions were not crimes under the old law there?

Democracies do NOT allow ex-post facto laws! "

An excellent point Gopher.

And damned good reason to drag the SOB out into a public square and shoot him once behind the ear, sans trial.

Perhaps they could find a survivor of one of his prisons to do the deed.

DEATH TO TYRANTS!

moghrabi · Nov 12, 2005