Saddam verdict / US elections

Will Saddam verdict timing manipulate US election?

Richard Falk:
Falk is an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University and coauthor most recently of the book Crimes of War: Iraq.

He said today: "It should come as no surprise that the final verdict in the Saddam Hussein criminal trial seems timed to coincide with the November U.S. midterm elections. ..."The U.S. government should be ashamed to have debased international justice by orchestrating every phase of this trial in Baghdad from start to finish to divert domestic public opinion in this country from the dismal failure of its Iraq policy. It is a sad day for American democracy if the citizens of this country fall for such a cheap propaganda trick amid a dreadful war that is wasting the lives of its young soldiers and bringing massive suffering to the Iraqi people."

Sureya Sayadi, MD:

A Kurdish doctor and academic now living in the U.S., Sayadi said today: "I've been watching the trial very closely -- the Kurdish channels on satellite TV show it late night. Hearing the stories from the victims, how they were blinded, how their families were killed is just heartbreaking. But now the U.S. government is using these people's death and suffering for an election. Since the 1970s, the U.S. government has played with Kurdish lives. They are playing with Iraqi lives and now they're even playing with American lives.

She added: "The trial is supposed to show justice, but it doesn't. It doesn't examine who gave Saddam the chemical and biological agents to kill people -- it was the U.S. and Germany. If we were really after justice, there would be an international tribunal, like for Rwanda. Instead, the U.S. government just wants to use the trial of Saddam to continue its policies in Iraq today. I don't know whether to laugh or cry."


November Surprise?Why Hasn't Mainstream Media Connected the Dots Between Saddam's Judgment Day and the Midterm Elections?

by Tom Engelhardt

The US-backed special tribunal in Baghdad signalled Monday that it will likely delay a verdict in the first trial of Saddam Hussein to November 5. Why hasn't the mainstream media connected the dots between the Saddam's judgment day and the midterm elections?

Here's how the story was reported pretty much everywhere: "An Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of Shi'ite villagers in the 1980s could deliver a verdict on November 5, officials said, a ruling which could send the ousted leader to the gallows…"

A possible death-sentence for Saddam and his top lieutenants on November 5? Now, shouldn't that raise a few eyebrows somewhere? If you happen to have a calendar close at hand, pull it over and take a quick look. That verdict would then come, curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections. It's the sort of thing that--you would think--that any reporter with knowledge of the US election cycle (no less of how Karl Rove has worked these last years) would at least note in an article. But no, you can search high and low without finding a reference to this in the mainstream media.

I must admit I hadn't thought about this myself until a friend forwarded me "No Comment," the e-mail newsletter that Scott Horton sends out from time to time. ("It's intended as ironic. All I do is comment.") Horton, who likes to identify himself in his newsletter as an "obscure New York lawyer," is actually an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Law School, as well as chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. He makes frequent trips to Iraq, working as an attorney "representing arrested local-hire reporters of US media."

Once he had pointed out the timing in his newsletter, I couldn't get it out of my head and, since a Google search and a spin through various mainstream articles on the changed verdict date, brought up only a couple of passing mentions online of its relationship to the US elections, I called Horton directly. Here's what he had to say when I asked whether he thought Karl Rove might have anything to do with this:

"For sure. That November 5 date is designed to show some progress in Iraq. This is the last full news-cycle day in the US before the elections. It'll be Monday. And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing.

"When you look at polling figures," Horton said," there have been three significant spike points. One was the date on which Saddam was captured. The second was the purple fingers election. The third was Zarqawi being killed. Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this.

"After all, almost every newspaper reserves space for Iraq reporting every day. This just assures that they will have a positive news story to feature. I find it amazing not that journalists don't editorialize on this, but that they report the story without even noting that this is right before the midterm elections. That's pretty amazing to me!

"This is not coincidence," he continued. "Nothing in Iraq that's set up this far in advance is coincidental. Look at Michael Gordon's book Cobra II. One of the points he drives home is how everything in the battle for Baghdad was scripted for US media consumption.

"In fact, in my experience, everything that comes out of Baghdad is very carefully prepared for American domestic consumption.

"As for Saddam's trial itself, I've spoken with dozens of lawyers and judges in Iraq and they have a uniformly very negative opinion of this special tribunal. Everybody -- pretty consistently across the board, and despite the fact that there's no love lost for Saddam himself--has a high level of irritation about the tribunal. Judges have said to me, ‘I wouldn't serve on that. I wouldn't have anything to do with it. It's a blot on our country.' Their main point of criticism is its lack of independence. There is a team of American lawyers working as special legal advisors out of the US embassy, who drive the whole thing. They have been involved in preparing the case and overseeing it from the beginning. The trial, which is shown on TV, has mild entertainment value for Iraqis, but they refer to it regularly as an American puppet theater."
Still, scheduling the announcement of what will almost certainly be a future execution to give yourself one last shot at a bump in the polls?
Welcome to Bushworld.

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute of which he is a Fellow. He is also consulting editor for Metropolitan Books and the co-founder of its American Empire Project series. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the cold war, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, about a world he inhabited for thirty years. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hussein trial - timeline

Oct. 19, 2005
Mr. Hussein's trial opened. He said he would not recognize the court's authority and finally pleaded not guilty.

Oct. 20, 2005
A group of a dozen armed men seized a defense lawyer from his Baghdad office. His body was found in a rubbish-strewn lot nearby.

Nov. 8, 2005
Gunmen ambushed two defense lawyers, killing one and seriously wounding the other.

Nov. 28, 2005
The trial resumed. Mr. Hussein seized the floor for a verbal assault on American military guards.

Dec. 5, 2005
The first witnesses took the stand, offering gripping accounts of torture.

Dec. 21, 2005
Mr. Hussein accused American military guards of beating and torturing him and his co-defendants.

January 2006
The chief judge submitted a letter of resignation, saying he was frustrated with the tribunal's failure to defend him against widespread criticism.

Jan. 23, 2006
A new judge was appointed to take charge of the trial.

June 21, 2006
A senior lawyer on Mr. Hussein's defense team was abducted, beaten and shot to death.

July 23, 2006
Mr. Hussein was hospitalized and was being fed with a tube despite a hunger strike that he began on July 7.

July 27, 2006
The trial ended after nine months.

Nov. 5, 2006
The verdicts were announced. Mr. Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to death by hanging.