A Fair Trial

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark is fixated on fair trials. He doesn't think Saddam Hussein can get one in Iraq. Saddam is currently on trial for the reprisal executions of 140 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against the former president in the Shiite town of Dujail in 1982.

Of course, what Clark thinks is a fair trial and what anyone in their right mind thinks is a fair trial are two separate things. For starters, Clark thinks that the only way Saddam gets a fair trial is if the Iraqis aren't involved in the prosecution. In fact, Clark would much prefer an international court deciding whether Saddam was guilty or innocent. And Clark would much prefer a stacked deck in favor of Saddam, rather than the hundreds of thousands of corpses that litter the Iraqi landscape due to Saddam's criminal behavior over the three decades of his tyrannical rule. Should this particular court find Saddam guilty, Clark will rail that this trial was fixed and that Saddam couldn't get a fair trial, plus the sentence of death is too harsh.

Clark is the founder of ANSWER, which is a radical leftist group that is dedicated to casting aspersions on the US at every turn. It has no problem defending the genocidal policies of Saddam, but criticizes the US for not being more sensitive to al Qaeda and terrorist groups that seek the destruction of the US and the mass murder of Americans.

And Clark's presence at the trial is a sideshow, considering that many of Saddam's defense attorney's did not want him there due to his showboating and the way he treated fellow counsel. Of course, Clark wants the attention focused on himself, and couldn't care less about Saddam's victims, which is at the heart of this trial.

Of course, Saddam himself is combative and 'feisty' as the New York Times puts it. Saddam, the genocidal dictator, is feisty. He challenges the legitimacy of the court, how the court operates, and seeks to undermine, coerce, threaten, and badger the court into doing Saddam's bidding as though he were still in charge of the country of Iraq.

And for someone who is always noted by the Times and other outlets as being a secularist, Saddam has no problem busting out the Koranic verses when it suits his needs:

Moments earlier, following a pattern he established during his initial court appearance 17 months ago, Mr. Hussein invoked a verse from the Koran, on this occasion one that seemed intended to suggest that the ultimate judgment on the events that occurred during Mr. Hussein's 24-year rule in Iraq would rest with God, not with the court. "Do you think that you will enter paradise without Allah judging those among you who fought hard in his cause, and remained steadfast?", Mr. Hussein said, reciting the verse from memory.

UPDATE:
Poca Dot at Basil's Blog wonders why the coverage of Saddam's depravities and criminal behavior, including the execution of the 140 Shi'ites in Dujail in 1982 has garnered a mere fraction of the coverage that the Abu Ghraib scandal. Is there something about mass-murdering dictators that suggests that we shouldn't get wall to wall coverage of their heinous actions, but abuses by the US military must be an open season for continuing media coverage?

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin notes that Saddam's gone unhinged, and has Ramsey holding his hand. Stop the ACLU also notices the hand holding.