Posted on 7-8-2003
Dead
Dictators Tell No Tales
by Eric Margolis, The Toronto Sun, 3 August 2003
(Osama Bin Laden also fits the USA's political policy
`dictators who left us must die' - Alan Marston)
In 1987, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy led me by the hand through
the ruins of his Tripoli residence, showing me the bedroom where
American 2,000-lb bombs, launched in an attempt to assassinate
him, had killed his 2-year-old daughter. The bombing of a Pan
Am airliner filled with Americans two years later may have been
revenge for this attack. Murder breeds murder.
Now, the latest irksome Arab leader is in Washington's gun sights.
Time seems to be running out for Iraq's fugitive former president,
Saddam Hussein. Chances are Saddam, like his sons, will
be killed in a Bonnie and Clyde-style shootout. He is unlikely
to be captured, unless incapacitated. The Bush administration
will be delighted not to put Saddam on public trial. Dead dictators
tell no tales.
The White House would much prefer to display a bullet-riddled
Saddam as a trophy to divert mounting criticism over U.S. casualties
in Iraq and the litany of falsehoods it used to drive America
to war. If put on public trial, Saddam would have a field
day revealing the embarrassing alliance between his brutal regime
and Washington: The CIA' in bringing the Ba'ath Party
to power in a 1958 coup, opening the way for Saddam to take
control. U.S., Israeli, and Iranian destabilization of
Iraq during the 1970s by fueling Kurdish rebellion.
Washington's egging on the aggressive shah of Iran in the Shatt
al-Arab waterway dispute, a primary cause of the Iran-Iraq War.
The U.S. secretly urging Iraq to invade Iran in 1980 to overthrow
that nation's revolutionary Islamic government. Covert
supply of Saddam's war machine by the U.S. and Britain during
the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, plus biological warfare programs
and germ feeder stocks, poison gas manufacturing plants and
raw materials. Billions in aid, routed through the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Italy's Banco del Lavoro and the shadowy BCCI.
Heavy artillery, munitions, spare parts, trucks, field hospitals
and electronics. Equally important, the U.S. Defence Intelligence
Agency and CIA operated offices in Baghdad that provided Iraq
with satellite intelligence data on Iranian troop deployments
that proved decisive in the war's titanic battles at Basra,
Majnoon and Faw. The murky role played by Washington just before
Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. ambassador told Saddam
"The U.S. takes no position in Arab border disputes."
Was this a trap to lure Saddam to invade Kuwait, then crush
his army, or simple diplomatic bungling? Saddam could supply
the awkward answers.
In short, Saddam was one of America's closet Mideast allies
during the 1980s, a major recipient of U.S. military and financial
aid. Saddam's killing of large numbers of Kurds and Shia rebels
occurred while he was a key U.S. ally. Washington remained mute
at the time. After George Bush Sr. called on the Kurds and Shia
Muslims to revolt in 1991, the U.S. watched impassively as Saddam
slaughtered the poorly armed rebels.
Better a bullet-riddled Saddam, or one executed by a military
kangaroo court in Guantanamo, or hanged by the new, American-installed
Iraqi regime in Baghdad.
Saddam should be handed over by the U.S. to the UN War Crimes
Tribunal in The Hague that is trying Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic
and other accused Bar criminals. After all, it was Washington
that engineered Milosevic's delivery to The Hague, an act for
which the U.S. deserves high praise. What applies to Milosevic
applies equally to Saddam Hussein. In fact, it
would be better for the Iraqi leader to stand trial at the newly
constituted International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
But the Bush administration, in one of its most shameful acts,
has refused to join this tribunal or co-operate with it.
Should Saddam be gunned down, like his two sons, there will
be glee among many Americans and rejoicing in the White House.
But Saddam Hussein is not John Dillinger or a prize elk. However
odious, he was the leader of a sovereign nation and a government
recognized by the U.S. Killing foreign heads of state violates
international law and the directives made by three American
presidents. Dropping 2,000-lb bombs on sites where Saddam was
believed to be is called attacking "leadership targets"
in the new Orwellian Pentagonspeak, but it's still old-fashioned
murder from the air. Gunning down Saddam will also be murder,
or, to use a more polite term, assassination.
America, the world's greatest democracy, has no business murdering
foreign leaders. Such behaviour is criminal, immoral, undemocratic
and reeks of the law of the jungle. Past U.S. attempts to murder
foreign leaders have proved self-defeating. Last week, Task
Force 20, a trigger-happy U.S. military hit squad hunting Saddam,
killed as many as 11 innocent Iraqi civilians in a botched Baghdad
raid. This is an outrage worthy of Saddam's former secret police.
George Bush may yearn to drape the body of Saddam over his Jeep
and show it off to the folks around Crawford, Texas, but he
should be forcefully reminded that the president represents
the laws of the land. Bad enough the White House waged a totally
unnecessary, unprovoked, undeclared war on Iraq based on spurious
charges. This egregious offence should not be compounded by
cold-blooded murder, no matter how odious the intended victim.
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