December 21, 2005

"A noticeably calmer Saddam Hussein sat quietly in his defendant's chair."

At the resumption of his trial, Saddam Hussein has adopted a new demeanor -- for whatever reason. Tranquilizers? Resignation? New legal strategy? Re-analysis of the political effect of acting obstreperous? The reason he's trying to project: Religion?

UPDATE: Ah, he's chosen to play the victim.

4 comments:

Mark Daniels said...

Those tranquilizer dart guns are amazing things. Saddam probably only requires twice the dosage of your average male rhino in the wild.

Mark Daniels

Scott Ferguson said...

Is Robert McNamara still on his defense team? Maybe he talked some sense into him.

Freeman Hunt said...

Maybe they've fitted him with a little shock belt.

KCFleming said...

Re: "Our institutions are designed to offer every one basic protections, they have pretty much worked."

The key words, of course, are "pretty much". These institutions pretty much let Slobodan Milošević turn his trial under the International Criminal Tribunal into a joke. It took bribes of oil from Saddam to look the other way on his transgressions, it let Darfur and Rwanda proceed unchecked.

The international process worked for the Nuremburg trials, but have failed in many others since, as miscreants have learned to turn its protections to their advantage. Smart mass murderers getting away with mass murder is not a sign of a healthy judicial system.

My bet is that the people of Iraq don't particularly care what "the rest of the world" thinks, when the rest of the world never cared much about them before.