Saddam Hussein Captured, Officials Say
Congratulations to the men and women of Operation Red Dawn.
I've already seen a few whines that "ordinary Iraqis don't care," but based on the reports from the scene, I don't think that will be as profitable for the usual suspects as the predictable calls for him to be tried by an "International Court". Amir Taheri was prescient in his Friday column for the NY Post - Iraqis Must Judge Saddam:
After months of soul-searching, it now seems certain that the Iraq Governing Council is prepared to put the fallen Ba'athist regime on trial. The decision is important because it ends the debate over who should hold the trials and where.Hmm, it will be interesting to see what part of "Bite me" they don't understand.
The council seems confident enough that the Iraqis can handle the task themselves: No need for a court outside Iraq, with foreign judges. The tribunal will sit in Baghdad, with only Iraqi judges to try Saddam and his associates on charges ranging from corruption to crimes against humanity.
Although long overdue, the decision has drawn criticism from the European Union and the United Nations. Their beef: The tribunal would exclude the U.N. and ignore internationally accepted judicial norms and practices.
The U.N. and E.U., after all, still refuse to recognize the Governing Council as a legitimate authority. Both are reluctant to acknowledge that the toppling of Saddam's regime was an act of liberation for the Iraqi people. Thus neither can claim moral authority in telling the Iraqis what to do.That takes care of the corrupt bureaucrats and Euroweenies, what about the professional freakazoid whiners?
There is no reason why the Iraqis should trust the U.N. or the E.U. - they did nothing to curb Saddam's criminal activities. In fact, several EU members helped Saddam build his death machine while the UN played cat-and-mouse with him for 13 years.
Nor should Iraqis take notice of those who claim to represent public opinion in the West.They can pound sand too.
The suggestion that Western opinion may regard an Iraqi tribunal as "questionable" is neither here nor there. If by "Western opinion" one means the newly created coalition of Islamists and Stalinists, plus the usual fellow-travelers, it is enough to remember that it never organized a single protest march when Saddam was killing thousands of women and children with his chemical weapons, and filling all those mass graves.
But "Western opinion" has held marches to lament the demise of Saddam and denounce the liberation of Iraq, in the words of the British playwright Harold Pinter, as "a blood-drinking tea-party" by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. This "Western opinion" would rather put Bush and Blair, and the entire Iraqi people, on trial than utter a harsh word against Saddam.
