Previously this week, I posted on an Antiwar.com blogpost by Matthew Barganier suggesting that the Saddam trial is designed so as convict him with the smallest possible "collateral damage," i.e. to prevent him from implicating other people we don't want to get in trouble, e.g. Don Rumsfeld.
Now LAmom points out that radio talk-show host, fake rock star, and Simpsons voice Harry Shearer has suggested the same thing.
I don't think that this is an unreasonable interpretation of the decision to try Saddam on relatively minor charges involving Dujail before moving on to the "big ones." Not that the killing of 143 people is a small thing, but compared to the gassing of Kurds ay Halabja or the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, this is small potatoes.
Of course, on the other hand, as Dennis Mangan and Temetwir have pointed out, this is sort of a show trial anyway; and perhaps it would have been more honest and forthright to just shoot him in the head when he was captured; at least, I think, if we are simply going to turn it into a farce anyway.
Personally, I am not exactly opposed to a trial of Saddam, for the purposes of (a) showing that the U.S., or the "Iraqi government," or whoever, is able to convict him and execute him while playing fair, and because (b) I would really love to find out whom else Saddam will be able to implicate, whether it be from Russia, the U.S., France, or whatever. But if we are going to go out of our way to cover up any part of Saddmam's tyranny that we think will make us or other powerful nations whom we wish to appease look bad, what's the point? And on the other hand, just getting Saddam dead would also provice a sort of closure and make it harder for people to make arguments that Iraq's problems are due to a fear that Saddam will come back.
That is all.
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