Tag: diplomacy

Anything look peculiar about this Baghdad courtroom in which the trial of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was to continue Tuesday?

“One of the judges suffered a high-blood pressure attack and I just saw him in the hospital,” one of Hussein’s lawyers, the former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuami told AFP.

Rauf Rashid Abdel Rahman, who was appointed as the presiding judge after the December resignation of Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, was apparently angered by excessive security measures at the courthouse when he cancelled the proceedings.

The trial was postponed until Sunday because “some witnesses and complainants were away on pilgrimage to Mecca and did not show up” according to The Washington Post.

Tuesday was the scheduled date for the trial’s resumption after a month long recess preceded the resignation of Amin last week. The trial, which began in October 2005, was postponed for 40 days shortly after it began.

There was palpable contention regarding the sudden assignment this week of Abdel Rahman — a Kurd — as presiding judge, his first involvement in the case.

The Shiite judge Said al-Hammashi, who was chosen by the remaining judges to succeed Amin, was suddenly removed from the case entirely at the insistence of Iraq’s de-Baathification committee.

The sensible solution comes from Iraqi Vice President and leading prime ministerial candidate Adel Abdul Mahdi, who apparently recommends execution without trial as the most righteous and painless solution to the fiasco that may or may not become Saddam Hussein’s trial: “The continuing process is unnecessary and will only hurt the Iraqi people.”

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Is this foreshadowing how hard it might be to get current and future dictatorial leaders to stand trial?

Will we live to see either a) Saddam Hussein on trial, b) Bush / Cheney / andor Rumsfeld on trial, c) any semblance of “democracy” in Iraq d) ???

What to do when another founding member of the axis of evil triumverate is thought to have WMD (but really this time)?!?

No doubt the ed. board @ New York Times lit up (“Why Not Strike Iran?“)

Clearly, the newspaper reading public is getting obese with the hand-to-mouth fear-mongering. With a side of lies. (biggie-sized). I’m pretty sure Ecclesiastes had other ideas when he spoke of overindulgence and the fat economic lifestyle.
The Sunday Telegraph:

Seven buildings have been erected around the concealed centrifuges which Western governments fear will be used to manufacture weapons-grade uranium at the Natanz site, 200 miles south of Teheran.

And Secretary Rice is just deciding NOW that it might be a good move to transfer high level, Arabic-speaking foreign service officers to the Middle East? A satellite photo does not reveal a secret, but it certainly communicates what no U.S. diplomat or able translator has been able to.
It is nice to see that she’s been cleared by the bosses to actually do something proactive, albeit a lifetime too late… not unlike John Kerry finally taking off the gloves and appearing to have regained feeling in his cojones after his 2004 lead role in “The Grouch that Gave away the Century.”

It’s hard to imagine, as one “career foreign officer” posts, that Rice’s tough talk isn’t anything but hot air.

The U.S. has accomplished little since deposing Saddam, and our mission has been severely stalled by a disorganized enemy with little firepower. Clearly, as Democracy Arsenal, Cirincione @ Carnegie and other clear-headed individuals will write this week: There is no need for military strikes against Iran. Not only is there no need, but it would be distastrous to our already vulnerable homeland, government andn troops. Just what the enemy wants. Spread freedom by bombing a country who’s Mickey Mouse rockets wouldn’t even make it to the Dead Sea. And, Iran is at least three times as populous as Iran with an internet-crazed public that is bent on dissent.

With this negative-track-mind administration its all about the oil. As long as we’re wearing out the merry-go-round in their backyard, Ahmadinejad, Zarqawi, et all will toy with us until they break us.

I’m banking on the cool head of Mohamed ElBaradei, recipient this past October of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to miraculously bring reason back to U.S. foreign policy.