KEY POINTS:
What was the Government's duty minister, Trevor Mallard, thinking when he said last week, "While New Zealand did not support the death penalty, Saddam Hussein's execution occurred within the framework of Iraqi law"? He's deliberately fudging our Government's and his personal moral obligation to oppose state executions.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of events around this particular grotesque pantomime knows that the trial of Saddam was a farce. You couldn't even flatter it by calling it a kangaroo court - not when two previous head trial judges resigned in protest at political interference and at the assassination of Saddam's defence lawyers.
This trial had nothing to do with justice. It was about internal, political payback and the US administration's clear agenda to remove Saddam as quickly as possible to cover up its complicity in bringing him to power in the first place and encouraging his past crimes. I'm sure the US administration wouldn't want a real court to reveal that it had been an active supporter of Saddam's murderous oppression of his people until recently. It was the CIA who backed his initial coup and gave him the names and addresses of the membership of the Iraqi Communist Party and of his other enemies. All were rounded up by US-sponsored death squads and butchered to pave the way for their man.
The US administration also wouldn't have been keen on Saddam confessing that it directed and sponsored his invasion of Iran. The US provided Saddam with the weaponry and poisonous gases which agonisingly choked to death thousands of innocent Iranian civilians. Even when Saddam started using these poisons on his own people, the US was silent. Saddam was torturing and murdering his fellow Iraqi citizens long before his US backers turned on him. The only reason they did was because he invaded Kuwait and threatened the West's oil supply.
The invasion of Iraq by Bush has turned into a nightmare for both Iraqi and US citizens. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and certainly never had any "weapons of mass destruction". The hijackers were all Saudi nationals, and most terrorism originates in Pakistan these days. Both countries are autocratic and undemocratic, and should be prime targets for Bush's campaign for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. But different rules apply, as they are US client states.
The two countries in the Middle East with weapons of mass destruction are Pakistan and the key ally of the US, Israel. Along with Saddam's Iraq, Iran and North Korea were identified by Bush as members of the "axis of evil". Their rulers are making sure to get nuclear weapons to ensure they are not in the same situation as Iraq. Does anyone believe that Bush and Tony Blair would have invaded Iraq if they really thought that Saddam had nuclear weapons? Bush's actions have not only spread terrorism but have forced "rogue states" to get nuclear weapons. You can't get a foreign policy much dumber than that.
But even taking into account the hypocrisy, lies and deceit by all involved, it seems that Bush has still not learned anything. His latest idea to send more troops to intervene in what everyone now knows is a full-scale civil war created by him must be giving his generals the heebie-jeebies. Vietnam: Part Two, here we come.
Bush's announcement that the handover of Saddam to a lynch mob for hanging was a "milestone" is madness. It's almost as out-of-touch as Mallard's comments.
Despite Saddam's atrocities, his defence in court was that his crimes were committed in his role as elected President of Iraq and permitted by law at that time. It's not dissimilar to Bush's claim that, as president of the US, he has the power to invade other nations, resulting in the deaths of hundreds and thousands of innocent people.
There is a certain irony in Saddam's and Bush's claims to have the same rights to carry out crimes against humanity. Saddam could claim more justification, as he was elected by the majority of his citizens, while Bush became president with fewer votes than his opponent, Al Gore.
The only reason Saddam was a prisoner in the court was because of an invasion by foreign powers without the sanction of the United Nations, which is accepted by international jurists as an illegal act. Notwithstanding their completely unjust court procedures, how Mallard can claim that the guilty verdict in Saddam's trial was OK is perplexing. Anyone with half a brain who saw the televised humiliation and killing of the former president of Iraq would know that this has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics and revenge.
The ritual murder by a state of any individual surely must be seen for the sickness that it is. I know that some people confuse this with the human instinct to believe that a truly wicked person deserves everything he gets.
But that instinct, while understandable, can't determine how we, as evolved human beings, deal with evil.
Saddam Hussein was clearly a deranged psychopath and should have been locked away. But those of us who feel a sense of righteous justice for his murder are no better than he.
