Much ado about nothing, fellas, in my view. In addition to an actual witnessing, assuming perceptions to be true and properly processed, there are a number of different "truths" that can be brought to bear in a situation like Saddam's. I refer to the following, among others, all with their formal and informal "standards of proof," and variously applicable depending upon the event, the circumstances, the people involved, and so forth: thus, there is "journalistic truth," there is "historical truth," there is "truth derived from intelligence," there is "reputation and word of mouth," there is "political truth," and there is "formal legal proof." To set context, on both sides in Iraq hundreds of thousands, perhaps, have met their death by actions set in motion by much less cause than any of these. Saddam's capture and execution plays out against that backdrop, one which his brutality helped paint.
What is "fair" under the circumstances, to me, an experienced and well-respected defense lawyer, was met in Saddam's case on the information available to me. Every criminal trial approximates reality; it does not and cannot reproduce it. Here, based on voluminous evidence as I see it, Saddam was guilty of the Dujail killings beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not to mention the other atrocities, such as the attempted genocide of Iraqi Kurds and the slaughter of southern Iraqi dissidents after the first Gulf War, not to mention the Iran-Iraq War and the incidental brutalities of a vicious government's method of keeping control. As to Dujail, at least formally -- and I ask, with the widespread "publicity" given Saddam's regime, could he really be tried "fairly" in Iraq by Iraqis not of his deposed party? -- Saddam got the ceremony and the procedure due him, in a trial, in all frankness, that was foreordained as to outcome. The "facts" that did him in, proven according to legal rules and their recognized exceptions, paint a convincing picture of th evil with which he was charged. To be sure, there were flaws in the trial, but none significant to overcome the overwhelming "truth" I have just identified: Saddam was guilty of these charges according to the "legal proof" standard." And this is not to mention that he had been and will be judged on a larger stage as a longtime leader of a nation who committed horrible wrongs in the name of not so much as his personal ambition. All the "ancillary indices" of guilt -- the reliable intelligence reports, the journalistic accounts, the historical evidence, and so on -- painted the man as a monster.
Under the circumstances he was tried -- recall Nuremberg and its "fairness" -- leaving aside heady legal issues such as sovereignty and illegal foreign occupation, which were considered and rejected, Saddam got as fair a trial as the lot of man could allow, judged by all the indices of truth I have listed and any others that come to mind. In saying this, I assert that -- without condoning the sequence of charging nor the timing of the trial and execution, as well as what use his life could have been put to perhaps placating the Baathists -- Saddam had to be tried in Iraq for political/historical reasons that far outstripped any claim that he should have been sent to the Hague, or elsewhere. With ceremony and proof in hand, the Iraqis were enabled to express their judgment of this political, historical figure in a way that future generations may decry as to the wisdom of its incidentals but not as to the fate of its subject.
