June 07, 2005
The Trial of the Century: Saddam HusseinIn a better world, the Michael Jackson trial would get media coverage only in passing. But in our celebrity-obsessed, voyeuristic society, it receves non-stop coverage. Let's hope the trial of a madman who gassed hundreds of thousands of people to death and launched several wars, earns at least half the attention bestowed on some freakish man-child's child molestation case.
The word is that Saddam Hussein's former aides are singing "like a canary."
Some of Saddam Hussein's most notorious former lieutenants have been dishing dirt. Senate investigators looking into prewar U.N. Oil-for-Food deals have named Saddam's former personal secretary and security chief, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and former foreign minister Tariq Aziz as key witnesses who have provided inside info about Saddam's regime...While this story primarily relates to Oil-for-Food, let's hope these guys are also encouraged to testify about Saddam's murderous rampage so that the world will know what evil he was, and what the human cost was of years of European and UN accomodation and deception.According to Senate documents, Ramadan is one of the most talkative captives, supplying pithy quotes about how Saddam allegedly manipulated the prewar oil program to buy support from influential foreigners. Senate investigators quote Ramadan saying that Saddam's regime gave foreigners oil allocations-which could be cashed in for lucrative brokerage fees-as "compensation for support."
Posted by Jonathan R. on June 7, 2005 11:00 AM
