Saddam Hussein's show trial rolls on... into perjury and bribery

With all that Saddam Hussein has done, why is his trial limited to one accusation of mass murder in the town of Dujail?

There are so many things he might be tried over.

For example, the invasion of Kuwait. That's a bigger deal, surely?

Oh, but wait. He might want to call April Glaspie as a witness and drag that whole bungled (at least!) episode into the light again. Anyone remember her meeting with Saddam? I think there are a couple of sections that we should quote here. They have discussed how Kuwait is conducting economic warfare with Iraq by over producing, driving down the price of oil...

GLASPIE: I think I understand this... I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.

This seems like the clearest indication that the US intends to stay out of any conflict. Just in case we are in any doubt, at the end of the conversation we get this:

HUSSEIN: Brother President Mubarak told me they were scared. They said troops were only 20 kilometers north of the Arab League line. I said to him that regardless of what is there, whether they are police, border guards or army, and regardless of how many are there, and what they are doing, assure the Kuwaitis and give them our word that we are not going to do anything until we meet with them. When we meet and when we see that there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death, even though wisdom is above everything else. There you have good news.

GLASPIE: I am planning to go to the United States next Monday. I hope I will meet with President Bush in Washington next week. I thought to postpone my trip because of the difficulties we are facing. But now I will fly on Monday.

No probs, Saddam mate, I'm off back to the US. Do what you want!

So... probably not the Kuwait war. And the US might feel uncomfortable about having invidious comparisons made with their own aggressive invasion on trumped-up charges of WMD and links to 9/11. And it seems very likely that no-one wants April Glaspie to give her side of it.

Ok. How about the gassing of the Kurds? Any problems there?

Well... I remember when that was going on thinking, why didn't we do anything about it? Why didn't Thatcher or Reagan condemn it? Well, of course, Saddam was our buddy at the time...

But should he be accused of this, do you think he might call ex-CIA analyst Steven Pelletiere who has written extensively to suggest that it was

Iranian nerve agents that killed the Kurds at Halabja? How embarrassing would that be, one wonders?

I'm starting to run out of room on this post. We can look at other issues later, but now, the show trial descends into farce:

Saddam witness accuses prosecutor of bribing him

Speaking from behind a curtain to hide his identity, a defence witness, who said he worked at a U.S. base, accused chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi of offering him money in 2004 to give false testimony.

But it gets better... one guy seems unable to make up his mind whether there was an assassination attempt:

The toppled president's defence attorneys also attempted to tear apart the testimony of key prosecution witness Ali al-Haidari by showing a video aired on Arabic television channel al-Arabiya on Tuesday they said proved perjury.

The defence team showed footage of his original testimony for the prosecution in which he said there was no assassination attempt on Saddam in Dujail and that shots were fired in the air to celebrate the former president's visit to the town.

A video was then shown of Haidari giving a speech in Dujail on July 8, 2004, during a celebration in which he said people from the "heroic" town tried to kill Saddam.

"It was a historical day in the life of this town when they tried to kill the worst tyrant ever known in history ... when this religious group wanted to save the Iraqi people from this tyrant," he said on the video.

Kind of important, really.

So we have one crucial prosecution witness who cannot make up his mind whether or not there was an assassination attempt. If there was, as he now claims, then Saddam can merely claim that he was carrying out the law in ordering the executions.

I mean, we can all think of at least one head of government who's had the death penalty carried out so that the letter of the law is obeyed, can't we? He's even had the sheer gall to mock a death penalty case, saying "please don't kill me"

And this is someone, after all, who invaded an entire country partly because "Saddam tried to kill my daddy". Causing... how many deaths are we up to now? A LOT, anyway. I know figures are disputed, I'd estimate around 120,000 by now, not to mention all those whose lives have been blighted by DU munitions, the corruption of the water supplies, lack of electricity and fuel, and so on.

So why are we trying him on merely carrying out the law of his own sovereign nation?