I am anti war. You stupid evil scum are pro Saddam.

[Bill Stewart]

At 07:31 PM 12/21/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
>baudmax23 at earthlink.net wrote:
> > That is quite a presumption there.  "If you're not with US,
> > you're with the terrorists",
>
>If you call for the release of Saddam, or you justify 9/11,
>as the "anti-war" posters in this thread have  been arguing,
>then indeed you are with the terrorists.

Saddam's not particularly related to the terrorists,
especially the 9/11 gang, other than having a common enemy.
He's apparently funded some terrorism in Israel,
but then the Israelis have funded lots of terrorism in Palestine.
He is related to the anti-invader resistance, but that's fair.

He may have been involved in a plot to kill George Bush the Elder,
but Bush had tried to kill him first, with decapitation bombings.
Either try both of them for that, or neither of them, or better,
let the two of them do pistols at dawn.  (Come to think of it,
give enough people that opportunity and the problem goes away.)
(Of *course* I meant give them that opportunity with Saddam, not Bush...)
But making up pretenses for invasion any time people question
your previous pretense is simply unprofessional.

If you want to have any pretense of caring about the Rule of Law,
you need to stick to it even after capturing your enemies,
otherwise you're just an illegitimate tyrant.
(Also, it's nice to pronounce "rule of law" the way Jefferson did,
rather than sounding like Bismarck's speech about "Blut und Eisen".)

That means either letting him go, or finding something to
try him for that you can not only prove, but that you have
your own standing to try him for, or else turn him over to
someone else who has a legitimate case.  Handing him to the ICC is fine,
if you don't think drowning people in red tape is cruel&unusual,
or hand him to the Kuwaitis, but not to the gang who were
lying about Iraqis ripping babies out of incubators.
Or to the Iraqis.

>Plus, if you really believed that Saddam was a CIA agent, how
>come you are calling for him to be released, or turned over to
>the questionable justice of his fellow tyrants and mass
>murderers running the court in the Hague?

The US did support Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, because he was
more in line with their interests than the Ayatollah's gang were.
However, unlike Noriega, I doubt he was a direct employee,
so if they wanted to attack him, the right channel was to declare war,
rather than to just call in CIA Internal Affairs....