Saddam Hussein Triumphant

A former dictator enjoys the spotlight while he can.

Human Shields Come To Rescue Saddam Hussein, 2003

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has a new lawyer; prominent anti-war critic and faithful supporter, Ramsey Clark. They are old friends. Clark went to visit Saddam twice around the time of the first Gulf War. In 1998 Clark went back to Iraq and guess what he went there for? He was the keynote speaker at the Baghdad Symposium on Human Rights. Would you care to guess who sponsored this event? Who else, Saddam Hussein!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t make this stuff up myself. Clark declared that it was “the most solemn time to stand with the Iraqi people, who, on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are the greatest victims of its violation in its history.” As Baathist troops were filling mass graves with the bodies of Kurds and Shi’ites, Clark had the nerve to come to Iraq to support Saddam’s regime in the name of human rights!

To their credit, some anti-war activists have been dismayed at the connection between Clark and Saddam’s regime. So in some cases they have become harsh critics against him. However, the connection is clear. Ramsey Clark has helped set up or been a leader of some of America’s largest anti-war groups. Including ANSWER, the International Action Center and of course the Workers World Party.

Support for Saddam’s regime doesn’t stop there. In 1991 as the world was poised to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, Baathist troops rounded up over 800 foreign citizens to use as human shields. Saddam's regime placed these hostages in about 70 sites of strategic importance in Iraq and Kuwait. When coalition troops were assembled to finish the job in 2003, Saddam didn't have many foreign citizens to round up. Enter Kenneth O’Keefe and his debacle, "The Human Shield Action to Iraq". He gathered up to 500 volunteers from all over the world to serve as human shields for Saddam's regime. I think it was very considerate of them to help the dictator replace the hostages used in 1991. That way Saddam didn't have to waste time rounding up scarce foreigners.

Since protesters are so eager to help anti-American human rights violators, I have an idea. Perhaps in the name of peace we can behead volunteers in the place of Iraqi and foreign civilians. That would give peace activists the ultimate orgasm because counter-protesters wouldn’t be able to label Iraqi insurgents as “terrorists” anymore. After all, the victims would be willing!!!!!!!!!

Anyways, this morning Saddam Hussein strutted into an Iraqi courtroom like he owned the place. His lecturing of the Chief Judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, shows that Saddam is very confident and optimistic about his fate. Where does this optimism come from? First off, he feels contempt for the weakness of the Americans. Under Saddam’s brand of justice a defendant is lucky to get into a courtroom at all. Here Saddam is well treated and in a position to continually make demands from his captors. I am not saying that it is wrong for him to be treated so well, I am only pointing out the absurdness of the accusations of American brutality.

In his role as a victim, Saddam complained that he had to walk up four flights of stairs in shackles and was accompanied by “foreign guards” because the elevator was out of service. This enabled him to extract a promise from the Chief Judge that it wouldn’t happen again. After a lecture from Saddam on how to conduct his court, Judge Amin was then prodded into giving Saddam a pen and paper to replace some stationery that was confiscated from him earlier. Saddam is running the table like a pool shark hustling some kids at a teen recreation center.

Thanks to the support of westerners like Ramsey Clark and George Galloway, Saddam feels that he can actually win his court case. His defense strategy is not relying on refuting the overwhelming evidence, instead he relies on attacking the legitimacy of the court and the US occupation. For that he knows that he has the world’s Islamists and Leftists behind him. He feels that he is the puppet master pulling the strings.

As he has done before, Saddam walked into the courtroom brandishing a Koran. It’s ironic that he quoted a verse from it which reminds believers that God knows who actually participated in Jihad or Holy War. This is the man who created the Fedayeen Saddam to wage the current brutal insurgency. A man who built great mosques so he could bribe the good will of religious leaders (this was done with money that should have been spent to feed hungry Iraqis). And here is a dictator that began the first wave of suicide bombings in Iraq. After which Saddam’s Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan announced; "We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land. This is just the beginning. You’ll hear more pleasant news later". The Iraqi soldier who committed the first suicide bombing of the Iraq War emulated the ritual of terrorists from the Palestinian group Hamas, kissing the Koran before getting into his booby-trapped car. Meanwhile, western liberals deny Saddam’s manipulation of Islamic fundamentalism because of his former secular background. This is the pattern of lies that Saddam is counting on. The peace movement is always pro-war when it is against America.