Saddam's
death penalty
It was nauseating to hear President Bush pontificate about the decision to execute
Saddam and using words such as "victory" and "justice". If Bush could have cited any
moral superiority he has over Saddam then his words might have carried weight,
but the simple truth is that this was one opportunistic and blood-drenched killer
revelling in the misfortune of another and, far worse, for political expediency.
The very fact that the death penalty was passed on Saddam two days before the US
mid-term elections, at a time when Bush's popularity in opinion polls was recoding a
serious fall, can hardly be ignored. Saddam had been in custody for two-and-a-half
years before any charge was levelled against him and the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court
miraculously came into existence the same week he was captured. When the time
came Saddam was no longer a tool of US foreign policy but an instrument of
Republican Party domestic policy.
The first thing to observe is that Saddam's trial was not an Iraqi legal
procedure; it was a White House coordinated process from start to finish. It was
funded by a $138 million grant from Congress and orchestrated by a large team of staff
know as the Regime Crimes Unit and operating from the US Embassy in Baghdad.
It was Washington and London who selected the trial judges, who were then sent
to London to be trained on how to handle the case and who were then taken to Italy
to rehearse the trial.
Several judges stepped down, one having been rounded on by the Iraqi
government because he was considered too lenient. Three defence lawyers were
kidnapped and murdered and a similar fate befell one witness for Saddam.
Many have asked why Saddam could not have been tried in a similar manner to
Slobodan Milosevic whose case was heard at The Hague. Quite simply Washington
would have pooh-poohed such a suggestion, just as it has refused to recognise the
InternationalCriminal Court or judgements laid down by the International Court
of Justice.
Indeed the US has little regard for any international legislation or treaty, including
the Geneva Convention. All are seen as meddlesome in the pursuit of its global
corporate interests.
Historical amnesiacs would do well to remember that Saddam came to power via
CIA assistance and was financed and chemically-armed by the West for many years
in his war against Iran. Successive American and British governments turned a
blind eye to his atrocities, including his mustard gassing of Iranians and the poison
gas massacre of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in 1988, only showing concern when he
invaded Kuwait without the nod from Washington and worried the pro-American
oil sheiks of SaudiArabia in the process.
From 1991 up until the US-led invasion of 2003, an estimated 1 million Iraqis died
as a result of UN Sanctions. When, Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of State
to Iraq,was questioned on American TV about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children
as a result of economic sanctions, she commented that it was "a price worth paying."
Since the 2003invasion some 655,000 Iraqis have been killed. Throughout Saddam's
24-year reign he never killed this many humans. Meanwhile, US-led intervention in
Iraq in 15 years has resulted in the deaths of almost 1.75 million.
And this is in the name of justice!
There is of course nothing the warring factions in Iraq have to celebrate about the
death penalty. Their lot has not been improved one iota since the US-led invasion
and even if they live in a relatively stable Iraq they will exist as wage slaves, their
lives subordinated to dictates of profit-merchants and the whims of religiously
-aligned warlords, their future always over-shadowed by the dangerous game of
geo-politics,their blood worth far less to the powerful than the country's oil.
Introducing The Socialist Party
The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made
up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of
the profit system and establish real socialism.
Our aim is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves,
organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of
society that we are advocating in this journal.
We are solely concerned with building a movement of
socialists for socialism.
We are not a reformist party with a programme of
policies to patch up capitalism.
We use every possible opportunity to make new socialists. We publish
pamphlets and books, as well as CDs, DVDs and various other informative
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We also give talks and take part in debates; attend rallies, meetings
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The more of you who join the Socialist Party the more we will be able
to get our ideas across, the more experiences we will be able to draw
on and greater will be the new ideas for building the movement which
you will be able to bring us.
The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and
there are no followers. So, if you are going to join we want you to be
sure that you agree fully with what we stand for and that we are satisfied
that you understand the case for socialism.
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