UN get lost!

UN Rights Boss Wants Iraq Mass Graves Protected

U.S.-led forces must protect the sites of mass graves discovered in Iraq and allow forensic experts to preserve evidence for possible prosecutions, the top United Nations human rights official said Thursday.

Strangely, the UN still seems to feel that it will have a large role in the trial of Saddam Hussein. Apparently, Bush was not clear enough when he said, quite clearly, that the trial would be conducted by Iraqis in Iraq.

Allowing the UN to be involved in the prosecution of this trial would be a mistake. They can witness it, but the US needn't fear the "victor's justice" accusation.

The world knows that Saddam Hussein is guilty as sin.

A UN trial will not convince "the world" that the US was right to remove Hussein. The world has long known that Saddam was evil, but believed he could be tolerated (or in France's case, a source of profits).

Just as there is a danger in providing a wholly unfair trial to a defendant, there is also a danger in being meticulously fair to a point, and letting a criminal escape justice through technicalities and legal nuance.

The evidence against Saddam Hussein is overwhelming, and it has been overwhelming for decades. Iraq is filled with videotapes showing the cruelty of Saddam Hussein, and it brims with witnesses of a state where nothing happened without the approval of an all-powerful tyrant.

The pictures from Halabja tell a story that amount of lawyering can undo.

The world does not need to be treated to another spectacle of excessive UN legalism. These bureaucrats have argued the finer points of international law for two years while Slobodan Milosevic has laughed and delayed. They will - in all likelihood - never dispense justice to thousands of mass murderers now mulling around camps in Rwanda.

This trial should be speedy, carried out by Iraqis in Iraq with American security.

The penalty should be death, and it should be carried out immediately.


- posted by total @ 4/02/2004 08:43:00 AM .