Man, This Could Get Ugly

Saddam's in the dock. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. He deserves Saddam justice, but we're promising real justice - a fair hearing, evidentiary rules and a chance to defend himself.

Man, this could get ugly. What if Saddam and his lawyers insist on detailing the complicity of Reagan and Rumsfeld in Iraq's procurement of chemical and biological weapons in the '80's? What if Saddam insists on going into gruesome detail on the decision by Daddy Bush and Dick Cheney to facilitate Saddam's brutal suppression of the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in the aftermath of Gulf War I by permitting Saddam to violate for more than a year cease-fire terms that prohibited military use of Iraqi helicopters in southern Iraq?

Man, this could get real ugly.

What if Saddam insists on testifying to the whole sordid series of events that took place after the U.S. chased him out of Kuwait?

What if he testifies that Bush 41 knew that he, Saddam, was using choppers to massacre shiites, and cites as evidence the fact that Bush 41 specifically denounced the use of the choppers against the Shiites as a violation of the cease-fire terms at a news conference in Ottawa, Canada on March 13, 1991?

What if Saddam cites accounts by Brent Scowcroft and Bush 41 confirming that use of the attack helicopters to slaughter Shiites was discussed at the highest levels of the White House and that the Bush 41 administration feared that the Shiite uprising could lead to a partitioning of Iraq and therefore a stronger Iran, an outcome inimical to U.S. interests in their opinion, and cites Brent Scowcroft's account of this given to Lowell Bergman:

LOWELL BERGMAN: Wasn't there an uprising in the north? Wasn't there an uprising in the south?

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Of course.

LOWELL BERGMAN: Didn't we see their military killing people?

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Yes.

LOWELL BERGMAN: And we didn't intervene.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Of course not.

LOWELL BERGMAN: Not from the air.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Of course not.

LOWELL BERGMAN: We didn't cut off their gasoline supplies.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Because- OK, because- first of all, one of our objectives was not to have Iraq split up into constituent parts. It's our- it's- it's a fundamental interest of the United States to keep a balance in that area, in Iraq and- in Iraq.

What if he insists on testifying that Bush 41 knew the massacre was taking place, knew the choppers were being used in the massacres, knew that chopper flights violated the case-fire terms, and that Bush 41 could have stopped the flights by enforcing the cease-fire terms?

What if Saddam insists on testifying that Bush 41 authorized the White House to issue a statement on March 26, 1991 declaring that the U.S. would not enforce the cease-fire terms, thereby greenlighting Saddam's massacre of the Shiites?

What if Saddam presents as evidence the statements of Bush 41 and Brent Scowcroft admitting that the U.S. permitted Saddam's use of the chopper flights to brutally suppress the Shhiite uprising because Bush, Cheney, Scowcroft et al feared a possible partition of Iraq, and further feared that the Shiite uprising would divert the Iraqi military from a hoped-for coup against Saddam?

What if Saddam can establish based upon the foregoing that the U.S.'s decision to permit Saddam to brazenly violate the cease-fire terms for more than a year renders the U.S. complicit in Saddam's massacres of tens of thousands of Shiites in southern Iraq?

Man, this could get real, real ugly.