it appears that the lawyers for saddam hussein are planning on going after the jurisdiction of the court that is trying him--the argument will be that the trial cannot happen because the court cannot claim jurisdiction. while this move is not surprising--milosevic used it in the hague--it seems that the refusal to try hussein at the world court level could create a problem.
the best article i have found on this is in french--dont know if folk can read it, but i'll post the link anyway:
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=220403
it is mostly an interview with a member of hussein's legal team.
now i am no fan of saddam hussein, at any level.
however i opposed the war and still oppose it. (full disclosure)
but i am trying to think about the question of legitimacy for the present regime in iraq---putting aside for the moment all qualifications concerning it---and wondering why they are moving so quickly to set this process in motion.
what happens if the jurisidiction argument holds up? or, alternatively, what happens if the argument gets overridden in such a way as to reduce the proceedings to an obvious show trial, like the bukharin trial was. how would this help the situation of gaining legitimacy for the present regime? why is hussein not being tried at the level of the hague?
i expect that there will be folk who will say just fry the bastard, but that would seem to be a way of bypassing the matter at hand.
what do you think?