Saddam's court stance will override his crimes? That's stretching it. He's not likely to be seen as a John Brown.

But we'll see.

It certainly is too bad it was such a high-profile trial. I suspect this was Bush's doing--his regime wanted pictures of Saddam on the news as often as possible--to remind his (Bush's) own base of one of the precious few successes of the wretched Iraq war--and to give giant intellects opportunity to make absurd predictions of Saddam's return to power. As we've seen here on Mudcat.

As I've said before, I would have handed Saddam over to the Kurds--or aggrieved Shiites. I don't think they would have had a high-profile trial.

At any rate, this was the verdict of an Iraqi court--and not a kangaroo court--whether we agree or not.   If you believe that irregularities in the trial are such that Saddam should be found innocent, I disagree. If you accept the death penalty for anybody, you'd have to accept that Saddam would be a good candidate.   If you don't think Saddam has earned the death penalty, if anybody has, you need to do more research.

At this point it would behoove the West to stay out of the case.