Hrrm. Now might be a good time to remind people of the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia:

Sic semper tyrannus.

Anyways, I've been mulling over the Saddam situation and I've got several points:

1. It's good that we've got him, dead or alive. This takes the wind out of Howard Dean's sails when he says "...blah blah haven't caught Saddam or Osama." Make that "haven't caught Osama...yet", Dr. Strange.

2. Unfortunately, the clock is now ticking and the European Union is now keeping score. The longer we hold this individual, the more pressure that will probably be exerted upon us by Old Europe to treat him as an international criminal, that we should send him to the Hague or the International Criminal Court. This is, of course, not the way he should be handled in my opinion, but that doesn't mean that the power-hungry bureaucrats of the aforementioned organizations won't be clasping about in order to get their hands upon the prosecution (or not) of Saddam Hussein. That this should be resisted goes without saying, but these efforts could complicate an already complex situation.

3. What do we do with him now? My first instinct is to get information from him, then take him out to a ditch and shoot him. The next thing is that we might not want to do that, because he may be of use to us. I don't know exactly how, but I'm not employed at high levels of DOD, CIA, DIA, or State. I'll leave potential uses of a captive Saddam Hussein to the people who are paid to think of those things.

I'm not fond of an automatic reconvening of the Nuremberg Tribunal (Nuremberg II: Fun in Fallujah), because as Terry Moran points out, there are some problems with the Nuremberg model. (The old saw of "pot calling the kettle black" vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany is one of them, although I haven't read any legal criticism on the things.) I am in favor, however, of him being tried by Iraqis. The problem there is that it doesn't seem to be possible, due to the (apparent) fact that the Iraqis don't have a post-Saddam judicial system set up yet. I suppose the way around that is some sort of special tribunal.

Whatever the means of trial, Saddam Hussein will probably wind up dead. Therefore, the important thing is to deny him a martyr's death. Whatever happens to him must be carefully calculated, probably by Iraqis or other experts in the Arab Islamic culture, so that there is maximum psychological damage to our opponents. A little bit of 'shock and awe', if you will. The problem for me is that I don't have a clue as to what would deliver that while simultaneously extracting some punitive result.

Suffice it to say that I'm very glad he's been captured, and I hope that this quells some of the noisier Democratic carping. My personal hope is that this in some way moves the Iraqis closer to freedom and sovereignty, and our boys (and girls!) closer to returning home.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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