Wampum

Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants are charged with unlawfully causing the deaths of 148 persons in 1982 in the town of Dujail in the Salah al-Din province, 60km north of Baghdad. The trial began on October 19th, marked both by the obvious question of whether the body sitting in judgement is a "court" under Iraq's, or International law, and the assassination of two members of the defense team. On November 13th some 170 persons were found in the custody of the forces aligned with Jalal Talabani. All were at profound risk of death when found, due to dehydration, starvation, and the effects of torture. They were found by US forces, after some weeks of as yet unexplained delay. An unknown number of persons, in the thousands, have been "disapeared", and other than the hundreds that have been identified by relatives or forensic methods, most are like the 170 until recently found -- simply missing.

General Martin Dempsey, US Army, has accused Jalal Talabani's militia commanders of organized torture and assassination.

Don't look for Jalal Talabani's men to face charges, at least not before the same body sitting in judgement on Saddam Hussein. Talabani is Bush's current happy face in Iraq.

But that is just tit for tat. The real thing is that it is a whale that is being tried, and that is a long and bloody business that just starts with taking the whale. There is cutting the whale to produce blankets of blubber, than spades to cut the blankets into smaller horses, minced and booked into bible leaves off of the black skin hide, the leaning and then the trypot, where the oil is boiled off the bible leaves, burning over boiled-off bible leaves. It is a long, messy task to try a whale, and vastly greater than the mere killing of an animal that cannot swim faster than a long boat. Bomb lances, steam and factory ships have made the vastness of the undertaking seem diminished, but it is still a whale that is tried, not a mere fish. It may not be as simple as Benito Mussolini hanging by his heels in an Esso gas station in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.

Which brings me to the real point. Should Saddam, the President of Iraq under the Iraq Interim Constitution of 1970, contest the December election? If so, how? Has the executive the war-time authority under that Constitution to call an election?

"It is possible that we may consider at some point examining the legal aspect of having Mr Saddam run for elections..."

Issam Ghazawi, Saddam defence team

It would be beyond awkward for Bush if Iraqi political factions took a long look at the future Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld have in mind for them, stretching at least until 01/09, and opt for Plan A. Other than Bremer's puppets, and the militias that have infiltrated the CPA's domestic cut-outs, which refers to itself as the Government of Iraq, there isn't a whole lot of "Keep the Foreign Troops All Costs" in any part of Iraq.

Can Iraq self-govern under a compromise that doesn't "De-Baathify", a 2005 version of the Stalin/Hitler liquidation of the Polish Officer Corp and Intelligencia of 1940, and which doesn't "Iranify", replacing one visibly bad system of government with the same visibly bad system of government, with the labels of victimizers and victims swapped, and which doesn't leave every political faction, presently armed, previously armed, and capable of transformation into armed form, with little choice other than pre-emptive extermination of other political factions, and which leaves Iraq intact? There are some wicked poor futures becoming more present each month the real political issue -- the balance of power organic to Iraq society -- is submerged in Washingtonian charades about nameless candidates in confessional and regional elections or super-majority language in unread draft versions Constitutions.

Since the Kurds were reasonably happy with the Norther No-Fly Zone, which the Peshmerga made into a limited No-Go zone for the Iraqi Army, and the same was produced by the Southern No-Fly Zone, a partial federalism with the limited return of the pre-American Iraqi state, at least its Army, in central Iraq, framing a message of stability, and a return to prosperity, looks, from a great distance, wicked competitive, even in a snap election, with the popular candidate actually having to campaign from the custody of the Occupation Forces.

Since the Americans are reasonably happy with the NNFZ and SNFZ, and have repudiated the Bush/Bremer blunder of disolving the Iraq Army, it really comes down to the value of a show trial.

Is an execution worth the bloody work of trying the whale?