Saddam Trial: GOP Sacrifices Justice for an 'October Surprise'

A Baghdad court in the heavily defended Green Zone found Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants guilty of crimes against humanity on Sunday for wiping out the Shiite village of Dujail after an attempt on Hussein's life there in 1982.

Saddam and two others were sentenced to death. Their sentences will automatically be appealed. A second trial for waging a genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s is under way.

Baghdad and other flashpoints in Iraq's simmering civil war have been under curfew in anticipation of a fresh wave of violence following the verdict. At this writing, fighting has been reported in predominantly Sunni areas of Baghdad. Large, angry protests among the Sunnis and raucous celebrations among Iraq's long-oppressed Shiites and Kurds suggest that the sentence is only likely to worsen Iraq's sectarian divide.

The verdict comes just two days before voters in the United States cast their ballots in a political environment that has been toxic for Republicans, in large part because of the war. Polls show that almost nine in ten Americans favor either a total withdrawal of American troops from Iraq or at least a fundamental change in strategy. Iraq is the most important issue for voters, who, by a 51-36 margin, say that Democrats would do a better job handling the mess. As of Saturday, Democrats led in 37 contested House races and trailed in none.

Bush said of the ruling, "Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's effort to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law." It was the 15th "milestone" or "turning point" cited by the administration in the three and a half years of Iraq's steadily deteriorating occupation.

White House press flack Tony Snow told his former colleagues at Fox News that it was "a good day for the Iraqi people." Regarding charges that the verdict was timed to influence the midterms in the United States, "the conspiracy theorists are climbing out of the woodwork trying to manipulate things," Snow said. "The most important thing to know is that the Iraqis are running their own system. We're not telling them what to do, when to do or how to do it."

The statement begs the question, not for the first time: Exactly how stupid does this White House think we are?

Scott Horton, a Columbia University law professor who's been to Baghdad several times to see the proceedings up close, told the Nation's Tom Engelhardt that "most observers expected the date would be much later, but it seems to have been moved up." He said the verdict's timing "is designed to show some progress in Iraq" so that "the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing."

In my experience, everything that comes out of Baghdad is very carefully prepared for U.S. domestic consumption. ... There is a team of American lawyers working as special legal advisers out of the U.S. embassy, who drive the tribunal. They have been involved in preparing the case and overseeing it from the beginning. The trial, which is shown on TV, has mild entertainment value for Iraqis, but they refer to it regularly as an American puppet theater.

The occupation authorities are decidedly political. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," wrote that partisan loyalty has consistently trumped experience when it comes to hiring Americans to staff the largest embassy in the world, in Baghdad's Green Zone:

[The authorities] posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Although the trial was expected to last months longer, the date of the verdict was moved up, in part by ending the evidentiary phase before all of the defense's witnesses could be heard. Presiding judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman -- the third judge to oversee the trial -- shut down the testimony before it was complete, saying: "We are done with witnesses. ... If those 26 were not able to make the case, then 100 will not."