DesertFox
12-11-2005, 07:49 PM
Christopher Hitchens
Not many months ago, on The Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page, a former attorney general of the US defended his decision to appear as an attorney for Saddam Hussein. Ramsey Clark made the perfectly obvious and irrefutable point that his infamous client — his ‘‘demonised’’ client, as he phrased it — was as much entitled to a defense counsel as the next man.
Nobody disputes this proposition, least of all the Iraqi court that Clark described as illegitimate before it had even opened proceedings. So now, Clark — one of the chief spokesmen of the American antiwar movement, leader of the Answer coalition that filled the streets with protesters and compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler — is indeed in Baghdad, seated at the defense table for a client who last week terminated the proceedings by comparing his own stand in the dock to the heroic struggle of Mussolini.
A core of principle is involved here. Saddam stands accused of some of the most revolting crimes ever perpetrated by any despot. A defense lawyer is (presumably) engaged to acquit him of such charges. Yet before he had even had his credentials accepted by the court, Clark announced his client was a) guilty of disgusting atrocities and b) justified in having committed them.
...For the most part, the antiwar faction has subordinated everything to its hatred of Bush, folded its hands and watched coldly as Iraqi democrats struggle in a sea of chaos. That sham neutrality is bad enough. But now, the antiwarriors do have a permanent representative in Baghdad, in the form of an apologist for the past crimes and aggressions of a man who makes his hero, Mussolini, seem like an amateur.
What will Sheehan and the other humanitarians say this time? Or are they simply pro-war and on the other side?
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=83780
Not many months ago, on The Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page, a former attorney general of the US defended his decision to appear as an attorney for Saddam Hussein. Ramsey Clark made the perfectly obvious and irrefutable point that his infamous client — his ‘‘demonised’’ client, as he phrased it — was as much entitled to a defense counsel as the next man.
Nobody disputes this proposition, least of all the Iraqi court that Clark described as illegitimate before it had even opened proceedings. So now, Clark — one of the chief spokesmen of the American antiwar movement, leader of the Answer coalition that filled the streets with protesters and compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler — is indeed in Baghdad, seated at the defense table for a client who last week terminated the proceedings by comparing his own stand in the dock to the heroic struggle of Mussolini.
A core of principle is involved here. Saddam stands accused of some of the most revolting crimes ever perpetrated by any despot. A defense lawyer is (presumably) engaged to acquit him of such charges. Yet before he had even had his credentials accepted by the court, Clark announced his client was a) guilty of disgusting atrocities and b) justified in having committed them.
...For the most part, the antiwar faction has subordinated everything to its hatred of Bush, folded its hands and watched coldly as Iraqi democrats struggle in a sea of chaos. That sham neutrality is bad enough. But now, the antiwarriors do have a permanent representative in Baghdad, in the form of an apologist for the past crimes and aggressions of a man who makes his hero, Mussolini, seem like an amateur.
What will Sheehan and the other humanitarians say this time? Or are they simply pro-war and on the other side?
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=83780