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Originally Posted by BigV
. . .it is (I think) televised, but with a 20 minute tape delay, to prevent his holding forth and communicating, rallying those outside.
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And given his pouty displays of "I'm still dictator, though nominally President, and you're all a bunch of American pogues and puppets, so I'm going to mouth off a lot, since I can't order you blown in half," a tape delay seems a good idea in one sense. Thoughtful Iraqis, however, would no doubt conclude the man's AFU in the head from too much dictator time logged were they to either read or see his rants. He seems to believe he could still rally enough Iraqis to bust him loose, and will probably continue to believe that until the moment the rope snaps taut and breaks his neck. Again, or still, he's playing the mafioso. His career more resembles that of a Mafia torpedo who rose to capo di tutti capi than a politician's.
Not the kind of guy anybody wants controlling the world's second- or third-largest share of a unique mineral and energy resource. We want ethical and altogether sane people in there. Why the f@ck anybody would object to this remains obscure to me.
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I see absolutely no sense of the presumtion [sic] of innocence. Perhaps that's a quaint American judical tradition. Why not just summarily execute him?
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Why not, indeed? Well, frankly, a fair trial and a fair hanging look better than summary execution. We (and by this I also mean at least two very large blocks of the Iraqi population) want to de-martyrize this man before we punish him. An active presumption of guilt would lead naturally to execution without a trial -- that a trial is being held, and held by Iraqis, with a thoroughly hands-off attitude from American officialdom (Ramsey Clark is in there with no connection to the American government), suggests more of a presumption of innocence than you're seeing.