Monday, November 28, 2005

Who is Saddam Hussein?


CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO: Thanks for the Memories

While we are fed sensationalism on every news channel of the Saddam Hussein Trial, it would certainly be honorable to insert some truth and clarity in our coverage.

Watch. Then ask yourself, if Saddam is a monster, what are we?

RELATED ARTICLES:

CLICK TO READ: Hussein, Back in Court, Is Combative and Feisty - New York Times

CLICK TO READ: Text of Saddam Trial Deposition - New York Times

I have to admit, if I were Saddam Hussein, I would be "combative and feisty", too. Guilty or innocent, monster or maligned, either way, I find myself wondering how much of what we have been told about Hussein is true and how much is fiction. We will probably never know the truth; we certainly can't count on hearing it from this administration.

But even if every monstrous thing we have ever heard about Saddam is true, I have to ask, "Is America not guilty of the same crimes?" Does not the employment of white phosphorous against innocent civilians in Fallujah, as just one example, make the United States as guilty as Hussein? So where is the trial of George W. Bush and Company? Where is the outcry?

Is a crime against humanity any less or more of a crime depending on the perpetrator? Of course not. So where is our outrage? I mourn the absence of a moral denouncement of the administration's crimes from the press, from the citizens and from the leaders of this country. Unless we protest the atrocities of our own government and hold the perpetrators accountable, are we not as guilty as they? Are we not complicit in the crime?

What has happened to morality in this country? Where is the religious right? Where are the pro-lifers? If they value the life of an unborn child, do they not value the lives of innocent Iraqi men, women and children? Or of our own men and women in uniform who are dying every day in an illegal war not of their making? Can someone please, please explain to me this hypocracy?

PHOTO: (Ben Curtis/AFP-Getty Images) Saddam Hussein returned to court in Baghdad after a six-week recess.

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