RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Saddam Hussein’s trial started in Baghdad in front of five judges but has now been put off for a month.  It will start again November 28th, the Monday after our Thanksgiving weekend, likely televised.

This is the first of a series of trials that Saddam and various co-defendants are expected to face. They are accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity and they have been busy and practiced leaders in all of those endeavors. 

Saddam was arrogant, defiant and uncooperative in the Tribunal court –and briefly struggled with his guards after refusing to acknowledge his name and saying he was innocent. Outside, the courthouse was ringed with 10 foot blast walls, bomb dogs, dozens of soldiers and a tank.

Saddam is expected to face up to 14 different trials, though it is unlikely that all of them will actually take place. 

Saddam is being charged with a series of capital offenses and if execution is ordered it will take place within 30 days of the end of any appeal.  By hanging or firing squad.

Keep in mind that this is a man responsible for the savage murders of an estimated 300,000 people, most of whom disappeared into mass graves. And those figures ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who died in stupid, losing wars Saddam initiated against Iran and Kuwait.

Here are a couple of specifics about the first trial that have gotten brief shrift in the daily press:

This is about a 1982 massacre in a village 35 miles north of Baghdad.  148 Shiite men and young boys were imprisoned and then lined up and executed in retaliation for a couple of men having fired a rifles at Saddam’s motorcade.

Another 1500 of the people in the village were beaten and tortured.

Entire families were seized and locked up in windowless cells for years.  The principal livelihood of the village for centuries had come from farming lush groves of oranges and dates.  Saddam had them all bulldozed and destroyed.         

Saddam will be tried along with seven other codefendants, all former Baath party henchmen -including his half brother Barzan al-Hassan, who was Saddam’s Intelligence Chief and his former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

The number of future cases against Saddam will depend in part on whether Saddam is convicted and sentenced to death at the earlier trials, which is likely.

Future charges for trial include: The 1987-88 Anfal campaign of genocide and Arabization in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq; 

Indiscriminate mortar bombardment of the city of Kirkuk –killing and maiming hundreds of people; 

Saddam's violent suppression of a post-Gulf War Shiite uprising, which resulted in thousands buried in mass graves; 

The forced population transfer of thousands of Kurds, who were pushed from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran;

The murders of an estimated 5,000 people in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on a Kurdish town. 

The execution of 8,000 members of the Barzani tribe, an influential Kurdish clan; 

Murders, torture, rape and looting that accompanied the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the first Gulf War; 

The execution of hundreds of prominent Iraqi political and religious figures; 

The forced draining of the famous Southern Iraq Marshes –an environmental and cultural disaster that destroyed the ancient civilization of the Marsh Arabs. Saddam depopulated the entire area, all for political retaliation against Shiites.

The man deserves as swift an execution as is legally possible.