Defending Hussein, Clark Seeks to Set Historical Record Straight

Amid the wrenching testimony of a survivor who told of the atrocities wrought by Saddam Hussein's secret police, the presence of a former American attorney general on Mr. Hussein's defense team in the trial court on Monday seemed to be one of the day's less bewildering things. Ramsey Clark, one of America's more renowned contrarians, made a mark notable even by his own singular standards Monday when he delivered a lecture to the judge on how to give his client a fair trial. Earlier, flushed and indignant, Mr. Clark joined in a defense walkout that brought the trial to a temporary halt.

Iraq is "a country that I love, and in a very dangerous time," Mr. Clark, 77, said when the judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, relenting on his demand for a written submission from the former United States attorney general, gave him exactly five minutes to make his case. "There is a huge foreign military occupation, and even brother and brother are killing each other. This trial can either divide or heal, and so far it is irreconcileably dividing the people of Iraq."

In a two-hour interview on Sunday, Mr. Clark, a tall, gaunt figure, still with a Texas drawl after decades living in New York, set out a rationale for defending Mr. Hussein that would face little contest in American law schools. All men, he said, deserved a fair trial, even history's worst criminals. "Suppose Hitler had survived," he said. "It seems to me that it would have been absolutely critical to give him a fair trial, to let him call witnesses and cross-examine the hell out of them." He added, "If you don't do that, historical truth will be distorted."

Mr. Clark said in the interview that beyond the personal right to justice, there was the need for a broken society like Iraq to find ways to heal its wounds. "If you don't give Saddam and the others a fair trial now, you're not going to get peace," he said. "Emotions are so inflamed, it would be hard to make things worse. So if there is a perception that the trial is simply war by other means, people will be deeply angered, and they'll say, 'You're perverting justice so as to destroy a man who is your political enemy.' "

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/international/middleeast/06ramsey.html?hp&ex=1133845200&en=383dd91a14b8e139&ei=5094&partner=homepage

received from the likes of Dick Cheney and GHWBush.

Where did Saddam get all those chemicals from? Us.

Remember the picture of Cheney with his arm around Saddam?
I hope Clark gets the opportunity to bring all these areas up.

The republicans certainly aren't free from blame in Saddam's rise to power and infamy.

that Clark may be there to uncover US war crimes

Clark is correct. Every human deserves a fair trial or we all become less human, also Clark's actions will do more to help bridge the divide between the Sunnis and us than anything Bush could do.