By Eric Margolis
The Toronto Sun
Sunday 03 August 2003

In 1987, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy led me by the hand through the ruins of his Tripoli residence, showing me the bedroom where American 2,000-lb bombs, launched in an attempt to assassinate him, had killed his 2-year-old daughter. The bombing of a Pan Am airliner filled with Americans two years later may have been revenge for this attack. Murder breeds murder.

Now, the latest irksome Arab leader is in Washington's gun sights. Time seems to be running out for Iraq's fugitive former president, Saddam Hussein.

Chances are Saddam, like his sons, will be killed in a Bonnie and Clyde-style shootout. He is unlikely to be captured, unless incapacitated.

The Bush administration will be delighted not to put Saddam on public trial. Dead dictators tell no tales.

The White House would much prefer to display a bullet-riddled Saddam as a trophy to divert mounting criticism over U.S. casualties in Iraq and the litany of falsehoods it used to drive America to war.

If put on public trial, Saddam would have a field day revealing the embarrassing alliance between his brutal regime and Washington:

The CIA's role in bringing the Ba'ath Party to power in a 1958 coup, opening the way for Saddam to take control.

U.S., Israeli, and Iranian destabilization of Iraq during the 1970s by fueling Kurdish rebellion.

Washington's egging on the aggressive shah of Iran in the Shatt al-Arab waterway dispute, a primary cause of the Iran-Iraq War.

The U.S. secretly urging Iraq to invade Iran in 1980 to overthrow that nation's revolutionary Islamic government.

Covert supply of Saddam's war machine by the U.S. and Britain during the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, plus biological warfare programs and germ feeder stocks, poison gas manufacturing plants and raw materials.

Billions in aid, routed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Italy's Banco del Lavoro and the shadowy BCCI. Heavy artillery, munitions, spare parts, trucks, field hospitals and electronics.

Equally important, the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency and CIA operated offices in Baghdad that provided Iraq with satellite intelligence data on Iranian troop deployments that proved decisive in the war's titanic battles at Basra, Majnoon and Faw.

The murky role played by Washington just before Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. ambassador told Saddam "The U.S. takes no position in Arab border disputes." Was this a trap to lure Saddam to invade Kuwait, then crush his army, or simple diplomatic bungling? Saddam could supply the awkward answers.

Military and Financial Aid

In short, Saddam was one of America's closet Mideast allies during the 1980s, a major recipient of U.S. military and financial aid. Saddam's killing of large numbers of Kurds and Shia rebels occurred while he was a key U.S. ally. Washington remained mute at the time. After George Bush Sr. called on the Kurds and Shia Muslims to revolt in 1991, the U.S. watched impassively as Saddam slaughtered the poorly armed rebels.

Better a bullet-riddled Saddam, or one executed by a military kangaroo court in Guantanamo, or hanged by the new, American-installed Iraqi regime in Baghdad.

Saddam should be handed over by the U.S. to the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that is trying Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and other accused Balkan war criminals. After all, it was Washington that engineered Milosevic's delivery to The Hague, an act for which the U.S. deserves high praise. What applies to Milosevic applies equally to Saddam Hussein.

In fact, it would be better for the Iraqi leader to stand trial at the newly constituted International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. But the Bush administration, in one of its most shameful acts, has refused to join this tribunal or co-operate with it.

Should Saddam be gunned down, like his two sons, there will be glee among many Americans and rejoicing in the White House. But Saddam Hussein is not John Dillinger or a prize elk. However odious, he was the leader of a sovereign nation and a government recognized by the U.S.

Killing foreign heads of state violates international law and the directives made by three American presidents. Dropping 2,000-lb bombs on sites where Saddam was believed to be is called attacking "leadership targets" in the new Orwellian Pentagonspeak, but it's still old-fashioned murder from the air. Gunning down Saddam will also be murder, or, to use a more polite term, assassination.

America, the world's greatest democracy, has no business murdering foreign leaders. Such behaviour is criminal, immoral, undemocratic and reeks of the law of the jungle. Past U.S. attempts to murder foreign leaders have proved self-defeating.

Last week, Task Force 20, a trigger-happy U.S. military hit squad hunting Saddam, killed as many as 11 innocent Iraqi civilians in a botched Baghdad raid. This is an outrage worthy of Saddam's former secret police.

George Bush may yearn to drape the body of Saddam over his Jeep and show it off to the folks around Crawford, Texas, but he should be forcefully reminded that the president represents the laws of the land.

Bad enough the White House waged a totally unnecessary, unprovoked, undeclared war on Iraq based on spurious charges.

This egregious offence should not be compounded by cold-blooded murder, no matter how odious the intended victim.