10pm Eastern. Primetime.

Wow what a weird ACLU slam. Perhaps they were nowhere to be seen because the defendants had competent counsel?

"a stable representative government based on law"

A government based on law requires due process and requires a meticulous attention to due process. You belittle process and claim it comes at the expense of substance. I don't see that they are in conflict. I don't see evidence to support the claim. Clark is merely doing his job as an advocate. He doesn't control the process. Anybody's lawyer would do anything he or she could to prevent the execution of his or her client. It would be malpractice otherwise.

It is not an advocate's role to be fair or impartial. His role is to take a side and plead for that side.

Re: the ACLU, the presence of good lawyers already engaged has not stopped them from taking up cases of alleged governmental misbehavior in the past. I live in a state where there have been dozens of such interventions in the last decade or so. A public lynching - and I use the word advisedly - effected by a prosecutor outside of the courts and in the face of what he knew was exculpatory evidence ranks high on my list of violations of civil liberties. But apparently not on that of the ACLU, when the accuser is a black woman and the accused are young white men at Duke in an election year.

Re: process and substance, in an ideal world they would mesh well. In the real world sometimes they mesh less well. Don't forget that Clark lobbied hard for over a year to get onto Saddam's defense team and spent that whole time criticizing the trial without either having had access to evidence or acknowledging the magnitude of Saddam's actions against thousands of Iraqis. He's an advocate, all right -- but of a political stance, and only incidentally of a defendent in a trial.

Due process is a means toward justice, not an end in itself. When it is pursued 'meticulously' as an end in its own right, it can and sometimes does end up eroding substantial good sense and ultimately respect for the law.

"Due process is a means toward justice, not an end in itself. When it is pursued 'meticulously' as an end in its own right, it can and sometimes does end up eroding substantial good sense and ultimately respect for the law."

I disagree. The ends do not, generally speaking, justify the means. Justice cannot be had through unclean means, again, generally speaking. Now, I believe, this "generally speaking" caveat is an important component in this equation. As you say, correctly, "sometimes" process can end up eroding good sense. However, generally speaking, it does not. Since we cannot go back and forth, and choose to skimp on process only during the "sometimes" cases--after all, who would decide when to skimp and when not to--then we MUST, we absolutely MUST, if we are to be a country of laws and not men, meticulously respect process.

We all need to be able to rely on the fact that process will never be overlooked and that some judge somewhere down the line will not be allowed to arbitrarily say, "Enough already. We all know you're guilty. So the evidence was tainted. So you were denied an appeal. So what. You are guilty. Let's all save ourselves time, money and headaches and just put our guilty ass in jail."

Without respect for meticulously observed process how can you hope to avoid the above from happening?

What makes due process 'due' is that it is non-arbitrary, being based on appropriate laws appropriately and uniformly applied. My own observation is that over the last 30 years there has been an overt politicization of the application of due process. It has become both a fetish and a way to achieve social engineering as pursued by the ACLU and some politicized courts.

When that happens it is important to demand appropriate interpretation of the rules. And I'm not alone in this opinion: some US courts have ruled to this effect as well, throwing out challenges to convictions when the challenge consists primarily of an assertion that process was compromised in fairly superficial ways.

However we balance that here, it's ludicrous to criticize the Iraqi trial of Saddam on process grounds IMO. To do so ignores both the huge investment and effort that has been made to make this a judicial process based on evidence, legal representation of Saddam, defendent opportunity to challenge witnesses and other elements which -- notably -- have little or no precedent in Iraqi justice.

Contrast the trial of Saddam and his care under detention with the fate of previous Iraqi leaders. The last set were drug through the streets and lynched, if I recall correctly. It is highly significant that there has been Sunni Arab, Shia Arab and Kurdish participation in this trial. It's a significant achievement, if not perfect, and to criticize it on process grounds is tendentious at best IMO.

I have no information to judge one way or another whether his trial was a fair one or not. I do know that comaparison's with past Iraq trials is irrelevant as it its fairness. Perhaps it is an improvement over past Iraqi trials and yet still a long way from being fair. That said, as far as I know, it could have been the world's fairest trial. But I would go back to my original point: it is absurd to expect an advocate to not raise whatever issue he can raise. It's up to the courts to dispose of the issues fairly.

I am aware that many respected international human rights organizations have denounced the trial as unfair. But, again, I am no judge. I'll have to leave it to the experts.

Respected by whom, Mark? Increasingly, not by many of us.

HRW and Amnesty have criticized the trial on the grounds that it was not conducted in the manner of trials held in Europe. While NEVER denying the substance of the charges against Saddam. As btw Saddam himself never denied the acts he was accused of. His response was that it was the due of the ruler of Iraq.

Meanwhile HRW and Amnesty have outright lied in accusing Israel of various war crimes. Such as the phony ambulance "bombing" debunked by "zombie" at zombietime.com .

HRW and Amnesty are NOT I repeat NOT interested in human rights. They have nothing to say about Darfur, Christians being murdered in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria. Or any other inconvenient fact. What they DO care about is critizing the West and particularly America and Israel for not being perfect while excusing or acting as the shield for all sorts of tyranny and oppression by third world Islamists and thugs.

The ACLU of course found the defendants guilty of being white and middle class, therefore deserving of nothing but a public lynching. And people criticized Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities for being ludicrous. So too did btw Duke's faculty.

Neither Nifong, the University, ACLU, NAACP, the Press, or anyone else associated with this circus will have any credibility among middle class whites and the descent into tribalism started by the Tawana Brawley affair continues. When Civil Rights is basically a shakedown circus represented by Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Nifong, and others the credibility of all parties goes and can't come back.

NO ONE will listen to the ACLU after this. Nor the Press. Nor the NAACP. Nor Nifong or any other prosecutor playing the race-re-election card. Even if a shocking allegation is factually true. Because after having been caught lying twice in notorious cases the public perception is set: nothing more than a lying shakedown.

The German government said Wednesday it was satisfied that that the trial had been both necessary and fair. While stressing that Germany is "categorically opposed to the death penalty," Saddam deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, said the government's deputy spokesman Thomas Steg.

"There is nothing to indicate the trial, including the appeals process, did not take place in accordance with the rule of law and legal principles in operation in Iraq," Steg said.

FWIW. Source: The Guardian

Am I being conspiritorial when I think aloud that Bush held off his big "Change in Iraq Plan" press conference because he knew that Saddam was going to be hung?

Jim Rockford might want to check out AI's Darfur work here but why let the facts get in the way of a comment?

Yes, it is monstrously unfair that Saddam Hussein will receive the same treatment that is meted out to 14 year-old Bahai girls in Iran. Could have been worse, of course. He could have been raped by his uncle and then stoned to death for being a whore.

It's also sort of unfair that he got a trial when Mussolini didn't. Most fallen strongmen who don't escape into exile get a bullet in the face, not a lawyer. I guess when you have powerful friends in the UN and the EU - the very best that money can buy - you just get special treatment.

I look forward to hearing the lamentations from the left (and probably the Aryan right) that will follow Saddam's shade up to Nazi Valhalla. They will be qualified, of course, by assurances that the left does not at all approve of dictator-type guys. Goodness, no. Even if people are better off under dictators. Other people, of course, not real people like us.

And leading off the festivities is Russell Shaw at the Huffington-Puffington-Blow-It-Out-Your-Ass Post.

Check out the amusing spelling errors. Those are satirical in intent. People who don't agree with Shaw are stupid, you see, and that's how they spell. At least, I think that's what he means. Grief makes people do funny things.

I work with 3 Bahai Iranians who will all be dancing a jig upon Saddams demise.

As the initial facts concerning the case became clear, it was obvious to the ACLU@DUKE’s members that what D.A. Nifong was doing was unethical, inappropriate, and illegal. However, for better or worse we made the decision to focus our efforts on increasing the conversation within Duke’s community. While we did not feel qualified to speak on the O’Reilly factor or similar shows, we felt comfortable telling our classmates that the immediate, large-scale presumption of guilt, and the circumstances that Nifong created that allowed such to happen, were reprehensible and not so different from the very same presumptions that had for so long—and still today—plagued minorities.

Andrew -- nearly all of AI and HR's efforts have been against Israel, either the Wall, or the anti-weapons smuggling efforts, or firing back at the rockets coming out of Gaza or Lebanon.

Darfur hardly rates a mention from them. And is useless anyway. "Negotiating" with the Janjaweed is like negotiating with the SS.

Darfur will end PRECISELY where Libs and NGOs like AI and HRW WANT it to end: with the destruction of the people who live there (genocide) and the victory of the Islamists that Libs and the NGOs love. See: AI and HRW reflexively siding with the Al Qaeda supported Islamic Courts in Somalia (executing people who don't pray five times a day EARNS AI and HRW support, as long as the god worshipped is Mohammed not Jesus).

Note: neither HRW nor AI have said anything about Hamas and Hezbollah rocketing Israeli civilians, nor the abductions (and likely torture-murders) of Israeli soldiers. But then they are the enemies of the Islamists.

As a result they lose credibility. I certainly wouldn't believe anything they say. I certainly wouldn't believe anything the ACLU or "Civil Rights" figures say either since they've embraced the Shartpon-Jackson shakedown ethos. Nor will I believe the Press and I suspect I am not alone.

Once begun a descent into tribalism is almost impossible to stop. It has already begun.

Made even worse by Libs, Dems, NGOs and the Press throwing away their credibility for reflexive "hate America" or "hate middle class white guy" identity politics.

Take the "Flying Imams." Clearly they meant to terrorize and intimidate people into thinking another 9/11 murder plot was underway. Yet the ACLU and Liberal Media and Civil Rights class sides with the terror-threat makers not the victims (the crew and passengers).

The entirely predictable result: the credibility of the ACLU/Libs/Press once again is smashed on PC Multi-culti twaddle.

Okay, I'll shut up after this, but the Huffingtons are such a gold mine; here's one of their top potted intellectuals, Raed Jarrar -

With all due respect to the 158 victims of Al-Dujail - where an assassination attempt was made against Saddam -- and their families, this incident was minor when compared to the other major atrocities committed during Saddam's era and supported by the U.S...

Saddam indeed was a brutal dictator.

The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.

See a sarcastic visual of George Bush playing a round of “Hangman”…here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Daniel:

Thanks for a near-perfect example of a post that is right on the edge of the "warning" zone. Not substantive, but representative of an aspect of the predictable commentary, and thus just inside the lines as I see them.

Well played.

Care to actually say something yourself? Of substance?

We can but hope.

Sadly the prosecutorial abuse in the Duke case is not an isolated incident.

Corruption is Routine

On the subject of due process:

Due process is just that; a process whereby the facts of a case can be ascertained. The penalty for the crime has usually been decided by elected officials, and the trial is to find out whether the accused is guilty of the crime so that the penalty already agreed can be applied. or so I understand it.

Right. So let's throw up a hypothetical situation. An innocent relative, or very good friend of yours, has just been killed by someone - whom you have caught red-handed, smoking gun, whatever. Or maybe you even witnessed it. You are armed with a gun, and know that there will be no repercussions whatever your decision on what to do.

What do you do? What I would do is blow the stinking murdering bastard's head clean off.

I don't really care whether it was an accident, or he was off his head on drugs, or whatever. When you pick up a deadly weapon you assume a responsibility.

Relevance to Mr. Hussein? Simple. He was guilty. Guilty as sin and everyone in the entire world knew it - and if he was responsible for a hundredth of what he was accused of then hanging was too good for him. He should never have come to trial - should have been shot and his spiderhole filled in - and if he hadn't come to trial then perhaps a few hundred people killed in bombings would be alive today.

Due process is just that; a process whereby the facts of a case can be ascertained.

More to the point, a process that ensures that the facts, rather than a random collection of common wisdom, hearsay and prejudice masquerading as facts, are ascertained to the satisfaction of a group of judges or jurors.

The reason we don't dispense with the process for obvious cases is because obvious isn't obvious, and while Hussein's case is as certain as one could ask for, to forego due process when it is "obvious" what the facts are is to invite miscarriages of justice under the guise of "obviousness".

Almost every process has a case where it is inefficient or less than ideal. However, trying to determine which cases a process should be discarded is often more perilous than following the process in all cases.

Tom, I think you nailed it: we should try to give everyone a fair trial so that we don't make a mistake in a less-than-obvious case that looks obvious at first.

Still, it strikes me as a tad weird to be upset by possible minor procedural issues with Saddam's trial. Due process is meant to protect the innocent; failure to convict the guilty is also a form of injustice.

Molon said, "When I am asked why I no longer support the Democratic party or its positions, I have only to point to several decades of this masterbatory focus on process to the exclusion of substance. It is smothering our own democracy"

EXCELLENT point, Molon.

I would argue that it is commonplace to take a "right" to an extreme and that doing so does ideed damage democracy. The most egregious example is, of course, the exclusion of "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" from freedom of speech. Another example is the extreme insistence, as you point out, upon full judicial process even in time of war. A third, controversial example might be insistence upon application of the Second Amendment to guarantee easy availability of aggressive arms (such as those termed "assault weapons," rightly or wrongly).

With respect to the trial of Hussein, the objectors' reasoning would preclude ever bringing mass murderers to justice -- before defeat, they cannot be tried, while after defeat, they cannot be tried (because the trial would be imperfect/victor's trial etc.).

To Jim Rockford #17:

Jim said, "Andrew -- nearly all of AI and HR's efforts have been against Israel, either the Wall, or the anti-weapons smuggling efforts, or firing back at the rockets coming out of Gaza or Lebanon."

Jim, it's even worse: I don't remember exact details, but one of the two organisations you mention (HR or AI) responded to criticism of its one-sidedness by issuing, then RETRACTING, a condemnation of Arab "militant" behaviour!