Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general and leftist anti-war activist, announced yesterday he has joined the defense team of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Clark made the announcement in Amman, Jordan, and took the opportunity to slam the Bush administration, saying the U.S. should be tried for alleged “war crimes” in Fallujah, Iraq.
According to a report by Agence France-Presse, fellow Saddam lawyer Ziad Khasawna said Clark’s presence on the ex-dictator’s legal team “honored and inspired” the other attorneys.
Ramsey Clark
Clark arrived Tuesday in Amman, where Saddam’s legal team is based. Besides meeting with other lawyers, Clark met with Saddam’s two daughters who live in Jordan.
The attorney general during the Johnson administration, Clark visited Hussein in Baghdad in February 2003 just before the U.S.-led invasion. He first met the dictator prior to the first Gulf War. The news service reports Clark has also been involved with the defense of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes in The Hague.
Clark decried the fact Saddam saw a lawyer for the first time one year after his capture.
“In international law, anyone accused of crime has the right to be tried by a confident, independent and impartial court, and there can be no fair trail without those qualities,” he told reporters.
“The special court in Iraq was created by the Iraqi governing council, which is nothing more than a creation of the U.S. military occupation and has no authority in law as a criminal court.”
Referring to the former despot as “President Saddam Hussein,” Clark says it’s the U.S. that should go on trial, pointing to last month’s siege of Falluja, destruction of houses, alleged torture in prisons and the military’s role in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis.
A Baghdad court ruled in July that Saddam faced seven preliminary charges, with more precise charges to follow.
“It’s selective prosecution and it’s the worst form,” Clark said. “You pick your enemies and you prejudge the case and you go through the formalities and you convict them.”
Clark called the U.S. “an arrogant power that is not dealing with rights.”
Reuters quotes Clark as saying Saddam’s defense could take years to prepare with many witnesses who would have to testify, among them world leaders and politicians.
“Assuming Saddam Hussein is going to be tried you have to prepare the defense and that’s an enormous task maybe two years of prosecution evidence and hundreds of witnesses,” he said.
The Iraqi government has announced it will begin trying several of Hussein’s henchmen soon with proceedings likely to begin before the Jan. 30 elections.
Clark, who runs the International Action Center, a front group for the communist Workers World Party, is a longtime critic of Bush foreign policy, referring to the president’s actions as “criminal offenses, they are high crimes, they are indictable offenses, and they are impeachable offenses.”
Ahh Freedom of Speech indeed. Where’s a D.C. Sniper when ya really need them. Its people like Clark who give reason and sanctioning for the nut jobs of this world like Bin Laden and his kind as it emboldens the enemy. Clark himself should be tried as a traitor!
What else would you expect from Ramsey Clark? Here are some excerpts from a brief history of Clark, and background on his family, how he got to be Atty.Gen, who his sponsors were, and how he finally got the boot from D.C. These are just random clips, the whole history is worth reading:
http://shadow.autono.net/sin001/clark.htm
ROFLMAO, Well, you sure ain’t gonna find one in the skinheads, neonazis, iron-cross survivalists or other radical groups that gather in the woods, ’cause Ramsey Clark jumped in with Lyndon LaRouche a long time ago! (And you won’t find one in any of the radical muslim or communist groups either.)
http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/nclcmain.html
BTW of explanation, "publiceye.org" (link in above post) is not one of my favorite watering holes becasuse they are … really …strange… quite a bit of the time. Most of the time in fact. However, they did manage to get Ramsey Clark’s history written in historically correct stark terms without being wishy-washy about it so I guess you just pick up gems wherever you can. Even out of a (well, never mind). 😆
It’s always been fascinating to me how the Far Leftists try to deny their despotic tendancies.