Captain's Quarters Blog


« The Definition Of Insanity ... | Main | A Costly Game Of Hide And Seek »

December 21, 2004
The Best Mouthpieces That Genocidal Charm Can Buy

Saddam Hussein will get legal representation from around the world in his attempt to beat the rap on hundreds of thousands of murder charges, not to mention rape, torture, and war crimes. Arthur Chrenkoff takes a good look at the defense team that Saddam's family has chosen to shill for the genocidal lunatic. As expected, a number of far-left legal minds have leapt at the chance to defend one of the twentieth century's most significant fascists:

Of Emmanuel Ludot little is known outside his own country, except a for his penchant for controversial cases. In the past he represented a cancer sufferer suing over the Chernobyl disaster. In case you were wondering the suit wasn't against the Soviet Union but the French government for allowing people to consume food possibly contaminated by the radioactive fallout over France. According to one recent report, "Mr Ludot... called the Iraqi penal code 'Stone Age legislation' and said it was ill-suited to Saddam's case." One would have thought it was very well suited.

Ludot, in turn, is closely associated with another French member of the team, Jacques Verges, famous - or notorious - as defender of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and international terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Charmingly, he "is said to have been a friend of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader behind Cambodia's genocide." ...

Then there is American academic (Professor of Human Rights Law at American University in Cairo) and lawyer Curtis Doebbler. Doebbler is a former legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority, and has been representing suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay (or as this note delightfully puts it, he "served as an advisor to the Taliban on the laws of war").

Arthur has plenty more on the balmy members of the bar queuing up to service Saddam, including the sad and unexpected exclusion of Ramsey Clark. One can only presume he was too centrist to join up. While I agree that Saddam should get competent legal assistance for his trial to have credibility, the sight of all these Western lawyers climbing all over each other to get their names in print is not just unseemly; considering the many victims and the cruelty of Saddam's crimes, it's rather disgusting. Excoriating "American ... neo-imperialism" as an excuse for acting as a mouthpiece to the man who gassed thousands of Kurdish women and children to death shows twisted priorities at best, but more clearly a fatally flawed conscience.

Read all of Arthur's post for the complete scoop.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at December 21, 2004 5:31 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is



Design & Skinning by:
m2 web studios





blog advertising



button1.jpg

Proud Ex-Pat Member of the Bear Flag League!