Oh my god...

[Chemical Ollie]

What Iraqi laws did he break? He WAS the law in Iraq, wasn't he?

Only an international court could convict him.

That said, I wouldn't be to formal in this case.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
If this was directed at me,

It wasn't.

[East Street Trader]

An ordinary sort of legal provision as to a proper period for keeping someone in custody before charging them is 3 days.

That every man should stand equal before the law has been thought an important principle from the very first days that Kings discovered the benefits of being the fount of justice. For reasons that are obvious.

The trouble with allowing Saddam Hussein to be an exception is the self same problem as treating the people in Guantanamo Bay as exceptions. Once you allow an executive to substitute its own sense of what is expedient for a rule of law then you must not expect that just because the executive's sense of what is expedient matches your own in one instance that will always be so.

In fact one of the main reasons the rule of law is valued is because the opposite is true. Those upon whom we confer the power to rule come to have different interests to our own.

When the barons in England extracted from King John a promise not to lock up without trial they did not do so for any merely theoretical reason. They did so because he loved to do exactly that. And he was not alone. Those who ruel have loved to do it from time immemorial.

Just right now, and in some societies, rulers have not done that for quite some time.

Long enough so that Guantanamo and this instance now seem shocking.

But that is because the people in the coutries concerned have believed in a rule of law and have insisted that the powers of the state are exercised subject to that rule.

Just at the moment we are forgetting where all this came from. There is some sort of complacent sense that suspending basic legal provisions does not matter when it is done to combat terrorism.

If you take a look in any history book it is very easy indeed to find huge mountains of human misery which came about directly as a result of rulers acting outside the rule of law or, if initially bound to it, escaping.

Try Hitler's Germany for a recent instance. But the search for instances will just not be challenging.

Now look for instances of human misery caused by terrorism. You will certainly find some. But the two will not be comparable. The one is a major thing - something which has fuelled huge amounts of effort to combat. The other, by comparison, trivial.

Allowing the executive to keep Saddam Hussein in custody uncharged for any period longer than the law allows for no better reason that that he is widely believed to be an evil man is a great mistake.

The Red Cross are absolutely right to draw attention to it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If we're going to start acting like the people we replaced, what was the point in replacing them? How do you justify overthrowing someone for violating international law, and then violate international law yourself?

As long as we get the oil, who cares about the rest of the details?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

What Iraqi laws did he break? He WAS the law in Iraq, wasn't he?

Only an international court could convict him.

That said, I wouldn't be to formal in this case.

Not being a student of Iraqi law I can not answer. But in light of a rather substantial Iraqi constitution in force (even if ignored) at the time of Saddaam's reign one can imagine their were a number of violations even if Saddaam was the defacto law.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


As long as we get the oil, who cares about the rest of the details?

[Ben Kenobi]

Not every culture writes the date as month/day/year; some go day/month/year. Yes, it is annoying and strange, but they're not going to be corrected anytime soon.

Even Canada is civilised enough to go day/month/year.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Says the person who says we should forgo evidence and a trial and just murder the guy.

That was me. It'd be a good way to build up good will with the Kurdish population again.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Even Canada is civilised enough to go day/month/year.

This is just backwards. Year/Month/Day... that way you can order them numerically and have the timeline preserved. Month/Day/Year is of course just silly.

[Aeson]

If there is a law that a suspect in custody needs to be charged in a certain timeframe... we should do it. Very simple.

We have evidence. Or should. We invaded a whole damn country and deposed it's leader based on this evidence, right? I fail to see how evidence that would warrent war (and the civilian casualties resulting therefrom) would not support a simple conviction against the leader responsible for those infractions.

[DinoDoc]

It's more fun to decide which mob to throw him to.

[Nubclear]

Re: Oh my god...

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I never would've expected this kind of lunacy from the ICRC, but here it is...
It's a damn shame, that's all I can say.

Yeah....The US has to bow to international law?!
Don't they know that Saddam was about to nuke New York with his ubersecret uberevil weapons of DOOM?!

[laurentius]

Tass:

Why doesnt the US understand that there are certain rules to be followed. And if your not going to respect the rules of war and after, who do you expect to do so?

[Nubclear]

But Lauri! Americans are the Superior peoples: Ameryans! They are inheritly better than all other peoples and as such the world peoples should recognise their inferiority and allow the Ameryan people certain privledges It is the least the world can do, considering how the Ameryans even tolerate their existence in the first place.

[laurentius]

Amen! Brother

But seriously. Should the rest of the world just surrender to America?