BBC NEWS | Europe | Chirac warns on 'post-war' plans: French President Jacques Chirac has warned he will not accept any UN resolution allowing the United States and Britain to administer post-war Iraq.
.... Does he seriously think that either country intends to ask for such a resolution after the last time?
And elsewhere....
Arab Media Look Past War, Focus On Future (Washington Post, March 21, 2003, page A27): ide from a few cartoons, one depicting President Bush in cowboy duds dunking a scrawny Saddam Hussein wearing tattered combat fatigues into an oil barrel, the Arab media largely began looking ahead yesterday to an Arab world transformed after hostilities end ..... The Saudi daily Al-Watan said in a front-page story that the future of the Iraqi president and his family was limited to two possibilities: "death or detention." If Hussein is not killed, he will be referred to an Iraqi tribunal, the newspaper said, with the United States offering a large dossier on his human rights violations. In an unsourced report, Al-Watan said the United States had agreed with Iraqi opposition groups that Hussein and his senior advisers would not be referred to the International Criminal Court to avoid an adverse reaction among the Arab public.
How .... odd.
Then again, perhaps not. After all, despite the fact that the man and his sons are undoubtedly guilty of any number of human rights violations (his sons are reportedly monsters by any account), most of them were committed against Iraqis during what was, technically, peacetime. Technically, they really should be settled according to Iraqi law.
Not, one suspects, that Iraqis will have much choice in the matter, as such. (One does wish the administration had a better sense of the linguistically appropriate. However, one suspects that the thundering irony of something called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" that's designed to put in place a projected five to ten year occupation just went sailing right past.)
Posted by iain at March 21, 2003 01:26 PMComments
I'd think we wouldn't refer Hussein to the IC Court because, if I recall correctly, we refused to sign the agreement to comply by its terms.
It might look a bit, shall we say, tawdry, to be playing sheriff without official recognition of da hanging judge.
But I agree with you; his own should get first dibs at his sorry carcass.
Posted by Kevin Hayden at March 23, 2003 01:14 AM
