Marie Cocco: Too Many Ifs Surround Hussein's Detention

[jbfam4]

Too Many Ifs Surround Hussein's Detention
Marie Cocco
December 16, 2003 http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc163585801dec16,0,4441420.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines


The capture of Saddam Hussein marks a great day - if.

If the former dictator sheds light on the mystery of the missing weapons of mass destruction. If he proves - by leading us to these armaments - that the American president did not deceive his own country about the alleged stockpiles of horrific weapons, taking the United States into a war of choice and an occupation of chilling uncertainty and blood.

If Saddam Hussein instead says little, or confirms what international arms experts have come increasingly to believe - that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were crippled after the first Gulf War and never regained strength during years of international sanctions and inspections - then what are we to make of this war?
President George W. Bush has an all-purpose answer. He just would not believe anything Hussein says.


If this justice comes soon, it may persuade Bush that since he backs a fair and open tribunal for a genocidal despot, then perhaps he should also support some similar standard of justice for the hundreds he, himself, holds without charge, without lawyers, without hope of release, at Guantanamo Bay.

The president might decide as well that the two American citizens his administration holds indefinitely without charge, and without hearing evidence against them, deserve at least the justice Bush is willing to grant the deposed dictator. Or even that Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen on trial in Virginia as the only individual charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has a right to the testimony of witnesses that might aid him.



If the momentary joy felt by all Americans when we awoke to the pictures of Hussein's arrest deepens with some day-to-day improvement in the images of bombings and vehicle searches and street protests that have become the televised landscape of occupied Iraq, then the political landscape for next year's elections will be transformed. If not, the long-term effect of seeing a disheveled Hussein have his teeth and hair probed right there in our family rooms is going to be about the same as the effect of seeing Bush land in his flight suit on the aircraft carrier.

[Nadienne]

1. Like flight suit...

Except the jubilation will be louder despite the absense of real results.