If the trial is handled carefully it will not be Saddam vs the US but Saddam vs the Iraqi people. Though Saddam and his team may try to embarrass as many as possible, the actions of US agricultural negotiators are irrelevant to the circumstances and facts regarding such issues as Saddam gassing his own population ... It will be fodder for all those who have been trying to turn everything back on us but I don't think we ever claimed to be unaware of what Saddam was doing including the torture and so forth. The whole world knew that stuff was going on. It will be another thing entirely to try to pin any responsibility on us for Saddams criminal actions unless there is evidence that we commissioned those acts directly.
I'm sure we did quite a few things in turning our enemies against each other that we may now be embarrassed about. Shoot - we stood back and watched as Saddam butchered the uprising we inspired at the end of Gulf I and the Iraqis are very well aware of this but it did not prevent them from praising us for reversing the wrongs of the past. I suppose Saddam may take some consolation in these facts as they walk him to the gallows. And I have no doubt that the left / democrats will try to spin this whole thing as Republicans are Nazi's / blood for oil .....
For the purposes of this thread, and to expand on a conversation of another thread, throw the R and D stuff out for a moment, and just look how little turnover the United States has had between the people in charge then and the people in charge now.
From 1984:
But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
Torturing our POW'S. That is an offense against the USA.