OK, another comment upon a weighty issue, about which I am entirely ill–qualified to comment. Will I never learn? Just saw this discussion on the BBC website about how to deal with Saddam now that he has been found and whether or not he should face the death penalty.

This quote struck me:

“The most pressing moral and political need is for Saddam to receive a trial that is fair and seen to be fair”.

Totally impossible. It is totally pointless to talk about a fair trial in this case.

The punishment has been carried out before the trial by bombing his country, deposing him and forcing him to live in a hole in the ground. If he comes before a court, is there any possibility whatsoever that it might look at the evidence and find him innocent? What would happen then, they'd say “sorry about that” and give him the country back?

No way.

Any “trial” would just be a listing of his sins, in an attempt to bring his era to a formal close and start to move forward. Which may be no bad idea. But there’s no point talking about a “fair trial” for Saddam in any normally understood way.

Saddam is clearly no ordinary criminal. There is no punishment which fits his crimes. The normal rules of crime and punishment do not apply. Revenge? Deterrence? Protection of the public? Any punishment a convicting court imposes will be either vastly insufficient or entirely pointless in achieving any of those aims. What other aims could a court be trying to achieve in trying and punishing him? I can only think of “closure”. The only thing that Iraq can do is to try to move on. And if Iraq considers that “trying” Saddam itself is part of that process, then I suppose, pragmatically, that is the lesser evil.