Saddam Hussein'S TRIAL IS an example of victor's justice: First the trial, then the execution. That he will die is certain. But Iraq would be even more volatile either way. But putting to trial former leaders for what they have to do as leaders – that of Saddam Hussein is one, of Slobodan Milosevic another – would redound on US and European leaders once the worm turns, as it will. The United States realises this, and have offering aid in return for not clamouring for Americans to be tried in an international court. The publicity surrounding the trial of defeated leaders is deafening, giving the impression they do not have a case. But they do. And present it effectively. The Milosevic trial at the Hague was seen by Serbs as a punishment for not following Western dictates. His death, and burial in his country estate in Serbia, was a national event in his country, and the Western agenda over what was Yugoslavia is in shambles.

It is not, of course. Iraq under Saddam Hussein kept the religious divide between the Sunnis and Shia out, and ran a secular state. The Americans dismantle that, gave the Shias power, and believed it could have a state in which the majority ruled. It has resulted in chaos, and the old enmity between Iran and the Middle East, part of this conflict, is that one is Shia and the other Sunni, both of the Muslim religion, one is Arab and the other not. The British is their long presence in the region understood this, and behaved accordingly. Iraq could only be ruled by the Sunni, it decided more than four decades ago, but it lost out in the end by ordering the Middle East in its image. The last British-controlled prime minister of Iraq was flayed alive when he has caught in the late 1950s, trying to escape in a woman's clothes, which included the chador. The king was overthrown and killed. But the group that took over was Sunni. As was all leaders until the Americans decided that should change. But it is against the Shia leadership now.

But Iraq is a better place, the spin meisters say, after the US invasion reduced that country to a wasteland. Go into almost any office for information, and the first person of contact is the public relations man. He usually does not know what happens, but he is tutored in the art of deceiving people, while giving the impression he is telling the truth. The US and UK government, for example, is now in trouble because they lied to the people they represent, feeding them with public relations chatter on what is happening, and telling lies when the spin for going to war is broken down one by one. Today, the world is told to accept that despite what was said before, Iraq is a better place than under Saddam Hussein, now on trial for his life but one in which even the spin meisters cannot spin it to a victory for the quisling Iraqi government.

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CROWING two years ago that Iraq is a democracy, that it is a far better place that when Saddam Hussein, who is now facing trial for his life, was in charge. But US destroyed the framework, made enemies of the Baathist Party, opened the country to be run by Shia, made sure that the Sunnis would never have a place in the government. The civil war is fuelled by the Sunnis, Iraqi nationalists (both Sunni and Shia), the youngsters who see no future in an Iraq under American control. President Bush has had to eat every one of US optimistic statements. Sure, there are foreigners amongst these insurgents, but so has the Americans. The world hears only one side of the story, the insurgents are not allowed, but the appears on Arab television stations, even if they do not report the more horrendous American atrocities, is had enough. In less than two years, the Americans have made themselves unpopular not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Middle East and Iran. But they want a foothold in the Middle East at any cost. Would they get it?

THE Saddam Hussein TRIAL, like Slobodan Milosevic's, is political but conducted in Baghdad as a legal trial. The motto seems to be: First the trial, then the execution. It is presumed the defendants have no no case, so it is presumed by the prosecutors. And are shocked when the strong defence is made. They are tried under laws that did not exist at the time at the time the officences were allegedly committed, and became laws only after he was overthrown. The British. in its imperial glory, would have hanged them all before they were faced with scenes now shown to the world, if they thought they would get into the mess the Americans are now. But it is the Americans who rule, and they believe in the Queensbury's Rules even when fighting a war. The procedures of the court have not been fixed. Every hearing of the trial has been a slanging match between the judges and the defendants over whether the court was legal. The witnesses are allowed to make their statements in absentia. The witnesses are afraid to show their faces twenty years later, and when it clear Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants are history.

It is today a test of wills. Washington's inopportune attack on Iraq for reasons other than stated was aimed at a military presence in the Middle East. Its military presence in Lebanon was ended 25 years ago with a car bomb and 241 US Marine deaths. It wants to set up one in Qatar to keep an eye, it is said, on Al-Jazeera. It does not trust Saudi Arabia any more, wants to put the Saudi royal family out of business. But it has touched more than it chew in Iraq. It put Saddam Hussein on trial for crimes he is alleged to have committed when President 25 years ago. It has been stressed time and time again that his trial is not vendetta, that the rule of law will prevaile all of Iraq. But the trial is in shambles. What happened in Halabja is not as interesting as what happens in court. It is an impartial tribunal, so the Americans claim, but it chief judge, a Kurd, cannot stand the heat, his successor is found to be a Baathist, and his successor is from Halabja. Whatever happens to the trial, Saddam Hussein has won. He has already written himself into Iraq, and Middle Eastern, history as a Sunni martyr.

Saddam Hussein IN THE dock challenges the United States and its plans to make Iraq in its image and get at the second largest oil reserves known, after Saudi Arabia. He is on trial for his life, orchestrated by the US. He is in their custody. It decides when or how the trial will be held. The US must censor the trial reports and photographs before it can be published. He has too many supporters in present day Iraq, and they should not ever know he is putting up a fight. But Saddam Hussein in the dock is so threatening that witnesses give their evidence behind a screen; the judges and the prosecution can see them but not the defence. The trial of Saddam Hussein and his men is holding to ranson the US invasion of Iraq. The trial was decided to be in Iraq. The US made his first mistake when it charged him with minor offences, when they should have charged him and his men for the offense they have kept to the last. It did not know what it was doing, allowed Saddam Hussein to take charge. CNN and other television reports that the people of Iraq are not convinced. The judges, who except for the chief judge are kept hidden, can pronounce only death, the sooner the better. If he is acquitted in his first trial, the US is more on the defensive. It cannot afford that. Saddam Hussein has said he would expect the death sentence, and prepared for that. An Arab ruler expects to be killed if he loses or is overthrown. But he is arrested by an invading army, which did not know what to do once it had Iraq. The Invasion was done for false reasons. There was a rush to claim credit for the invasion, and the officials in Washington and their proconsul in Iraq did not agree what to do next. The decision was taken to create a government from start, with lthe Sunnis, who have ruled since the 1920s, excluded. the Sunnis saw the writing on the wall, decided they would never rule again, went against the US, and the country is in chaos.

The CIA sending those it arrests to secret prisons is an election issue in the United States. It has become one purely because the US has broken all rules of government by making foreign politicians responsible for acts that were not illegal in office. Now it puts the US answerable. The war in Iraq brought this out. A wise general plans how to get out before planning an invasion. The reasons for the invasion of Iraq and the unseating of Saddam Hussein were false. The US did not want Iraq under Saddam Hussein to be an exemplar in the Middle East. Iraq was invaded because the world was told it was an ally of al-Qaeda. It is now, and admitted by the US that the invasion made sure of that. It had no policy except it wanted to control Iraq's oil, second largest reserve known. The insurgents, former rulers, having decided they will never rule Iraq again, will not allow any one else. It is a dangerous position for the US to be in, now matter how many CIA plants it brings into the government. It has turned a secular government into a racial and religious one and divided the country into minorities. The Kurds want a government of their own, their price for joining the anti-Saddam band wagon. The secularists, from the three racial minorities in Iraq, do not matter. The invasion has ensured Iraq will be religious and racial in the end. Mr Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia former prime minister, was beaten with shoes, a particular insult, when he visited Najaf shrine. He hopes to play an important role after the elections next week. The US thinks he can. The CIA thinks he can. But can he?

THE MESS IN IRAQ today would not have happened if the United States had planned before Iraq was invaded. Their plans were of quislings, who were not given positions in the Iraqi government unless they held Western citizenship. In Australia, its citizens could not be in politics if they held dual citizenships. In Iraq, that was a necessity. Iraq had a working government, but that was destroyed for no reason than no planning. No one could be in the new government who held a Baathist Party membership. That restriction threw the experienced Sunnis out of the new Iraq. It was a precipe for disaster. The United States and those who followed it depended on quislings who had an agenda of their own, and who told lies without batting an eyelid. The United States was sucked into a quagmire. The Sunnis created an insurgency, knowing it would not be ruling power, and had no interest in a new Iraq. It got fighters from the Middle East, those who could not go back to their countries after fighting for the United States in Afghanistan against Russia. Osama bin Laden. a wealthy Saudi Arabian who is not allowed back, was, after all, once a CIA agent. So was Saddam Hussein, whose trial makes him a great figure in the Middle East each time the trial fumbles. And it has fumbled more often than not. The United States wants to hang him for what he did as a head of state. All his arguments are waved aside. They created a law that did not exist when he ordered the killing as head of state. The United States had, after all, supported Augustino Pinochet as president of Chile, and turned a blind eye when he allegedly committed the offenses for which he is now found guilty. The killings were done with United States connivance, in Iraq and Chile. The new circumstance in Iraq meant he would have to be killed.

Singapore, priggish at the best of times, now consider casinos, to attract the foreigner. Elaborate rules are drawn to keep the Singaporeans out. Singaporeans are warned not to enter these casinos except under very stringent rules that favour the rich and the powerful. Similar rules are in force in Malaysia, but there is a special room in Genting Highlands casino, for instance, for Malaysian cabinet ministers, sultans and Muslim highrollers - for whom, like the Muslim poor, gambling is banned in Islam - and kept hidden from the populace. But how many former and present cabinet ministers break it every time they enter the casino in Genting Highlands? The casinos, in Singapore and Malaysia, are for the foreigner, for whom facilities are built to which its own citizens are banned. Singapore is a rest-and-recreating centre for American troops who were then fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s, and is today host to about 2,000 troops of the island. mainly as insurance against Malaysia attacking the island republic. But both are kept on a tight leash by the West and Caucasian countries. The governments in both keep the citizens in the dark while its leaders take orders from the West, usually the United States. Especially in the war on terror. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia are with the United States, but most of the people are not. To stay in power, they believe they must. They warn of 'Muslim fundamentalists' on behalf of the United. And behave as prostitutes do. They expect to remain in power for all times. But so did Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And look where they are now!

The officials are throttled to say nothing about the murders and mayhem, and they would keep quiet in their retirement unless they become activists themselves, as David Kay, the former chief of the WMD in Iraq has done. The television, the media, the government information services is Western inspired, so we get the public relations version of what happens in Iraq. There is little of what happens in the country. Al Jazeera does report what happens in the street, and the mayhem caused by American invasion. But every effort is made to silence Al Jazeera. He who has the information wins the war. But if both sides have the information, they energise their supporters and the divide is wider than ever. We are told after the Amman attacks that most of the 78 per cent Sunnis in Jordan spit at the perpetrators of the American hotels. But those who died are those who wanted to be there. That means well off Arabs, who live in a world of their own and are seen important if they deal with the West. The bulk of Jordan, to these people, are irrelevant. King Abdullah of Jordan is more popular in the West than in his country. So what he says is ignored. The poor people, in the majority, have supported the Baathist Party in Iraq and President Saddam Hussein. They did not change overnight because he is arrested, and his country invaded, by a foreign nation. The United States have gone into war with terror, and terror here means the Muslim world. But it does not understand what the term means, and finding itself in difficulties, gets into dividing the religious and racial factions. It is not between two Iraqi factions, but it is between Sunnis and Shias or between the Iraqi Sunni and the Turkomen, who is Sunni more often than not. But will we hear in memoirs written by those who are there? We might get a sanitized version of what happened there, but little else.

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