Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tariq Aziz
It's been quite a while since I wrote about Tariq Aziz, whose "right to a speedy trial" (or even to being charged with anything) is no more a reality than tens of thousands of others being held by the U.S. in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But now it's time for an irony alert:
Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the public face of Saddam Hussein's regime, will face trial next week over the execution of dozens of merchants in 1992, a prosecutor said on Thursday.40 people executed (I'm willing to bet following a trial, however nominal, and a conviction, though the article doesn't say)! The U.S. will kill more people in Iraq than that before the trial even starts next week, much less before it ends (and much less than they've killed in total, needless to say).
The merchants were accused of increasing prices of essential goods against state policy at a time when Iraq was suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
