Left Gears Up For Saddam Trial

That Saddam Hussein was a bad, bad man is above question. Just the first of the charges against him is worse than any of the Left's hallowed outrages -- My Lai, Kent State -- pale in comparison.

July 8, 1982, Saddam (allegedly) ordered the massacre of 150 Shiites the town of Dujail after Hussein, a Sunni, narrowly escaped assassination.

And that's just the first of 14 charges, including the 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed an estimated 5,000 people and the execution of 8,000 members of a powerful Kurdish clan.

The trail will snuff the Left's outrageous concern that Saddam is being held too long without trial, and it will trot out atrocity after atrocity, making Bush's drive for Democracy more popular.

So how is the Left preparing for the trial? Let's look in on TalkLeft, a prime Leftist spokesblog:

Providing a happy distraction for the Bush administration (which always needs one, this time because of Karl Rove), the Iraqi Special Tribunal announced that Saddam Hussein will be prosecuted for "the killings of about 150 Shiites in the Iraqi town of Dujail in 1982." No trial date has been announced, but the trial may occur before the end of the year.

No word yet on whether Iraq will seek the death penalty. At one point, the UK indicated that it will boycott the trial if death is sought. In April, Jalal Talabani said he opposed the possibility of a death sentence, but as TalkLeft recently reported, Iraq decided to resume its use of death as punishment, perhaps with a view to executing Hussein.

Amazing, isn't it? First, they drag out the dead horse that every event is cynically, darkly controlled by Rove in order to advance Bush's agenda.

Second, of course, is Leftist concern about the death penalty. If they can't see the benefit of the world's dictators seeing Saddam going to his death for his crimes, they just don't get anything, do they?