Mabus Trial Opens With The Defendant In Control

By James Donahue

Dec. 6, 2005

The King of Iraq stood in an Iraqi courtroom Monday and even though he was on trial for alleged war crimes, everyone in the courtroom knew he was still a leader.

After the first witness testified concerning the deaths of more than 140 Shiites in an incident in 1982, Saddam dismissed the testimony with the following statement:

“You can’t go on playing these games,” he said. “If you want my neck you can have it.”

The chief judge eventually called a halt to the highly charged proceedings. The trial is set to resume today.

Saddam had more to say on Monday:

“When I speak I speak like your brother,” he told the court. “Your brother in Iraq and your brother in the nation. I am not afraid of execution. I realize there is pressure on you and I regret that I have to confront one of my sons. But I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for Iraq. I’m not defending myself. But I am defending you. I want you to be the shooters and the swords against the enemy army.”

Saddam also said: “If it’s ever established that Saddam Hussein laid a hand on any Iraqi, then everything that witness said is correct.”

Now if a speech like that doesn’t disarm a courtroom, I don’t know what will. Some saw in the remarks a call to arms and worry that Saddam may have used the public television time to send verbal signals to supporters that will have repercussions elsewhere in the world.

Remember that Hussein ruled his country for two decades with an iron fist. Some say that Hussein needed to use his autocratic style of leadership to hold together a nation split by Kurds in the north, Sunni Muslims in the center and Shiites in the south.

And it worked. Since his overthrow two years ago, the U.S. and Britain have been unable to patch together a government that can hold Iraq together. Attempts to build a democratic system appear to have met with failure, with civil war looming the moment American forces withdraw.

Critics of the Bush Administration are beginning to think that the decision to attack Iraq, over a contrived allegation that Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, was a big mistake.

And a spokesman for the United Nations said this week that the Hussein trial will never satisfy international standards because of ongoing violence and obvious flaws in the Iraq legal system.

UN human rights chief in Iraq, John Case, said the murder of two of the defense lawyers, continued threats against the judges, lawyers and witnesses, and general weaknesses in the Iraqi justice system are raising grave doubts about the trial’s legitimacy.

Psychic Aaron C. Donahue, who believes Saddam is the dark figure Mabus portrayed in a disturbing prophecy by Nostradamus, recently suggested on his radio show that America should not be trying the man, but instead somebody should apologize and give Saddam his country back.

No matter what happens, Donahue believes Hussein is doomed for an early death, although he said this week that it does not have to happen that way.

The Nostradamus quatrain warns that following the death of Mabus, “there will be a horrible undoing of people and animals.”

Donahue believes this “undoing” is going to be a disease that spreads from animals to humans and brings mass death and suffering. He believes that disease may already be developing in the H5N1 virus now spreading throughout Asia and Europe.

However things end up, the trial of Saddam Hussein is going to be one to watch and watch closely in the weeks ahead.