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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
Iraqi Americans Rejoice Capture of Hussein But Speak Out
Against Occupation
Robert Fisk Reports From Near Tikrit After Visiting the Hole
Where Hussein Was Found
Dilip Hiro Predicts Resistance Against U.S. Occupation Will
Now Increase
Should the Former Iraqi Dictator Be Tried Before An Iraqi
or an International Court?
8:01-8:06 Headlines
8:06-8:07 One Minute Music Break
8:07-8:20 Iraqi Americans Rejoice Capture of Hussein
But Speak Out Against Occupation
INTRO: We hear reactions from two Iraqi-Americans living
in the U.S. on the capture of Saddam Hussein and we go to
Baghdad to hear a report from CorpWatch’s Pratap Chatterjee.
U.S. forces say they have captured the former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein after members of his extended family tipped
off interrogators as to his whereabouts.
Hussein was found hiding in a tomb-like snakehole near a
rural farmhouse near Tikrit. He was alone. He looked disheveled.
He had grown a long gray beard. He had with $750,000 in cash
and at least two AK-47s but U.S. forces say he did not put
up a fight.
Hussein was captured at about 8:30 Saturday night Iraq time.
But news didn’t break in the United States until Sunday
morning. The head of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, Paul Bremer,
held an early morning press conference. His first words were
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him. The tyrant is a prisoner.”
Soon, pictures of the captured Saddam Hussein appeared around
the world. A video released by the Pentagon showed an American
medical officer checking Saddam’s head for lice and
giving him a brief medical exam. The Pentagon later released
a photo of Hussein after his beard was shaven off leaving
just his trademark moustache.
Time Magazine reports that Saddam agreed to talk to U.S.
interrogators.
When officials asked Saddam if Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction. He replied “No, of course not. The
U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to war
with us.”
Hussein was also brought to meet with several members of
the Iraqi Governing Council, including Ahmed Chalabi, the
head of the U.S.-backed Iraqi National Congress. The council
members questioned him about his past war crimes. They said
he remained defiant.
Council member Adel Abdul Mahdi said “When we asked
him about the mass graves, he said the people in them were
Iranian agents and thieves.”
Chalabi said Hussein “would not apologize to the Iraqi
people. He did not deny any of the crimes he was confronted
with having done. He tried to justify them.”
During a four-minute address to the nation Bush vowed that
Saddam Hussein “will face the justice he denied to millions.”
- President George W. Bush’s addresses the nation
hours after the announcement of Saddam Hussein’s capture
on December 14, 2003.
- Salam Al-Rawi, Iraqi American businessman who owns restaurants
in New York.
- Anas Shallal, Iraqi-American living in the Washington
D.C. area. He is a "Partner for Peace" with the
Seeds of Peace program and one of the founders of the Mesopotamia
Cultural Society.
Link: www.seedsofpeace.org
8:20-8:30 Robert Fisk Reports From Near Tikrit After
Visiting the Hole Where Hussein Was Found
INTRO: Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for
the London Independent reports from the site where Saddam
Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in the village of Dawr
near Tikrit.
In his latest article, London Independent’s chief Middle
East correspondent Robert Fisk writes:
“ So they got Saddam at last. Unkempt, his tired eyes
betraying defeat; even the $750,000 in cash found in his hole
in the ground demeaned him.
“Saddam in chains; maybe not literally, but he looked
in that extraordinary videotape yesterday like a prisoner
of ancient Rome, the barbarian at last cornered, the hand
caressing the scraggy beard. All those ghosts - of gassed
Iranians and Kurds, of Shias gunned into the mass graves of
Karbala, of the prisoners dying under excruciating torture
in the villas of Saddam's secret police - must surely have
witnessed something of this. "Ladies and gentlemen -
we got him," crowed Paul Bremer, the American proconsul
in Iraq. "This is a great day in Iraq's history. For
decades, hundreds of thousands of you suffered at the hands
of this cruel man. For decades, this cruel man divided you
against each other. For decades, he threatened to attack your
neighbours. These days are gone for ever ... the tyrant is
a prisoner," he said.
“Tony Blair said: "Saddam has gone from power,
he won't be coming back. That the Iraqi people now know, and
it is they who will decide his fate."
It took just 600 American soldiers to capture the man who
was for 12 years one of the West's best friends in the Middle
East and for 12 more years the West's greatest enemy in the
Middle East. In a miserable 8ft hole in the mud of a Tigris
farm near the village of Ad-Dawr, the president of the Iraqi
Arab Republic, leader of the Arab Socialist Baath party, ex-guerrilla
fighter, invader of two nations, friend of Jacques Chirac
and a man once courted by President Ronald Reagan, was found
hiding, almost certainly betrayed by his own comrades and
now destined - if the Americans mean what they say - to a
trial for war crimes on a Nuremberg scale.”
- Robert Fisk, journalist, Independent (UK); speaking from
northern Iraq.
8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break
8:30-8:40 Dilip Hiro Predicts Resistance Against
U.S. Occupation Will Now Increase
INTRO: Longtime journalist and author of 25 books, Dilip
Hiro, joins us from London to discuss his thoughts on the
effect Saddam Hussein’s capture will have on the mounting
Iraqi resistance movement.
The capture of Saddam comes nearly 20 years to the date after
now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met for the first time
with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq as Ronald Reagan's special presidential
envoy. The date was December 20, 1983.
The impact of Saddam’s capture of the resistance movement
in Iraq remains to be seen.
At a noon-time address to the nation, President Bush admitted
“The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end
of violence in Iraq.”
On the website Counterpunch, British journalist Patrick Cockburn
recounts what the Foreign Minister of the interim Iraqi government
recently told him. "Saddam is very isolated. That is
the only way he can avoid being captured. He is not able to
organize the resistance. He dare not communicate with other
people because he is frightened they will betray him."
Toby Dodge, an analyst at The International Institute for
Strategic Studies at Warwick University, estimates there are
between 15 and 30 resistance groups in Iraq that have no direct
contact with Saddam Hussein.
On Sunday morning – 12 hours after Hussein was captured
– a car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi police station
in the town of Khaldiya. At least 17 people died. 33 more
were wounded. Today eight Iraqi policemen were killed in an
attack north of Baghdad.
On the campaign front, Senator Joseph Lieberman used the
capture to go after the Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean.
Lieberman said on Meet the Press “If Howard Dean had
his way, Saddam Hussein would be in power today, not in prison.”
- Dilip Hiro, longtime journalist and the author of 25
books including the newly published "Secrets and Lies:
Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Collapse of American Power
in the Middle East" (Nation Books)
8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break
8:41-8:58 Should the Former Iraqi Dictator Be Tried
Before An Iraqi or an International Court?
INTRO: Democracy Now! hosts a debate with the chief U.S.
prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials Benjamin Ferencz, Michael
Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights as well a two
Iraqi Americans living in the U.S. on how Saddam Hussein should
be tried.
The New York Times is reporting that U.S. and Iraqi officials
want Hussein to be tried before a new Iraqi tribunal that
was formed last week to try crimes of genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity. Unlike most international tribunes,
the Iraqi model allows for the judges to hand down a death
sentence.
The Times reports the Bush administration does not want any
direct United Nations roles in the trial process.
One Iraqi Governing Council member said Hussein could be
tried "in the next few weeks.”
But several human rights groups, including Amnersty International
and Human Rights Watch, warned against rushing ahead with
an Iraqi tribunal and called for an international trial.
The government of Iran today called for Hussein to be tried
in an international court for crimes committed during the
Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. An estimated
300,000 Iranians died during the war.
The head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth said “Iraq
has no experience with trials lasting more than a few days.
International expertise in prosecuting genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity case must be utilized to ensure
a fair and effective trial.”
Former British Labor Minister Tony Benn predicted that the
U.S. would attempt to tightly control any judicial proceeding
in order to prevent Saddam from discussing his close ties
to Washington.
Benn told Reuters "Saddam might call on Donald Rumsfeld
and say I met him in 1983 and he sold me chemical weapons
to use against the Kurds.” Benn continued “of
course the Americans don't want that. I think they may be
very embarrassed."
- Benjamin Ferencz, at the age of 27 he became the chief
U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, which the Associated
Press called "the biggest murder trial in history."
Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over a
million people. He is the author of several books including
“An International Criminal Court-A Step Toward World
Peace.” He is Adjunct Professor of International Law
at Pace University and founder of the Pace Peace Center.
www.benferencz.org
- Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional
Rights
- Anas Shallal, Iraqi-American living in the Washington
D.C. area. He is a "Partner for Peace" with the
Seeds of Peace program and one of the founders of the Mesopotamia
Cultural Society.
- Salam Al-Rawi, Iraqi American businessman who owns restaurants
in New York.
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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