Lawyers High and Low

Low would be Ramsey Clark, the lunatic lefty who has trafficked for forty years on the fact that Lyndon Johnson, in what Johnson described as his most appalling mistake, appointed him Attorney General. Clark has now showed up in Baghdad to volunteer his legal assitance to Saddam Hussein. Clark is one of those lefties who never met a dictator he didn’t suck up to.

The Associated Press reports that Clark alleges that the trial of Saddam Hussein will inevitably be unfair:

Clark and others say a fair trial is impossible in Iraq because of the insurgency and because, they argue, the country is effectively under foreign military occupation.

Got that? Because pro-Saddam terrorists are going around blowing people up, it is unfair to try him for his innumerable crimes. This theory is chillingly reminiscent of the strategy that was used by Clark and his fellow radical lawyers in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s: they would do everything they could to turn the trial into a circus, and then tell the jury that it would be unfair to convict their cient, since the trial had been a circus. And, obviously, the “foreign occupation” by U.S. troops was the precondition for Saddam being called to account in any forum.

But the more admirable end of the legal profession is also represented in the same AP report, in the person of Raed Juhi, the investigating judge who prepared the case against Saddam. The Iraqi government has arrested eight men who allegedly plotted to murder Juhi on the instructions of the senior Baathist still at large, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. The charge is not far-fetched; apparently one or more of the men were carrying Douri’s written instructions when arrested. The AP interviewed Juhi, who said:

As an Iraqi citizen and a judge, I am vulnerable to assassination attempts. If I thought about this danger, then I would not be able to perform my job … I will practice my profession in a way that serves my country and satisfies my conscience.

Those are inspiring words, fit to be carved in marble as a monument to what a judge should be. Lately, we’ve heard talk here in America about how brave our judges are when they they stick to their positions–often wrongly–despite being criticized. That is not exactly the apex of courage. Hats off, I say, to Raed Juhi, and may the prosecution of Saddam proceed with dispatch.

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