"The Lion" executes his strategy

Saddam's sad and comical trial continued today, and there was no shortage of sound bites from the Butcher and his gang. As usual, press reports focused on those outbursts, effectively muting the testimony of the people who experienced the real torture.

Saddam's team continued with what is now a clear strategy of painting America (Bush) as the real lying torturers. This is an effort to manipulate headlines from left-leaning news outlets in the EU and USA. The strategy is meeting with some success. Take a look at the headline from CNN's story:

Hussein: 'The White House lies'

Couple that with the allegations from those same news sources about secret spying, torture, and well you get the picture. As to the actual testimony of the witnesses at the trial, the reader must page down to the end of both the Reuters and CNN/Fox/AP stories to find anything.

Those victims should have claimed they were also recently tortured at Abu Ghraib under the Coalition. Their accounts would have instantly risen to the top column.

Saddam made this comment, which I find interesting:

"The White House are liars," he told the court, where he and seven others, including his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, stand accused of crimes against humanity. "They said Iraq had chemical weapons."

Uh, Mr. deposed President, did you forget something?

On second thought, we just released the two high valued scientists thought to be experts on that subject, whom we said we wouldn't. My bad, Saddam. No harm no foul, I guess?

Of course it will be interesting to see whether Saddam's "Bush lied, people died" rhetoric catches on here. Speaking of which, I saw no mention of Ramsey Clark at today's trial, and he wasn't there yesterday either.

Finally, at one point in the proceedings someone in the gallery laughed at Saddam, to which he turned, pointed his finger and stated:

"The lion does not care about a monkey laughing at him from a tree,"

Crazy? Like a fox.

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Donald Sensing links us to an interview with some of Saddam's holy warriors--just for perspective..