Isn’t there a difference between a war to annex the territory of another nation and a war to overthrow a regime which has forfieted it’s claim to sovereignty?

It’s very important that people you kill are not ‘your own’, killing ‘your own’ people isn’t prudent.

The specific issue of the border dispute was the Shatt al Arab waterway. The Algiers accord of 1975 (signed by VP Saddam Hussein) resolved that issue in Iran’s favour while a later treaty (Frontier and northerly Relations, 1975) settled other border disputes in Iraq’s favour.

The Algiers Accord was something of a humiliation for a lot of Iraqi’s. The impetus for signing it came from the Baathist’s inability to deal with Kurdish seperatism which was being sponsored by Iran. That support was withdrawn and the Baathists were able to turn their attention to creating their version of the perfect Arab state.

By January 1979 the Shah was gone. The Iranian revolution caused waves of discontent amongst the repressed Shia populations of Iraq and the othe Arab gulf states. Iran’s encouragement of Shia discontent was a violation of the 1975 Frontiers treaty. This was the pretext for Saddam’s invasion of Sept 1980. However by aiming as far as the cities of Dezful and Ahvazhe he went far beyond simply seizing the border area. His war was a war of aggression for the purpose of enlarging Iraq’s borders far beyond the traditional, albiet disputed international border.

I guess because they could prosecute Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/etc. for the exact same crime, which might make things a little awkward. I don’t think we’ll be hearing much about “launching an unprovoked war of aggression” when Saddam’s crimes are catalogued.

For the same reason Halabja is inconvenient to prosecute. It was part of the Iran war, both sides used gas, and Saddam’s lawyer is bound to bring up the old CIA reports that blamed the attack on Iran.

Indeed. ‘Coddling of dictators’ charge is so 1980s.

This raises the more general issue of the stupidity of executing war criminals like Saddam. Aside from the fact that execution always raises the suspicion that the perpetrator was executed to shut him up, people like Saddam are mines of historical information. After draining the world of value for so many years, they should be kept alive to provide the maximum value of which they are capable. That seems a more “just” punishment than execution. Generally, people like Saddam continue to talk over time, incessently, to “set the record” straight and repair their reputations. They cough up a great deal of useful information.

Also, wasting away in prison is a much worse, more humiliating, pubishment for an aspiring “great man” like Saddam than is death. I think of Al Capone. If he had been killed in a hail of police gunfire, his death would have had a heroic, legendary quality that would probably have brought him greater posthumous renown – like Butch Cassidy and Sundance. Instead he deteriorated in prison, and when he was finally released he was a broken, weak, embarrassing, somewhat ridiculous mockery of his former vital self.

It doesn’t have to “compare” – that Jeff Dahmer is tried for murder doesn’t prevent someone who “only” murdered their spouse in a crime of passion also being charged. If the US committed war crimes, the claim “Saddam was worse” isn’t a defense.

Your America, anyway.

I actually have a very hard time imagining such a verdict, because the Dujail massacres didn’t take place during a conflict to which the law of war applies. No war, no war crime. It may, however, be a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, or a violation of any number of Iraqi laws.

I wonder if Dujail might have been picked precisely because it didn’t take place during a war. Acts of war are subject to a rule of proportionality while crimes against humanity aren’t, so a court could reach a verdict on Dujail without having to make any comparisons to Fallujah. (That’s also where abb1’s analogy in comment 1 breaks down, but I digress.)

Re-arrange the following words: “head wall knocking your against”.