Down the Memory Hole

One of the reasons that I was so anxious for CBC's return was for their vast online-archives. In watching tonight's National report about Saddam Hussein's trial, I remembered a segment they did a few years ago. "Skeletons in the Closet" was a short documentary by senior correspondent, Brian Stewart. It aired in December 2003, just after the capture of Hussein. Brian Stewart dug all the way back to the beginning of the Reagan/Bush dynasty and found evidence of relationships and weapons sales that a lengthy Hague trial would find quite "inconvenient." Among others, Stewart spoke with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.:

"I think that if there were an open trial, western governments, particularly the government in Washington, would be very worried about what might come out," Bennis says. "It's precisely for that reason that I'm very much afraid we're not going to see an open trial. We're much more likely to see a very closed process which will be heavily orchestrated, controlled by the United States, and where the sole defendant will be Saddam Hussein and his personal actions, without going any further to issues of who were the enablers, if you will."

[thanks to Dissent for the photo]. I also remembered a great piece by Joe Schlesinger that aired before the invasion of Iraq. He takes us back to the first Gulf War, the Highway of Death, and looting by Iraqis, Saudis and Americans, and foresees "more Highways of Death" in the future. He was dead-on.