WASHINGTON - December 15 -

• MICHAEL RATNER, mratner@igc.org, www.humanrightsnow.org
  Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
  
  
• JOHN QUIGLEY, quigley.2@osu.edu
  Professor of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley was an expert witness in Pol Pot's trial.
  
  
• EDWARD HERMAN, hermane@wharton.upenn.edu, http://zmag.org/bioherman.htm?Fname=Edward&Lname=Herman&commentary=3&article=5
  Professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, Herman is author of many books including The Real Terror Network. He said today: "Saddam Hussein faces a trial sponsored by a 'coalition' that has captured him after an act of aggression in violation of the UN Charter -- the Nuremberg Tribunal called such acts the 'supreme crime' -- and whose leaders therefore should be in front of Saddam before an honest tribunal system.... The 'coalition' continues to kill civilians and violate all kinds of international laws on the proper behavior of an occupying power, which should be the basis of further criminal charges...."
  
  
• MARJORIE COHN, Libertad48@aol.com, http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew18.HTM
  An associate professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, Cohn said today: "The new Iraqi tribunal's statute was established with $75 million of U.S. money by the United States' handpicked Iraqi Governing Council.... Bush has once again thumbed his nose at the International Criminal Court, which was developed over a 50-year period by international legal experts and scholars to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since the statute for the new Iraqi court was passed in secret, we do not know if it contains the due process guarantees enshrined in the International Criminal Court's statute.... Moreover, Iraq must afford defendants the fair trial rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iraq has ratified. It requires that the accused be brought promptly before a judge, informed of the charges against him, and be afforded a speedy, public and fair trial with the presumption of innocence, counsel of his choice and the privilege against self-incrimination. The United States, which has also ratified this Covenant, has denied the prisoners at Guantanamo all of these rights."
  
  
• WILLIAM BLUM, bblum6@aol.com, www.killinghope.org
  Author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Blum said today: "In 1963, the U.S. played a key role in the overthrow of Iraqi leader Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, after an unsuccessful CIA assassination attempt against him. This led to the Ba'ath Party coming to power and eventually Saddam Hussein's control of the country. During Iraq's war with Iran, the U.S. supplied Iraq with military intelligence as well as the means to create biological and chemical weapons.... In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq where he publicly expressed Reagan administration support of Saddam's government.... Perhaps the most significant outcome of Saddam's capture is that it removes one more excuse the U.S. can use to justify its remaining in Iraq."