WASHINGTON - December 16 -

• DOUGLAS VALENTINE, redspruce@comcast.net, www.douglasvalentine.com
  Valentine is available to assess U.S. military operations in Iraq. He is author of the book The Phoenix Program, about U.S. "counter-insurgency" operations in Vietnam.
  
• MIKE LOPERCIO, mlopercio@aol.com, www.globalexchange.org/countries/iraq/familiesreport.html
  Lopercio just returned from a fact-finding trip to Iraq where his son Anthony is a solider.
  
• ANAS SHALLAL, ashallal@cox.net
  Shallal is co-founder of Iraqi Americans for Peaceful Alternatives and founder of the Mesopotamia Cultural Society. He said today: "Saddam Hussein has come to symbolize so many things in the Arab and Muslim world. He is seen as a hero (this speaks volumes about the deficit of leaders we have in the Arab world) -- someone who has defied the U.S. and the West and their superior military. Photos of where he was hiding or with his mouth gaping open (the image of vulnerability is eerie) belied that image that most have of Saddam.... It is critical that his trial be open, public and transparent. I am troubled that the U.S. government just got the right to edit Wesley Clark's testimony at The Hague. Getting the whole truth out in a trial of Hussein could mark the beginning of a solid healing process."
  
• KAREN PARKER, ied@igc.org, www.webcom.com/hrin/parker.html
  Parker is founder of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers.
  
• FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@law.uiuc.edu, www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0024.htm
  Boyle is professor of International Law at the University of Illinois and author of Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11. He said today: "This is the 21st century equivalent of the Roman Emperor parading the defeated barbarian king before the assembled masses so that they might all shout in unison: Hail Caesar!"
  
• MICHAEL MANDEL, mmandel@yorku.ca, www.lawyersagainstthewar.org
  Co-chair of Lawyers Against the War, Mandel is a law professor at York University in Toronto. He said today: "Apart from America's full legal and moral complicity in all the crimes for which they are now going to try Saddam Hussein, and apart from the hundreds of thousands who died from U.S.-imposed sanctions, this invasion has already taken about 20,000 Iraqi lives and brought nothing but chaos to Iraq, with no foreseeable end. The invasion was not only flagrantly illegal, it constituted the 'supreme international crime' and all the rest as well, including mass murder. Do these people seriously think they can mitigate their guilt or diminish their responsibility for all that by some farcical show trial of this creature of their own making? The effect of this pathetic exercise on George W. Bush's re-election fortunes may be debatable, but it's certain that it will further display the arrogance and hypocrisy of the U.S. government to the rest of the world. Frankenstein is now going to put another of his monsters on trial, but Frankenstein himself is still on the loose in the laboratory."