Posted 10:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

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Robert Parry's "The Iraq-gate Cover-up Continues":

In another show trial for Saddam Hussein’s compatriots – followed by more death sentences – an unnoted success for George W. Bush was how the U.S. press corps has continued to avert its eyes from the role of Westerners, including Bush’s father, in aiding and abetting Hussein’s murderous regime.

Major U.S. newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, reported on the June 24 death sentences meted out to Ali Hassan al-Majeed and two other senior Hussein aides without a single mention of the American role in helping arm and protect the Iraqi regime in the 1980s.

A special Iraqi tribunal handed down the death sentences after a tainted legal process that saw Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki oust the original chief judge for making comments viewed as favorable to the defense. The defendants also were denied the opportunity to call witnesses because of security concerns.

The prospect of real justice was impaired, too, when Maliki rushed Hussein to the gallows on Dec. 30, 2006, eliminating the possibility that the former dictator might offer explosive testimony, including how his regime got the chemical weapons that were deployed against Iranian troops and their Iraqi Kurdish allies during the Iran-Iraq War.