The Opening to the Greatest Circus in Baghdad... er... Saddam's Trial - Part I

I didn't write about this yesterday because... well, gosh.... um....

Let me add a few notes up front, just to limit the hate mail telling me I'm a Saddam lover (again). Uh, sorry, no. The world would have been better if Saddam - or a Pinochet, Khadafi, an Ariel Sharon of the 60s-70s era, a Kim Jung Il, and oh yes, let's not forget, or George W. Bush - had never gotten closer to power than watching it on TV. These men have caused such death with such lies and evil incarnate (a term I never use lightly because, sadly, I do believe in true evil).

Yet, although I don't really want to give the devil (Saddam) his due, there are actually a couple of areas in which I can say Saddam did have a slight edge up on other evil despots:

---specifically, a mostly secular government (run by a mix, including more than a few Catholics; while our fundamentalists call Iraq a "godless" country, a large number of Iraqis practice Catholicism not to mention many other God-centric religions)
---where women participated (a lot of our fundamentalists aren't too crazy about that one but they won't say a peep because they believe in that old rube: "I can beat my wommin all I want, but you, you cannot beat my wommin").