Ramsey Clark: Tyrant groupie

The counsel for Qaddafi, Milosevic and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman talks about his latest client, Saddam Hussein.

At his trial, Mr. Hussein is charged with crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 men and teenage boys from the Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982. But Mr. Clark suggested that Mr. Hussein's secret police had reason to act harshly against Shiite assassins who, he said, almost certainly had political links to Shiite-ruled Iran, then in the early stages of an eight-year war with Iraq. He compared the actions of Mr. Hussein's secret police with the muscular behavior of an American president's security detail.

"Just look at how our Secret Service works," he said. "I've been knocked down several times when they see some kind of threat." In any case, he said, he could not see how Mr. Hussein could be blamed for the killings. "He was the president of the country, he was in a war, he was a pretty busy guy," he said. "I can see this as a case of some of his juniors overreacting."

But much of Mr. Clark's energy in the interview went into linking his earlier legal career, fighting racial prejudice in the American south and apartheid in South Africa, with the seemingly crankier course he has taken since. In both periods, he said, he was engaged in confronting prejudice - in the case of Mr. Hussein, Colonel Qaddafi and others, prevailing against people "who have a habit of seeing the world in black and white, as good and evil, of demonized characters stripped of all humanity." That, he said, was what America had done to Mr. Hussein, and, in a way, to Mr. Clark.

"I know something about that, because I get a little bit of that demonization myself," he said.

UPDATE: Sandmonkey says it's gilding the lily to demonize Saddam.

He doesn't need the help. Ask any Iraqi and he will tell you all about the shit that this guy did. ... A 6 year old can look at this guy and tell you he is made of the same disgusting mold of Hitler, Stalin and Polpot. The fact that he writes poetry means nothing to me. Hitler was a vegeterian artist; Polpot was a history teacher and neither one of them can pass for human. Saddam is in that same category. As for you, Mr. Clark, your history speaks for itself. I don't think anyone can demonize you either. You are doing a bang-up job yourself.