By Brian Carnell

Sunday, January 2, 2005

In a move about as predictable as the fact that the Sun will rise tomorrow, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark recently joined the legal team advising deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

As the Associated Press aptly noted,

[Clark] . . . is a staunch anti-war opponent who has met Saddam several times over the last 15 years. He was considered a friend of Iraq under Saddam when the United Nations slapped an embargo on Baghdad following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

One of his many trips to Baghdad included a human rights conference (!) in which Clark blasted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, of course, was written predominantly by rich Western democracies -- evil de jure in Clark's pantheon.

When not sucking up to Saddam, Clark was off defending Slobadon Milosivec, going so far as urging Belgrade to resist NATO and promising that, if it did, it would enjoy "a glorious victory." After losing a case in which he defended Karl Linas, who had served as a Nazi Guard at a concentration camp in Estonia, Clark publicly questioned the need to keep prosecuting Nazis, "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."

From military officials accused of mass rape in Bosnia to preachers accused of genocide in Rwanda, if there's anyone whose been accused of crimes against humanity in the last decade, Clark has been there to lend his support.

Although Clark has apparently been written off by the more moderate elements of the Left, Clark has been at the forefront of Leftist protests in recent years due to his affiliation with the World Workers Party. The WWP was formed as a split of the Socialist Worker's Party in the mid-1950s, with the WWP being compose of former SWP members who supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

WWP is obscure to most people, but it has a much more well known front group called International ANSWER. International ANSWER, of course, has been a major force in organizing anti-war demonstrations against the U.S. attack on Iraq.

Sources:

The Mysterious Ramsey Clark: Stalinist Dupe or Ruling-Class Spook? Manny Goldstein.

Ramsey Clark, the war criminal's best friend. Ian Williams, Salon.Com, June 21, 1999.

US rebel joins Saddam legal team. The BBC, December 29, 2004.

Lawyer: Ex-Attorney General to Aid Saddam. Associated Press, December 29, 2004.

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