Saddam's trial likely to backfire ...

The trial (and it is actually an attempt at a "fair trial," I think) of Saddam Hussein, continuing to play out as the Sunni - Shiite Civil War in Iraq is heating up to new levels of violence, is very likely to blow up in the face of the country (that's us!) who rid Iraq of its former brutal dictator.

Certainly, the courtroom drama that is unfolding, like so much of the Iraq charade, moves from one unknown to another. Hussein's "hunger strike" ended with his being forced fed (feeding tube) and he looked thinner, but hardly weaker. He asked that he be shot by a firing squad rather than hanged by the neck until dead -- in accordance with the penalty prescribed by the "rules" for this trial -- despite the fact that the new Iraqi laws forbid capital punishment. That minor detail has never been satisfactorily explained to me, and if one of you knows how it resolves "legally," please let me know.

Anyway, my concerns about the trial "backfiring" is its close connection to the Sunni - Shiite civil war -- and the growing Shiite "crescent" being formed, a large land mass consisting of Iran, the evolving Iraq, and Hezbollah's "new" Lebanon. Saddam Hussein, brutal dictator that he was, was the primary disconnect in the (Iranian) Ayatollahs' dreams of a large Shiite crescent to the east and north of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- surrounding the remaining Arab oil -- the oil that it didn't itself contain! I used to listen long and hard to a very bright young Royal Saudi Air Force lieutenant (Mohammad Al Reeshi) as he explained the military, political and economic (oil!) history of that region to me.

Many Americans have forgotten why George H. W. Bush (Bush '41) let Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard survive the first Gulf War.

I haven't.

Wasn't it George W. Bush (Bush '43) who said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee ... I know it's in Texas ... probably in Tennessee ... that says ... fool me once ... shame ... on ... shame on you ... fool me ... [silence] ... you can't get fooled again ..." -- or something like that?