What to do with Saddam?(Insider Report)

Should Saddam be tried by the UN--at a special tribunal, a la the Balkans trial of Slobodan Milosevic--or at the newly functioning International Criminal Court? Independence-minded Americans understand that creating such a precedent would dangerously empower the United Nations.

Should the Iraqis establish an independent tribunal to try Saddam? In principle this is the best alternative. But it's almost impossible to believe that this would be allowed to happen, given Saddam's long and bloody career as a sometime asset of the American Establishment:

* Almost exactly 20 years before Saddam's capture, Donald Rumsfeld--now secretary of defense--visited the despot in Baghdad as President Ronald Reagan's emissary. Subsequent to that visit, Washington began to lavish economic and military aid on Saddam's regime, including the materials necessary to build biological and chemical weapons.

* During the Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam was the aggressor, the U.S. tilted its foreign policy toward Iraq and provided lucrative subsidies to the Iraqi war machine, including Baghdad's embryonic nuclear program.

* On October 2, 1989, President George ...