by TChris

Responding to prosecutors' complaints that the chief judge was "soft on Saddam," Iraq's prime minister removed the judge from Saddam Hussein's trial. But wait, you say. What kind of democratic government allows the executive branch to control the judicial branch, to the point of removing a judge during a trial because prosecutors want a judge who will side with them more often? The kind that has emerged in Iraq. The kind that cares more about assuring convictions than providing fair trials. The kind of government that is, by rational standards, a joke.

The change could revive complaints that the government is interfering in the tribunal trying Saddam and his regime members to ensure a quick guilty verdict.

The judge who presided over Hussein's first trial resigned midway through the trial in response to complaints that he, too, was "soft on Saddam." American prosecutors must envy the power of the Iraqi government to toss out any judge who isn't sufficiently pro-prosecution.