Tariq Aziz is to stand trial. Here’s a rap sheet from Indict.

The Crime of Aggression

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in launching two wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait; invading Saudi Arabia and attacking the town of Khafji in January 1991.

War Crimes

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the gross violations of Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time Of War and Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, committed by Iraqi forces during the war with Iran and during the occupation of Kuwait between August 1990 - March 1991.

Personally lent himself to the act of hostage taking in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf Conflict, in breach of the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages.

Genocide

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the use of excessive military force against the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq as part of an ongoing campaign against the Shi’as, including the deliberate destruction of the Marsh Arabs’ way of life.

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the genocidal Anfal campaigns waged against the Kurds, including chemical weapons attacks, destruction of rural villages and the rural infrastructure and mass executions.

To help any moral guardians of liberalism who may be reading, who may be more concerned with imagined war crimes of democratic leaders, I append the thoughts of the top three recommended comments from the BBC’s Have your Say page.

Tariq Aziz? Oh yes,,, isn’t he the guy that stood before the United Nations and told the truth Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction whilst at the same meeting Colin Powell stood before the United Nations and told a parcel of lies about WMA so as to make a case for war?

I think they’ve got the wrong man on trial this time. BTW where is Colin Powell these days? We don’t seem to hear much about him.

It’s enough to make you sick…

Ron Martin, bridge of allan

They’ve got it backwards. George Bush & Tony Blair should be tried for illegally invading a soverign state. Tariq Aziz should be the prosecution.

Zamir Zamora, Milpitas, Ca

The blood letting should stop. This man was a true statesman and the best face of Iraq to the outside world even in the darkest days of Saddam Hussein. What’s more, he has no ethnic agenda like the Sunnis, the Shiites or the Kurds, as he is a Chaldean, a member of the most persecuted people in Iraq. Enough is enough.

Joe Akinmusuru, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

While it is unfair to single out these comments as being representative of anything other than their owners’ own bizarre opinions, they (and their recommendations) come from a certain “moral” climate that is spread far and wide. That even includes apparently well-regarded liberals, who playfully point to the opinions of anti-semitic reactionaries that fit within that general climate, and who rarely take the time to acknowledge the undoubted criminality of the former regime in Iraq. Still less, do they take the time to look further than their own egos to support democrats within Iraq emerging from the darkness of tyranny through a veil of blood and loss.