There is some enthusiasm for an international trial along the lines of Nuremberg or the UN tribunal system presently in use against Milosevic. The flaws with these options have almost everything to do with power.
Or, to put it more precisely, with the way the crimes of the accused are used by the *victors* to score public relations points and obscure complicity.
Given the known limitations of human behavior - people in or allied to power do not willingly expose themselves to criticism, ridicule or arrest - it is unreasonable to expect any US officials past or present to share space on the defendant stand with Hussein.
So, regardless of the final form any tribunal or court situation takes, we are left with a very imperfect instrument for *justice.*
In the end, Hussein's many crimes will be listed, lifted out of history's architecture and stated as if he were a super villian or demi-god, flying from town to town murdering, torturing, gassing in sinister solitude.
The system which he built, his many co-conspirators - most domestic to Iraq, others sitting in lovely leather chairs in Washington DC or Norfolk or New York or Paris, etc - all this and things I don't know about will be glossed over or forgotten. We, both anti and pro war, will focus on the dreadful personality and neglect to look too much deeper.
He will die and we'll say he deserved it and that will be the end of one wasted and terrible life which should have been lived differently - or not at all. Meanwhile, the greater monster, not limited to single personalities but distributed and multithreaded, will continue its work.
A mock trial, like Yoshie mentioned, would be a good thing if handled soberly, free of leftie boilerplate tectonics and with as full a command of the facts as possible.
Even so, it must be admitted that the chances are good
such an event would mostly be a *family* soiree.
DRM