New documentary indicts US as co-defendant with Saddam

What if Saddam Hussein were to have a genuinely fair trial? That is the central question of a hard-hitting documentary to be aired on French television Tuesday. Michel Despratx of France's Canal Plus television teamed with independent Canadian filmmaker Barry Lando to produce "The Trial of Saddam Hussein, the Trial You'll Never See." The 43-minute film begins with frank and graphic highlights of Saddam's brutal reign. But it soon delves into a history of collusion going back to the cataclysmic Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when Washington, fully aware that Saddam was using mustard and nerve gas against Iranian civilians, calculated that it was better to keep backing him as the lesser of two evils. "There are your options. Neither one palatable," says retired Air Force Captain Rick Fontana in the film. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is shown in a clip from Iraqi television shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 when he was President Ronald Reagan's special representative for the Middle East. [more ]