Vincent Browne criticises US and current and past policy in Iraq but denies anti-Americanism.
On Sunday evening last, George Bush said in Waco, Texas: "Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law - it's a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government. During Saddam Hussein's trial, the court received evidence from 130 witnesses. The man who once struck fear in the hearts of Iraqis had to listen to free Iraqis recount the acts of torture and murder that he ordered against their families and against them. Today, the victims of this regime have received a measure of the justice which many thought would never come . . . The United States is proud to stand with the Iraqi people."
Saddam Hussein deserved to be convicted for crimes against humanity. He perpetrated wicked crimes against his own people and the people of neighbouring countries.
He was indeed a tyrant, the rule of law meant nothing to him, and had no place in the Iraq he ruled.
But in his tyranny, in many of his crimes against humanity, and most especially in his most egregious crime, the war on Iran, he was aided and abetted by the United States. He was afforded intelligence and arms. He was egged on in that war with Iran, which cost more than one million lives.
The United States stalled resolutions at the UN Security Council condemning his use of chemical and biological weapons. The killings of 148 Shia men and boys from the village of Dujail in 1982, for which Saddam was sentenced to death, took place in the midst of that war. These crimes were known to the Americans at the time but they persisted in supporting him, arming him and egging him on.
The Americans also supported his campaign to wipe out the Iranian-backed Kurdish rebellion in the north, for which he is also on trial. And in 1991, following the Gulf War, George Bush senior ordered the US military to do nothing to prevent Hussein's forces from suppressing Shia and Kurdish uprisings.
Prior to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saddam Hussein sussed out American reaction to his plans to invade.
He was told by the then American ambassador in Baghdad that as far as the US was concerned his dispute with Kuwait was an inter-Arab matter; inferring it was of little concern to the US.
American protestations that it has "liberated" Iraq from Saddam veil the reality that the US propped up Saddam right at the time when he committed the worst of his crimes and aided and abetted the subjugation of Iraq for as long as it suited them.
George Bush speaks of Saddam's conviction being a "milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law". Saddam was removed from office not by the rule of law but by the rule of lawlessness - the American-led invasion was unlawful. The trial of Saddam had little to do with the rule of the law.
The Iraq Special Tribunal was established by an edict issued by Paul Bremer in 2003. The judges were selected by the Americans.
In January, the chief judge was pressured to step down by the Americans for not doing enough to prevent Saddam from using the witness stand to denounce the invasion and the court itself. The court and the judges that tried him were put in place not by any lawful authority, but by the Americans, and they have delivered a "justice" based not on law but on lawlessness.
George Bush speaks of this being a major achievement for "Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government".
What democracy, what constitutional government?
In the 3½ years since the invasion, according to a study conducted by the John Hopkins University, America has been guilty of the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis. And before that, the UN sanctions, on which the US insisted, killed an estimated one million Iraqis from 1991 to 2003.
Saddam's allies in the Baath party are due for a return to power.
Having written in a similar vein previously on US involvement in Iraq, Neil O'Dowd and others accused me of being anti-American. Even if that is so it would hardly be a telling riposte to the argument.
But what does anti-American mean? I am against Irish foreign policy. I am against the huge disparities here between the rich and the less rich. I oppose most of the Government policy to do with health, for instance. I am critical of the Government's penal policies, its response to the crime phenomenon, its lack of action on sex crime, and its immigration policies.
Does that make me anti-Irish? And if not, why does opposition to American foreign policy make one anti-American?