TRANSLATION

Okay, last night we looked at Jennings and Burns' coverage of Saddam in the dock, but they were both actually in the room. Lets take a look at what we get from a reporter who watched on the monitor and then listened to the pool producer's and Burns' give their reactions. Here's the take from the Post (interestingly, this is the reporter that, this week, got slapped down, you'll recall, from the Marine, for taking the depressing, partial storyline he wanted, then getting out of town.)

And, oh look, what's the most telling feature about his appearance, the thing to notice first, the adjective that leaps immediately to mind? "Defiant Hussein Hears Charges in Court." (Burns noted to the assumbled reporters, by the way, that the lieutenants were "broken" men. I wish there were a transcript of his comments to the reporters because I'd love to see the exact words he used to describe Saddam and I didn't catch his entire presentation. Of course, if he weren't "defiant" we'd probably be hearing specualtion that he'd been mistreated in prison.)

In any event, look at the way the reporter begins the piece:

Former president Saddam Hussein was brought before an Iraqi judge on Thursday and was formally accused of ordering mass killings and other atrocities while he ruled this nation, but he refused to recognize the court and insisted he was still the leader of Iraq.

You've gotta be kidding me. Saddam referred to himself yesterday as the "president" of Iraq, so the judge slapped him down by saying "former." The whole thing had a touch of the surreal to it. Who thinks of Saddam as the "former president?" Who, when he was in power, thought of him as "president?" It is a title that confers a certain degree of constitutional legitimacy. You knew the Cold War was over when the press stopped referring to Gorbachev as "Chairman" (a party title) and began referring to him as "President" (a political title.) This is a subtle way of arguing he was a legitimate leader who we, qed, illegitimately overthrew; it accepts Saddam's view of the world.

But, then, the Post's reporter is leaning more to Jenning's view of what went down then Burns':

Hussein's presence before the court was intended to be a brief procedural formality, a chance for the investigating judge to inform the former president of his status as a criminal defendant and of his rights to legal counsel. But Hussein stretched the proceeding into a 26-minute event replete with feisty exchanges with the judge, who sat behind a wooden desk just a few feet away.

Hussein questioned the judge's credentials. He insisted he deserved immunity because he had been acting in an official capacity. And he challenged the legitimacy of the special tribunal set up to judge him and his associates, saying that "everyone knows this is theater by [President] Bush, the criminal, in an attempt to win the election."

See? It's one thing to be "defiant." Most people hope that in captivity they could muster the stuff to be "defiant" towards their captors. But to actually go past that and muster the stuff to be "feisty," to show them up, to win exchanges with them, well, that really takes a pair, doesn't it? Yup, the old man's still got a few tricks up his sleeves.

If he was a hero in the Arab world because he was the leader who successfully defied the United States then this coverage is succeeding in keeping the myth of Saddam alive. Even in defeat, he is the victor. We think we're really showing them something because we're showing off what a real trial is, what true justice is, that even evil men who've committed evil deeds can receive a fair trial and true justice? We're giving him a platform with which to beat us again. And he's using it. Every time these reporters say he's "still defiant" and he gets to say he's "still the president of Iraq" he's beating us. And his stable of attorneys plan to put the war itself on trial. That's their defense. That he was and is the legitimate president of Iraq, that the invasion of Iraq was illegitimate, and therefore the trial is illegitimate. We've got a damn tiger by the tail here.

It took Hussein himself, apparently, only minutes to figure this out:

Although Hussein, 67, looked nervous and confused as he entered, his eyes darting warily at the judge and two dozen spectators in the room, his mood quickly shifted to one of exasperation and contempt, then to outright defiance and anger. After a few hesitant minutes at the outset, he peppered the judge with skeptical questions and recalcitrant answers. His sullen demeanor quickly gave way to finger-wagging, animated hand gestures, hectoring comments and contemplative stroking of his salt-and-pepper beard.

I'm without a doubt not suggesting this shouldn't go forward. I think that, like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission these trials are a necessary step before this society can heal and go forward. And I think there will be benefit from the process being observed. I'm simply suggesting that we are naive if we think that the mere observation of formal court proceedings will have some kind of radical impact on the rest of the Middle East, and we are also naive if we believe that the noxious trial strategy Hussein's legal team is now suggesting they will pursue will not have an effect as well. Seeing the behavior of this regime laid out for the world may, indeed, finally force the world -- including, finally, the Europeans -- to face in the cold light of day what it was they were defending. But people of an awfully good track record for ignoring what they want to when they want to. The legitimacy of the war will also be put on trial. And this could get very ugly.

Update: A legal analyst on Fox (I didn't catch his name) makes a point I didn't hear in all the yaking yesterday. The Iraqis (and we, if we're advising them) brought this all on ourselves. If we'd waited until there were lawyers present, the judges would have addressed the lawyers, the defendants would have been relegated to spectators, and none of this would have happened.

Meanwhile, on The Today Show, John Burns. He argues that you could tell why Saddam was the dictator and the other 11 weren't: Saddam came in nervous, but quickly figured out it was time to do his "I'm President of Iraq thing" as Burns calls it. The others are insistent on getting legal council, scared to the point of having tears in their eyes when informed they face the death penalty: only Saddam, says Burns, seems unaware that the gig is up. (Or is he unwilling to admit it? Burns says he feels he needs a course in paranoid psychology to understand the hold Saddam has on Iraqis but he seems to know which cords to play with them. It's interesting, isn't it, that although so many news outlets use the quote that this is "theater," none of them think to apply that to Saddam's performance.

Isn't it possible that Saddam is neither defiant, nor delusional, but rather performative?)

Update: John Burns Unplugged

The article last night was Burns writing with another reporter, a straight up news report, quick and dirty. This morning's lead article in the paper (downplayed on the web site) is his solo effort. While the headline, of course, also plays up his "defiance" the article itself is quite different from his younger colleague at the Post.

A defiant but visibly shrunken Saddam Hussein dominated the opening of court proceedings on Thursday against 12 of the highest-ranking officials of Iraq's ousted dictatorship, declaring himself Iraq's lawful president and questioning the legitimacy of the Iraqi court.

Burns was a little less impressed with his appearance than either the Post reporter or Jennings.

The 67-year-old former ruler seemed 15 to 20 pounds lighter than when he last appeared, after his capture by American troops in an underground bunker near Tikrit last Dec. 13. He began nervously, like a hunted man in alien terrain. His eyes swiveled back and forth, his voice was weak, and his fingers stroked his beard and touched his bushy eyebrows. But halfway into his 26-minute appearance he appeared to find his pitch, and he ended with a string of finger-wagging admonishments for the court's temerity in putting him on trial.

Burns isn't buying the impression that Saddam got the better of the judge, either.

Several times, Mr. Hussein interrupted as the judge outlined his legal rights and Mr. Hussein sought to resume a political diatribe. Several times, the judge cut him off.

He continued:

From the moment that clanking chains announced Mr. Hussein's arrival outside the courtroom, the proceedings were a tableau of Iraq's dramas under Mr. Hussein's repressive rule and the American invasion that ended it 15 months ago. If Mr. Hussein cast himself as the usurped champion of Iraq's nationhood, falsely accused of heinous crimes against his people, he met his match in the judge, who admonished him to restrain his occasionally vitriolic language and respect the court's authority. (My emph.)

Comments

[Michael B]

An informative contrast. Jennings, as noted in an earlier post with his premeditated political agenda, was attempting to establish a metanarrative with a kind of trial balloon we've seen so many times in the past. While Burns, refreshingly, is reporting on the real-world situation, i.e., he's doing some actual reportage. Not that Jennings and others have given up attempting ploys, gambits and metanarratives for domestic political effect.

I've liked this Martha Gellhorn quote since seeing it at the "Rainy Day" blog not so long ago: "Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader." It's a beautiful quote that captures the essence of reporting at its very best, and that further represents a contrast with what Jennings, et al. typically, even habitually, offer.

[IceCold]

Burns is a treasure. His "peeling back the onion" piece on interviewing the 3 Iraqis on the street in Adhamiya stands as the classic rebuke and debunking of countless thousands of man-on-the-street quotes in hundreds of lazy and slanted articles since the liberation. But Burns' quality is ultimately more discouraging than encouraging, since it underlines the nearly uniform mediocrity (or worse) in the press corps in Iraq.