A record of genocidal tyranny forces lewis jones to rethink his opposition to the Iraq war
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Before it began, the war in Iraq seemed to me a thoroughly bad business, and subsequent events have confirmed me in that opinion: the dodgy dossier, the persecution of Dr Kelly, the public lies, the botched reconstruction, the torture at Abu Ghraib, the massacres, the proliferation of terror, the descent into civil war - an unmitigated disaster. And like many opponents of the war, I have taken a grim satisfaction as increasing numbers of its erstwhile supporters have come round to my view.
War is a contradictory business, though, and my gloomy complacency is severely dented by a French book entitled Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein). Edited by Chris Kutschera, and published by Oh! Editions, it is a collection of writings by historians, journalists
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| The Black Book recounts 25 years of blood-soaked tyranny, torture, rape, assassination, execution and genocide |
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and jurists offering an exhaustive account of the dictator's crimes against humanity.
At his trial in Baghdad, Saddam stands accused of 148 killings, but the Black Book puts the number closer to two million. During 25 years of blood-soaked tyranny, in a systematic programme of torture, rape, assassination, execution and genocide, he killed Iranians, Kuwaitis and Iraqis, among them Kurds, Jews, Marsh Arabs, Shiites and his fellow Sunnis.
Saddam was supported and supplied to the end by the governments of Russia and France - particularly by Jacques Chirac - and it is shameful if not altogether surprising that the publication of this important book has been ignored by Le Monde, Figaro and Liberation.
The Black Book's preface is by Bernard Kouchner, a co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres and former cabinet minister, who writes that "Saddam was one of history's worst tyrants and it was necessary and urgent to remove him." The war may not have been the ideal way to do so, but there was no other. 
FIRST POSTED JUNE 5, 2006
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