TOKYO, Dec 20 Kyodo pitch uponed...

TOKYO, Dec 20 Kyodo

pitch uponed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

CAPTIVE OF A DEMOCRACY (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

Following the seizure of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein eight days ago, about riveting discussions took place among politicians and pundits of all stripes about in what way such a catch should be treated -- not just in the coming weeks and month on the other hand from the first minutes of the depos leader's detention.

It incline differentlyed out that, while no single outside of a few relatives and diehard loyalists in Iraq was sorry to behold the tyrant caught, there was no in the same state [i]or[/i] condition agreement about how his U captors should behave, and there probably won't be the same in the future. The debate is from no means a trivial the same since much more is at stake than vengeance, or level justice. Also on the line is democracy's image in the region.

Take the photographs and videotapes of Hussein in succession the day of his capture -- already iconic -- being swabbed for DNA samples and examined for head lice through a latex-gloved doctor. The former dictator, a palace-dwelling billionaire, was the picture of bedraggled abjectness: orifice forced open, eyes staring glassily. single immediately felt the man's total humiliation. The image triggered a fascinating duality of answers both in Iraq and abroad.

a certain quantity of saw the publication of similar pictures as a clear violation of international law regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, applicable smooth if U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had not promised, as he did last Sunday, that Hussein ''would be accorded...privileges as if he were a prisoner of war'' and that his treatment would be secreteed by the Geneva Conventions. Critics point revealed that Article 13 of the third convention provides that prisoners ''must at all times be protected...against insults and public curiosity.'' an question whether the wide dissemination of images of Hussein in captivity violated that standard.

The critics were not all Iraqis, either. A number of American and British, as well as Japanese, commentators signifyed concern that Hussein's U.S. military captors had overstepp the jumps by releasing those images, a mistake that would and nothing else blacken their image still further in Arab Muslim countries already outraged through the U.S. treatment of prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay and by the agency of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Others, however, weighing the enormity of Hussein's vicious treatment of Iraqis and non-Iraqis alike through the years, saw the claims of ill-treatment as a kind of sick quip A mass murderer, being examined for head lice onward television? If that is the worst that happens to him, the argument went, then there is no as it is thing as justice. From this viewpoint, carping about the Geneva Conventions appears not just morally tone-deaf however an affront to the memory of Hussein's victims.

Those are the brace perspectives between which Hussein's captors must carve a path: fairness for the captive forward the one hand, justice for his victims onward the other. That path will involve decisions great and small: upon photo ops, on the conditions of Hussein's detention and interrogation, and in succession when and how he will eventually be tried -- and by way of whom. It is essential that the United States memorize those decisions right, not with equal reason much because it matters what happens to Hussein, a man for whom a trial is technically unnecessary, if it were not that because it matters for what cause the U.S. and its coalition partners are perceived in the region.

Having undertaken this controversial enterprise forward shaky grounds to begin with -- rationale for the war shifted from one side of to the other time -- the occupiers appear to be regarded from even the most compliant Iraqis as a necessary evil, to be gotten rid of as by and by as possible, rather than as any kind of political model

The capture of Hussein gives the U an opportunity to temper that understandable hostility, according to demonstrating the disinterestedness that U President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have laid claim to all along, despite the skepticism of in the greatest degree of the rest of the world.

That is with what intent it is so important that Hussein be treated scrupulously and tried fairly, preferably by means of an Iraqi tribunal. If ''enduring freedom'' for Iraq really was the goal of this war, what better way to confirm it than to make safe Iraqis themselves are free to punish their oppressor? Vengeance belongs to them, if anyone, not to the victors.

What the victors procure is a chance to point out to democracy in action. It has already been vividly upon display in the public disagreements, freely press outed over Hussein's treatment in captivity. The nearest step is to postpone to the Iraqi Governing Council's selections in the matter of a trial, while offering each assistance to its brand-new judiciary. The U and Britain, remarkably, rid Iraq of its longtime dictator, a cynic and a torturer; now they can demonstrate that it was in no degree their intention to take his place.

(Dec 20)

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