Quote:
Originally Posted by NBC
The only person that made decisions within the regime was Saddam. The RCC, national assembly, Iraq's judiciary, the civil service, none of these bodies had any real decision making authority. All the RCC ever did was sit around and try to guess what Saddam wanted to hear and what he was going to do. Solely based on his membership to that deliberative body would not necessarily mean that Aziz was complicit in the al-Anfal campaign or that he anything to do with Iraq's proscribed weapons programs.
When it became apparent that Aziz was going to be unable to get Iraq out from under UN sanctions, he fell out of favour with Saddam, even though he remained the Deputy Prime Minister until OEF.
Iraq under Saddam was like some sort of Babylonian wild west. Dissenters were killed ad nauseum. Very few people outside of Saddam and his two sons, had any authority to order the deaths of Iraqis, be they government officials, military personnel or civilians.
I'd bet that since Aziz was the face of the regime for years the Iraq Interim Government wants to make an example of him. Out of all of Saddam's inner coterie, Aziz was by far the most benign.
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Except that after Nuremberg it was no longer defensible to claim that you were following orders or direction from your government, especially if you were present when those illegal orders were created.
Aziz was a senior member of that government and probably in person when a lot of these discussions were had and the decisions were made.