The Process is Bad

Iraq's Vice President Hashemi may very well be guilty of running or looking the other way while his staff ran Sunni Arab death squads. But the trial (without Hashemi, who remains in Turkey out of Iraqi jurisdiction) is not any form of justice that all sides can accept as fair:

It does appear that the Hashimi trial is more for show than an effort to determine true guilt or innocence.

Even if Hashemi is guilty as sin, the trial has to be open and fair enough for even Sunni Arabs to accept the result. Railroading even a guilty man will do no good.

Is Maliki determined to drive the Kurds and the Sunnis away from Baghdad?

I really wish we still had troops in Iraq to have more leverage to guide Iraq to a future of rule of law. A future without Saddam is surely better than one with Saddam, but it isn't real freedom, either. But I suspect many in the Obama administration would be more comfortable with an authoritarian Iraq rather than see "George Bush's" (as if it shouldn't be America's) freedom agenda score a victory there.