Mass Murderer Psychopath--The Other Side of the Story

Tim Graham at Newsbusters on Hussein--'I Don't Acknowledge This Court' by Jackie Spinner on A1:

...He is not presented as a mass-murdering, torturing dictator. It’s time for balancing perceptions.... Under a picture of Saddam, the headline reads: "Hussein: ‘I Don’t Acknowledge This Court’: Iraqi Defiant As Trial Opens and Then Recesses Until November." He’s just an "Iraqi"? We can’t even get a weaselly word like "Strongman"? (If I'd been in Baghdad, I'd have recommended they at least humiliate the tyrant with a Phil Spector courtroom Afro.)

Spinner reported: "Broadcast on live television, the proceedings enthralled Iraqis all over the country. Many cheered the sight of a man they view as a demon being brought to justice; those who maintain loyalty to Hussein as an assertive nationalist leader expressed dismay at his humiliation." That caricatures the reality of a dictatorship into mere perception: "the man they view as a demon"? Spinner later described him as merely "the former Iraqi leader."...