President Bush struck all the right notes, with memorable brevity, yesterday when he reported the capture of Saddam Hussein and declared that the former dictator “will face the justice he denied to millions.” He called his capture “crucial to the rise of a free Iraq” and delivered the message the Iraqi people have been longing to hear: “You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again. All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side. … In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived.”

No sooner had Saddam Hussein been dragged off to await his trial than we found ourselves thinking of Justice Robert Jackson. He was the chief American war crimes prosecutor after World War II, and what we kept thinking of was the fact that the reason he chose the courtroom he did at Nuremburg is that it had on the wall an iteration of the Ten Commandments. Were such a stunt tried today, no doubt cries of protest would go up from the crowd that fears above all else a mixing of religion and state.

So we expect that what will assert itself in the weeks and months ahead is the logic of the leading figure on the Iraqi National Council, Ahmad Chalabi, who vowed that the tyrant would be tried in public in an Iraqi civil court. Mr. Chalabi and several other members of the Council had an extraordinary confrontation with the defeated dictator, who had just awakened from a nap in the cell in which he is being held at Baghdad airport.

Saddam’s capture was anticipated in American law as far back as 1998, when Congress passed — by a vote of 360 to 38 in the House and unanimously in the Senate — the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed by President Clinton. The act made regime change American policy as a matter of law, and section six of the law was titled “War Crimes Tribunal For Iraq.” It said, “the Congress urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law.”

But the struggle for Iraq has taken some turns since then, not the least of which was the refusal of the United Nations to step up to its responsibilities in the fight, to enforce its own resolutions. There will be a few, like General Clark recently, calling for putting Saddam on trial before the international criminal court at the Hague. This would amount to subjecting him, in effect, to a trial by France. We would be surprised if any of the leading figures who have been seriously engaged with the question of Iraq will count the United Nations option as anything but a dead letter.

There may be some logic to the idea of a tribunal designed specially for trying the Iraq tyrants. It might include representatives of America, free Iraq, and other nations that were wronged by Saddam. These nations would include Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, and Israel, which Saddam attacked with scud missiles in 1991 and whose people were the targets of the suicide bombers whose families were paid by Saddam rewards of $10,000 or more. Compelling as these claims are it’s hard to see why these neighboring nations and America herself can’t wait until the Iraqis have finished trying the dictator for the crimes he committed in Iraq.

There is much that can be learned from a trial: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Which French and German businessmen or government officials helped Saddam in the effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction? What were relations with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the years of the Baathist tyranny? What role did Iraq have in the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and 2001? Which, if any, Britons and Americans were on Iraq’s payroll? What was the nature of Iraq’s relations with the Hashemite monarchy? Where is Captain Scott Speicher, the American pilot who was missing in action in the Gulf War?

There will be plenty of time now for the long interrogation. But a glimpse of what is to come was gained yesterday when several members of the Iraqi National Council were taken to the holding cell where Saddam is being kept at Baghdad airport. The purpose of the visit was apparently to give the council members the chance to confirm with their own eyes that the erstwhile Baathist bigshot was in coalition hands. But the visit provided them and through them the world a sense of what Hannah Arendt was describing when, with regard to Eichmann, she wrote of the banality of evil. Saddam was reduced to muttering obscenities — and in French no less — at the distinguished victors who stood before him. The victors kept their dignity and set a promising example for the world.