The news reported yesterday by BBC, Agence France-Presse, and the Associated Press that Ramsey Clark has joined the team of lawyers defending Saddam Hussein is a fitting post script to the story of anti-war activism in America. Many of those who marched and spoke out in opposition to the Iraq war acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator but opposed using American military action to remove him. That is a position we disagreed with, but it is more tenable than the other position, which was held by at least some significant figures within the groups organizing the anti-war effort. They actually sided with Saddam.

Pointing that out while the protests were at their peak could get a conservative accused of McCarthyism or paranoia. But what else can be made of the news that Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general in the Johnson administration, has joined the legal team defending Saddam Hussein in his trial for war crimes? Mr. Clark and his International Action Center have been at the same time going around accusing President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney of war crimes.

This is the illogic that animated a significant segment of the anti-war leader ship. They think America’s elected leaders are guilty of war crimes, but that Saddam Hussein – the dictator who invaded Kuwait, gassed the Kurds, massacred the Iraqi Shiites, and dealt with his political opponents by feeding them into wood-chippers and raping their wives – is innocent.

It is not as if Mr. Clark is a public defender charged with making sure that even a guilty client has the best defense legally available. He is under no obligation to accept Saddam as a client. Saddam has plenty of apparently capable lawyers already. Yet, if the press reports are accurate – Mr. Clark didn’t respond to our request for an interview – Mr. Clark has taken on the task willingly. We’d hope it will give pause to those who think of marching alongside Mr. Clark in the next “peace” rally. Mr. Clark and anyone else who proclaims the innocence of Saddam Hussein have not a scintilla of credibility when it comes to claiming to be for peace.