While the trial continues, former dictator Saddam Hussein is alleging his American captors are beating him, which is obviously being met with strong denial by the US. He also claims the beatings have been documented by at least two American teams, and some of the wounds took up to 8 months to heal.

My feeling about this can only be summed by the infamous words of Dirty Harry: "Well I'm all broken up about that man's rights".

I am sorry but even if it were true, I am having a difficult time trying to feel upset about this.

Now before you all jump on your moral high horse and incorrectly accuse me of being anti Geneva Convention, let's have a look at some of Saddam Hussein's contributions to humanity over the years. I have already posted these in a previous article but I feel we need reminding.

• The use of poison gas and other war crimes against Iran and the Iranian people during the Iran-Iraq war. 
• Hussein summarily executed thousands of Iranian prisoners of war as a matter of policy. 
• Dropped chemical weapons on Halabja, in which as many as 5,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed. 
• Crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of Iraq 's invasion and occupation of Kuwait . 
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq , including the destruction of over 3,000 villages. The Iraqi government's campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq has created approximately 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country. 
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Marsh Arabs and Shi'a Arabs in southern Iraq . Entire populations of villages have been forcibly expelled. 
• Government forces have burned their houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Thousands of civilians have been summarily executed.

And let us not forget the crime for which he is currently standing trial. Saddam and seven of his minions murdered and tortured more than 140 Shiite Muslims following an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982.

With harrowing tales like that of the first witness to testify last Thursday, it's hard to feel anything for such a monster.

Speaking from behind a curtain and with his voice disguised, the witness testified his grandmother, father and uncles had been arrested and tortured, and that all the male relatives had disappeared forever, implying they'd been killed.

I have a cousin stationed in Iraq as I write this, so I will not dare trivialise the situation over there. But even though Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction, and Bush certainly lied about the reasons for going into Iraq, capturing Hussein and his minions was probably the only good thing to come out of the invasion.