In a blog post over at NBC News, reporter Richard Engel observes that details on why Saddam is being sentenced to death are still unclear. (The reasons are obvious, of course, and the verdict a foregone conclusion for years, but the court released little by way of supporting argumentation.) Turns out, the verdict hasn’t been fully written and is expected to be completed Thursday. Money paragraph:
The full verdict, a document of several hundred pages, explaining how and why today’s judgment was reached was not released. U.S. officials said it should be ready by Thursday. So why issue the verdict today? U.S. court advisors told reporters today it was delayed mainly for technical reasons. All insist the verdict was not politically timed and that it was an Iraqi decision; there is no reason to doubt their word.
Huh. The verdict will be completed two days after the American midterms, but the decision is made public two days before. I’ll bet the Bush Administration didn’t plan for that to come out.
