Recent events have re-stamped Ramsey Clark in the eyes of many as one of the liberal fools of our time. He has become deeply involved in the legal defense of Iraqi murderer Saddam Hussein and seems to be going out of his way to justify Saddam’s bloody past and brand his prosecutors, including the United States, as scurrilous at best.

Clark is the former attorney general of the United States and posted a questionable performance in that capacity. Not long ago, he wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times saying he considered his client, the Iraqi dictator, as “demonized,” fully entitled to the best defense possible.

Saddam is now on trial, and Clark is wielding his sword of justice in a way that is disgusting to anyone familiar with the background of the Butcher of Baghdad (and a lot of other places). Saddam is being tried in his own country with an emphasis on the use of legal people from that nation. Clark some time back, long before the current circus began, described the whole proceeding as illegitimate.

The ex-attorney general’s approach is difficult to understand. He is a noted antiwar activist who has compared President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. During legal proceedings in Baghdad, he declared that his client was guilty of atrocities but justified in committing them. Writes Christopher Hitchens in the Los Angeles Times:

“To be exact, in an interview with the BBC last week and another in the New York Times : Clark addressed the charge that in 1982, after an apparent attempt on his life in the Iraqi town of Dujail, Saddam ordered the torture and murder of about 150 men and boys from the area.

Adds Hitchens: “Far from denying that any such horror had occurred – and it is one of the smaller elements in the bill of indictment – Clark asserted it was justifiable. He now has twice said in public that given the war with the Shiite republic of Iran, Saddam was entitled to take stern measures. ‘He had this war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt,’ Clark told the BBC.”

(An aside: Were there mass arrests, beatings and executions after assassination attempts on American Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford? Or even after the slaying of President John F. Kennedy? But such was justifiable for Saddam Hussein?)

What we have, bottom line, is one of the best-known American antiwar spokesmen openly telling the world “that the Hussein system was justified all along in its aggression abroad (such as Iran and Kuwait) and its fascism at home.”

One can almost hear the old Red Skelton character who would notice weird goings-on and would respond with, “You may look right to some people, but you just don’t look right to me!”

There are millions of Americans who regard the strange and convoluted Ramsey Clark in that same way.