Interview with Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch Lawyer

July 2nd, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Matt Martin

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and your job here at Human Rights Watch.
REED BRODY: My name is Reed Brody. I am a lawyer with Human Rights Watch.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. -- Can you speak to -- generally, Ken Roth’s article that he wrote about Human Rights’s perspective -- Human Rights Watch’s perspective on Iraq as a humanitarian intervention.
BRODY: Yeah -- There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein is one of the great human rights abusers of our time. And Human Rights Watch has been consistently trying to get the world interested in the crimes of Saddam Hussein, but for a long time nobody was listening. In 19 -- What was it? -- 1989, 1990? ... --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- Okay. Hold on a second -- Just start from the top...
BRODY: Okay. There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein is one of the great human rights criminals of our time. Human Rights Watch has been documenting and trying to call attention to Saddam Hussein’s crimes for many years but for a long time no one was interested. In the late eighties, when Saddam Hussein committed genocide against the Kurds -- when he used poison gas to lay waste to entire Kurdish villages -- when he trucked tens of thousands of Kurdish men into the desert and just killed them -- The United States refused to condemn those crimes. I was in Geneva at the time working on the -- working at the United -- working – Sorry. Okay --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, it’s alright. Just start at "Working in Geneva" --
BRODY: I was working in Geneva at the time trying to get the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to criticize Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against his -- against the Kurdish population. The United States refused to co-sponsor a simple resolution criticizing Saddam Hussein for these executions, for the use of poison gas, for Halabja, the murder of the Kurds. It was at the time when the United States was actually supporting Saddam Hussein in its war against Iran -- when it was providing intelligence information to Saddam Hussein. So for the longest time the United States and many other countries were not interested in Saddam Hussein’s crimes. We tried to get any country to bring a case of genocide against Iraq after the Anfal campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed. Nobody would do it.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And let’s go back and go through the legal process of what would happen -- A lot of people only see armed intervention as the only solution for punishment. But what are some other options?
BRODY: What we’ve been trying for many years -- let’s see, let’s go back -- We had been trying for many years --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- I’m sorry. When you say "we," Can you say --
BRODY: -- Human Rights Watch?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah.
BRODY: Okay. Human Rights Watch was trying for many years to get a country either to bring a genocide case against Iraq or to indict Saddam Hussein. Now, obviously a legal paper -- a legal indictment doesn’t itself bring down a dictator -- doesn’t itself stop crimes. But as we’ve seen as with Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor in Liberia, the fact of inditing someone for genocide or war crimes delegitimizes them, and begins to create a dynamic that undermines their rule. And -- So we were trying for the longest time to get the rest of the world to focus in a legal way on Saddam Hussein’s crimes. And we were not successful.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And what are some of the attributes that you think of why the governments were so resistant to that push? ...
BRODY: Well, it wasn’t really until the invasion of Kuwait that the balance of power and the way Saddam was looked at really shifted. And until that point, the United States was supporting Saddam Hussein in different ways -- [Interruption]
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Go ahead.
BRODY: Before Saddam Hussein -- let’s see -- It wasn’t until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, really, that things changed and people started to discover all these crimes that he’d committed before. And when Saddam Hussein was committing genocide against the Kurds, when he was using poison gas -- he was actually being supported by the United States, by France, with -- in this case with the United States, you know, intelligence information, credits and things like that. And of course, France was providing armaments to Saddam Hussein. So they didn’t see the interest in criticizing or condemning Saddam Hussein for his crimes.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay -- I think in Ken Roth’s paper he lists some reasons such as -- Let’s see, commercial interests, they didn’t want to jeopardize future "commercial deals," "squander the influence in the Middle East," "invite terrorist retaliation," and "costs too much money." --
BRODY: -- Yeah --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- Can you just talk about -- elaborate on some of those --
BRODY: Well, you know it’s -- Generally countries don’t like to upset the status quo by condemning the leaders of another country. And in the case of US and Iraq, prior to the invasion of Kuwait -- You had economic interests. Saddam Hussein was also seen as a stable leader in an unstable region -- a lay secular leader in a region with a lot of fundamentalism. There were long-term, commercial interests -- oil interests. And so the United States kind of played it safe and stayed on the side of Saddam Hussein.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And -- Let’s go through kind of a hypothetical of if Saddam was indicted for this genocide -- And then what? Does he have to leave the country until we can get him? Or what?
BRODY: Well the indictment of a leader for genocide or for crimes against humanity by a foreign court doesn’t automatically remove him from power. But we’ve seen that it does begin the process of undermining their rule. Once Slobodan Milosevic was an indicted war criminal, you know, his days were numbered. Once Charles Taylor of Liberia was an indited war criminal -- you know, it invites all kinds of tactics from the international community. They don’t deal with him. You start to treat him as somebody who shouldn’t be in power. He can’t travel. His assets start to get frozen. And it in many ways it’s the beginning of the end. And it would have been preferable to try those kinds of delegitimizing tactics.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk to the legality of this so-called "regime change" that the United States was approaching and some of these compare -- contrast that with these --
BRODY: --Yeah -- Let’s just say that Human Rights Watch, as Ken made clear in that article, we don’t get in to the legality of regime -- or we don’t get into --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- It’s beyond your mandate.
BRODY: Yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, that’s fine. I have plenty of other questions.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Now, a lot of people -- they give the "better-late-than-never" argument. Can you address that a little bit?
BRODY: Alright, sure. You know, the United States went in -- Or -- One of the justifications that the Bush administration gave for the invasion of Iraq was Saddam’s crimes. And you know, let’s be clear, I mean, Saddam is a major-league, human rights criminal. But the real -- you know, the real genocides, the real massive crimes that he had committed were -- had been committed ten years before -- In the late eighties, the genocide against the Kurds -- the repression against the Marsh Arabs in the south -- the quelling of the Shia uprising. These things had happened ten years before invasion. Now, there’s no doubt that getting rid of Saddam Hussein could be a benefit for the Iraqi people -- That Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, that he was using torture. But the human rights -- The emergency justification for an invasion would have had -- would have been -- [Interruption].
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Let’s take that just from the top because there’s a lot of pertinent points --
BRODY: Okay, sorry. What were we talking about?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: We were talking about the "better-late-than-never" argument --
BRODY: Okay, We’ll start again. One of the justifications that was given for the invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s human rights crimes. Let’s be clear, Saddam Hussein is one of the all-time human rights criminals. But the fact is that the worst crimes that he had committed, the genocide against the Kurds the repression against the Shia rebellion, the draining of the marshes to kill the Marsh Arabs in the south had been done ten years before the US invasion. So the humanitarian intervention justification might have flown in the late eighties or the early nineties, but not in -- not ten years later.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you kind of elaborate on that -- The kind of threshold aspects of the distinction that you make of stopping imminent or ongoing --
BRODY: Yeah. -- If you’re going to upset the rules of international law, and go in -- invade a country without United Nations authorization in apparent violation of the traditional rules because you say, ‘There’s a humanitarian emergency. We’ve got to get in there.’ Then you do it when the humanitarian emergency is real. You don’t do it because a country is engaged in a lot of torture -- as bad -- as condemnable as that may be. You do it when you’re actually going in to save tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And speak to -- Was there any evidence or was there anyone even claiming that that was happening -- genocide?
BRODY: There was -- At the time of the US invasion, Saddam was still a brutal leader. There was still torture being used against political opponents. There was still a total lack of political freedom. But nobody was alleging -- credibly -- that there was killing on a mass scale or that there was any kind of imminent danger of mass killings or of genocide.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And one thing that I -- Can you speak to --You know, a lot of this stuff that I’m hearing right now is the first time I’m hearing it. Partly because a lot of this has been framed by the politicians, and the media being complicit in that. So can you speak to that phenomena of when politicians are in a way "cherry-picking" this information?
BRODY: Right. Well, I mean it’s fascinating to see that -- It’s fascinating to see, for instance, that the destruction of Halabja -- which was the paradigmatic destruction of a village through chemical weapons -- the photos, the women and the children frozen there from the chemical weapons -- that happened ten years ago. You saw a lot more of those photos, and there was a lot more discussion of Halabja ten years later on the eve of -- you know, during this buildup to the invasion of Iraq. So the information that was in the public domain but didn’t really get a lot of attention at the time it was happening -- when something could have been done about that -- All of a sudden, was in the public domain, on the front pages, ten years later as part of the drumbeat to war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And -- What expertise do politicians have in human rights?
BRODY: Well, I think that all politicians should have expertise in human rights. I think that should be a lot of what politics are about -- is defending human dignity. But the fact is that what we see here is just a lot of cherry-picking. You see, "Well, hey. This guy had rape rooms. This guy did torture. This guy --" you know, Bush started talking about -- I could be wrong here, but -- I’ll say "American leaders" -- You know, American leaders --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. So just start from the top.
RB. I mean, look -- Politicians should be experts in human rights because that should be what politics is about -- protecting human dignity, protecting human life. But what we saw here was really a lot of cherry-picking. US leaders talking for the first time about chemical weapons and Halabja -- not when it happened -- but as justification for military action ten years later.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: There’s distinctions that Ken makes in his article about the "dirty hands" argument -- that there was a lot of complicity at the time and it -- and some people see that as another form of cherry-picking -- Of saying, "Yeah, we did this, but we were also supporting them."
BRODY: I mean, he kind of -- if I recall his article ... if I recall, he takes two arguments about why -- He kind of says, ... ‘Let’s put ... to the side these two arguments why the United States should not act.’ One is that it didn’t have clean hands. And two is that we don’t act everywhere. And that’s not -- those are not good arguments not to intervene. So, I mean, he’s kind of -- they’re kind of footnotes, as it were. But --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, can you speak maybe in general terms -- It seems like during the buildup to the war, the humanitarian cause was almost a footnote. And then as it was starting, the whole campaign was about "Iraqi liberation" and "freedom" and the human rights cause. And then even to this day, it is the primary justification --
BRODY: -- Right --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- So there’s a clear switch.
BRODY: Yeah. Well, of course, I mean -- There were a number of justifications that were presented for the war in Iraq. There were weapons of mass destruction. There were the ties with Al Qaeda. And there were human rights. And as the other arguments lose credibility with each passing day -- as we don’t find weapons of mass destruction, as the links with Al Qaeda prove to be tenuous at best -- They’re left with the human rights argument. And so the human rights argument assumes even greater importance because it’s the only remaining argument.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. -- Ken mentions in his article about one of the reasons why they didn’t -- Human Rights [Watch] didn’t take a position was that it was kind of a footnote.
BRODY: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And after the war it became a primary justification that you felt compelled to speak out. So can you --
BRODY: Yeah. I mean -- As an organization, Human Rights Watch doesn’t take a position normally on war and intervention. We believe that our best role -- the best thing we can do to help protect lives and save civilians is by monitoring the conduct of troops in a war. And, so we don’t -- We feel that our expertise and our value added comes in monitoring the conduct of intervention. The only times that we do support armed intervention is when it’s necessary to stop a genocide or a similar level of atrocities -- The kind of thing that was happening in Rwanda in the 1980s -- The kind of thing that may be happening today in the Sudan. We felt that there may have been that justification -- in fact, there was that justification in the late eighties when Saddam Hussein was committing genocide against his own people -- but that that justification did not exist at the time of the US intervention, and had not existed for quite some time.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you give a -- Sort of a historical perspective of how human rights are used as a political ploy by politicians to gain support for military interventions. It seems like this probably isn’t the first time that this has happened -- and talk about that phenomena.
BRODY: Sure. I mean, you know -- Unfortunately, we’re very used to seeing our work held up to support armed intervention when it otherwise may not be justified. And of course, we are always producing information on human rights abuses, on atrocities, and we’re calling on the international community to do something. That’s why we do our work. We are not here to just document torture and killings. We’re here to stop torture and killings. But what happens is that we put out all this information -- whether it be on Turkey or Sudan or Columbia or Indonesia -- and what we find that it gets used very often when it’s in the interests of politicians to point the finger. Now, we’re delighted that people take our information and use it. But it needs to be used appropriately. It needs to be used at the right time, and it needs to be used for the right reasons.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And -- Ken lays out four guidelines [for intervention], in a way, to --
BRODY: I don’t remember those.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, one was that ‘it should be the last option’ --
BRODY: Yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- It should be ‘guided by primarily humanitarian purpose’, that you should ‘respect international human rights and humanitarian law’ -- actually there’s five -- ‘reasonably likely to do more harm than good’ and then --
BRODY: Yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- ‘you prefer the endorsement of the UN.’
BRODY: Okay. I mean, even as we -- I mean, this question of humanitarian intervention is an important one. I mean, what do we do in a situation like Rwanda where there is a genocide? There is a need for the international community to intervene to stop mass killings. We can’t sit back when genocide or tens of thousands of people are being killed. But how do we do that? How do we do that particularly if -- let me -- Should I go back from the top?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah, just go ahead --
BRODY: Okay.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- because I know that there’s -- I threw in a lot of stuff --
BRODY: No, no, no, no, but that’s okay. -- One of the critical questions in the world today is – ‘What is the international community supposed to do in the face of imminent or actual genocide -- or similar level of mass killings?’ And I think most of us would agree that morally we have a duty, if we can, to save lives -- tens of thousands of lives. The question is -- 'How?’ Obviously, the first test is whether or not the international community as a whole approves of that intervention. That doesn’t mean that we should allow ourselves to be blocked by a veto on the Security Council. So you know, if China or Russia or -- raises its hand, and says ‘We don’t want you to go in and save lives. And stop the genocide in Rwanda.’ We need to think of how to do, how to -- Anyway -- That doesn’t mean that if one country on the Security Council -- say China or Russia raises its hand to veto it -- that the international community should be prevented from stopping a genocide. But certainly that is the first test -- Is the United Nations behind this? And that is always the better course of action. Second, you need to think whether you’re going to do more harm than good. War -- People always die in war. So if you’re going in to save five thousand lives but the war is going to cost ten thousand lives -- or the war is going to upset the international status quo -- or the war is going to destabilize a region -- You’ve got to think about that. So the second test is -- ‘Can you actually save more lives than you’re going to lose?’ The third, I would say is ‘Good intentions.’ I mean, is really the purpose here to save lives or is it to invade and occupy and take over the country? And I think the world sees that kind of thing for what it is. I mean, if you’re actually going in to save lives, to set up a democracy, and then you’re going to leave -- then I think that’s one thing. If you’re going in to occupy the country, to install rulers, to take over the country’s economy, and to decide the country’s foreign policy -- I think it has to be looked at in a different way. -- What were the other ones?

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: There was ‘respect international human rights and humanitarian law’, and ‘it’s the last option.’
BRODY: Right. Another test is, of course, is how you pursue the war. Just war theory says that not only should the war be just, but the way you fight the war should be just. So that if you’re going in for humanitarian grounds, you don’t use methods that are designed to kill civilians or designed to do any more than the least possible damage. I mean, you go in a way that is respectful to the extent possible of human rights, and of the Geneva Conventions. And finally I think the most important criteria is that is should be the last resort. War is always -- An intervention is always going to lead to destruction and death. And it’s always important to first try everything else -- whether it be targeted sanctions against the leaders, whether it be delegitimization, whether it be diplomatic pressure, whether it be isolation -- Whatever it is, you’ve got to try every single thing before you really go in and break all the eggs.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And applying some of these options – you know, just from explaining these -- How did those play out in Iraq from your perspective?
BRODY: Well, if we look at Iraq we see, first of all, not only was it not endorsed by the United Nations, but there was a majority on the Security Council against the intervention. So it wasn’t a question of a simple veto. Second -- Well, let me think about these – whether -- I mean, it’s hard to say whether it does more harm. I mean it -- Let me at least look at the -- give you the ones that are clear rather than look at each one. --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- just from whatever comes to mind --
BRODY: Yeah. Look. When we look at these -- Okay. First of all, not only was this intervention not done with the authorization of the United Nations, it was done in clear opposition to what a majority of the international community felt. And in fact, it seems like a majority of members of the Security Council were opposed to it -- not just one veto-wielding country. But the US could not get even a simple majority on the Security Council. Second, it’s clear that this was not done as a last resort. There was -- There were weapons inspectors in at the time. There was a lot of road yet to go down before this intervention would have been the only way to deal with the problems that were raised.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And I think Ken mentioned cluster munitions and cluster bombs and --
BRODY: Yeah. I mean, the United States waged -- Let’s be clear, the United States military went to great lengths to minimize civilian damages -- in its targeting decisions -- in the methods it employed. But still, our research shows that hundreds of lives -- hundreds of civilian lives -- could have been saved had the United States not used cluster munitions in urban areas. And had it not attempted to go after high-value targets without advance preparation. Of fifty strikes against so-called, high-value targets -- people like Saddam and others -- zero reached their mark and many of them resulted in civilian casualties.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And do you ever -- I know there’s a lot of controversy over depleted uranium -- Do you have any -- ?
BRODY: Yeah, I’m not, I don’t – I do. But I don’t know enough about depleted uranium --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, that’s fine -- One thing that I noticed is that when I look at say, State Department reports on the human rights records -- a lot of their footnotes and sources go right back to the non-governmental organization community and very little primary first-hand source material on human rights. So can you speak to your evaluation of that?
BRODY: Well, I mean, actually that’s getting better. --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry, what is --
BRODY: Yeah -- The US each year prepares a -- what they call the State Department Country Reports on Human Rights, which are the human rights records in each country in the world. And they are very much reliant on information provided by national as well as international non-governmental organizations. More and more the State Department -- where it’s possible for it to do so -- is actually going out in the field and collecting its own information. We’ve encouraged the State Department, and in most embassies there is a person who’s tasked with collecting information on the human rights situation. And of course, it’s more perhaps authoritative when it -- the State Department speaks in its own voice.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And one thing that I’ve seen that it seems a blurring of the lines in a way -- Ken puts a number -- a round number -- around 250,000 – a quarter of a million Iraqis. And then I hear politicians -- like maybe Joseph Lieberman or others -- who are saying a million. Or then, then I hear a million to millions of people killed. So -- I know it’s probably impossible to put a clear number, but what are your thoughts on -- Is it being exaggerated? Or where are they getting that information from?
BRODY: You know, Human rights reporting in, under -- It’s very difficult to state precisely how many Iraqis died under Saddam Hussein, because it was such a closed society. Because we – there’s so much that we don’t know. We and other groups have talked about 250,000 -- 300,000. The number could be higher because we know a lot more. For instance, about the genocide against the Kurds in the north than we do about what happened with the Shia and the Marsh Arabs in the south. Information is coming to light each day. But there is -- There does seem to be kind of a number inflation by proponents or those who justify the war -- who start talking about millions. There may well be many more than 300,000, but we don’t have that information yet.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. So it’s unsubstantiated in a way.
BRODY: Yeah.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Another thing is when I looked into -- After the war, they were uncovering mass graves. And from what my interpretation or recollection is that from 1967 there were this many people missing -- and that number may have been 300,000. So then that number became, ‘We found 300,000 people in mass graves.’
BRODY: Yeah. Yeah --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: It seemed to be a blurring of that like, ‘Oh, we just found 300,000 people buried in the ground.’ And I’ve talked to people who’ve said that that’s what happened. So is that a misperception? Or is that a blurring --
BRODY: Yeah -- We don’t know -- There’s no way that we know how many people have been found in the mass graves. One of the problems is that in the immediate aftermath of the war, the mass graves were not properly guarded. I mean, obviously Iraqis family members were very anxious to find any remains of their loved ones. And so we found that bulldozers were being used in mass graves -- which upset, actually, the evidence and made it even -- made it much more difficult to determine with any accuracy the number of people who were buried there. We have no idea how many people have been found in mass graves.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And have you looked at some of these dossiers that are coming out of the government recapping a lot of these human rights violations?
BRODY: I haven’t, I haven’t -- Maybe somebody else here has seen them, but I have not.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Cause I was just wondering if you saw any -- .Now, during the buildup to the war how many times were either -- Ken Roth asked by the television news media or print news media to comment on human rights.
BRODY: In the immediate buildup to the war, we were being asked about human rights in Iraq so much more than we had been asked in the ten years before. Perhaps, only in the immediate run-up to the previous Gulf War had we been asked so much about human rights in Iraq. Those of us who have been working on this issue for fifteen years, it was somewhat jolting to see all of a sudden people -- the media, the news -- are interested in what we have to say about human rights in Iraq.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. I know that Ken eliminates some of the -- One of the two -- One of which ‘The Dirty Hands’ -- The other one was that ‘There’s more worse crimes elsewhere, so we should have focused on those instead of this.’ Now, I realize that’s part of the argument, but I want to just -- Can you give an overview -- Some people think that Iraq was the most -- the worst human rights violations currently going on in the world. Can you give me an overview -- a picture of what else is going on?
BRODY: Sure. I mean... There are many human rights disasters in the world. Iraq was one of them certainly in the eighties, and early nineties. It continued to be a very bad human rights situation. But let’s also look at the Sudan, for instance, where you have in the in a long running civil war we have millions of people who have died. You know, where the government for a long, for the longest time, cut off all humanitarian assistance in the south of the Sudan -- Where in just in the last year, over a million people have been driven from their homes in the eastern [sic] Darfur region – Uh, it’s actually the western Darfur region. Sorry. --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Start from --
BRODY: Yeah.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And then you can -- You can focus on other ones and -- Maybe even list what you see as the top five and where Iraq ranked in that.
BRODY: Okay. -- You know, there are a lot of human rights disasters in the world in the last several years. In the Sudan, for the last two decades, the south of the Sudan has been effectively starved by the central government -- not only through war policies, but also through preventing any humanitarian assistance from getting in. In the west of the Sudan, in the last year -- in the Darfur region -- over a million people have been driven from their homes. It’s the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster. In Chechnya, Russian troops have committed systematic war crimes in the Chechen Republic -- mass killings, torture disappearances and which continue to this day. In ...
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: China?
BRODY: China, well China. I won’t put China in this same -- in the same category. I mean, China’s bad, but it’s not like --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Go ahead.
BRODY: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in cycles of genocide and revenge and revenge -- particularly in the eastern region of the Congo. It’s estimated that in the last several years three million people have died in both interethnic violence as well as violence perpetrated by Congo’s neighbors in order to loot the country of its natural resources. In Liberia and in Sierra Leone -- I personally have never witnessed the kinds of horrific crimes that I, that I saw in Sierra Leone. You know, the signature atrocity of cutting off people’s arms and legs committed by the rebels supported by the then leader of Liberia, Charles Taylor.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And some people say, "Saddam is worse than Hitler." So can you just make that historical comparison --
BRODY: Oh, you know, it’s -- I wouldn’t, you know -- I mean –
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
BRODY: To me Saddam is one of the world-class, all-time criminals. You know, I certainly -- I certainly do put Saddam in the rankings up there with Idi Amin, with Mengistu, with -- It’s hard to make a hierarchy of evil. Saddam was very evil and is a very evil man.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. That’s fine. -- I’ve heard some arguments from the left that Turkey was a human rights violator towards the Kurds. You talked about, you know, the Kurds -- And you always heard about Iraq’s treatment of the Kurds, but can you give me some idea of the -- both the nature and the scope comparatively.
BRODY: Yeah. I mean -- For many years, Turkey carried out a very violent and brutal repression against the Kurdish population in the southeast. I mean, entire Kurdish villages were uprooted people were forced into larger settlements. The Kurdish language was not permitted in education -- it was not permitted in communication. Kurdish leaders were rounded up many – Unfortunately, I actually don’t know the numbers on stuff like that, but --

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: That’s fine. What I want -- I want to get, I guess is, in a way --
BRODY: I wouldn’t compare it, actually, to what Saddam did, I mean it’s not on the same level.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
BRODY: You know, with US support, you could say. I mean, yeah -- put it that way -- The government of Turkey for many years, actually -- I mean, for many years the government of Turkey, which is a very close US ally has --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: That’s alright. Take your time.
BRODY: For many years, the government of Turkey, which is a very close ally, has visited brutal repression on the Kurdish population there. I mean, Turkey, which receives big, very big US support, which is a member of NATO, which buys arms from the United States -- Uh, I have to be -- You have to be very careful here about -- because there was a whole thing about helicopters ...

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, I guess what I’m trying to get at in a way, is that -- If you take the administration’s claims on their face, and that if human rights is their primary concern, then what about our allies of Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Turkey
BRODY: Yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- So talk maybe in a general way like how --
BRODY: Sure. I’m happy to do that, yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- the United States ignores the human rights violations of our allies.
BRODY: Yeah. I mean, look at -- Human rights should be a core element of our foreign policy. But look at which countries are receiving the most US assistance in the world. Egypt: where torture is systematic. Israel: which -- whose repression of its Palestinian population is very well documented and very clear. Turkey: which for years has visited a brutal repression on the Kurdish population in the southeast. Columbia: which -- where the military and its paramilitary allies have committed widespread human rights abuses. In fact, there’s almost – There is, in fact, a direct correlation between the amount of American assistance that a country receives and the amount of human rights abuses that it’s engaged in.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And it seems to me that -- Some people are aware of this in America, but that it’s just completely unknown to a large majority. -- And how do you start to break down -- If there is a correlation -- Is there a cause and effect relationship there? Or what’s going on?
BRODY: Well, I -- It actually -- There may not necessarily be a cause and effect relationship. I don’t suggest that it’s because countries receive US aid that they engage in human rights abuses. It just so happens, though -- and obviously, the US tends to give more assistance to those countries that are on the -- that are on the front lines, as it were. And so that are more likely to be engaged in civil wars and things like that -- But the fact is that we hear about human rights abuses when, you know -- I mean, the fact is that one of the things that drives the news in general and that drives news about human rights abuses in particular is what the leaders are saying. And so we saw this in we saw this in the eighties in Central America – [Interruption] –

BRODY: I mean, we saw in the eighties --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, sorry. Just start from the media -- And since I am focusing on the media --
BRODY: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- and the attention -- And it seems that it’s widespread, but the spotlight is shined on certain select human rights and government --
BRODY: Right. -- Look, Human rights abuses in this world are widespread. And there’s a lot of information from Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, and national organizations about these abuses, but when do we hear about them? We hear about them when -- often when it’s our leaders point the finger. And we saw that in Central America in the 1980s -- that all of a sudden the Reagan administration was talking about atrocities in Nicaragua. And so the media started focusing on atrocities in Nicaragua. You know, as opposed to atrocities in El Salvador, for instance, which were being committed by the US-backed government and didn’t receive nearly the same kind of attention. And I think we see this pattern, that, I mean, -- Unfortunately it’s not just in human rights, but that the news media tends to follow an agenda -- or at least has to respond to an agenda that is proactively pushed by the centers of power.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Do you see any pattern of the government’s actions of -- When it’s in, let’s say, economic interests, they’ll forgive human rights violations -- let’s say in China or somewhere where -- there’s just a ‘waving the hands’ and ignoring it -- if it’s in some sort of economic interest.
BRODY: Yeah. I think we’ve seen for many years -- not just under this administration, but also under the Clinton administration, and previous administrations -- that it’s very easy to stand up for human rights when either it’s – the abuses are being committed by an enemy or where it’s a little country like Burma with no strategic interests. But as soon as profits are at stake -- or there’s a bigger economic interest at stake -- human rights tend to get subordinated. And I think the best example of that is China under the Clinton administration. For years, there had been a process of denying China -- or conditioning China’s "Most Favored Nation" status -- on its human rights record. And during the Clinton administration -- At a certain point President Clinton said, "Look this is interfering too much with business relationships." And Clinton and the Democrats ended this yearly review and gave China permanent "Most Favored Nation" status so that human rights would not interfere with these business interests.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you see any -- I guess it may be outside your mandate to follow the causal path -- the cause and effect relationship of why human rights occur -- the situations occur -- but maybe it’s within. But -- Do you see that certain economic conditions that may create poverty? -- Or something else, or -- What are some of the factors that create an environment for human rights [abuses]?
BRODY: Well, I think there’s no doubt that competition over resources and -- and poverty are factors in human rights – I mean, there’s no -- It’s no great discovery that poor countries -- or countries where there is inequality -- abuse human rights more than rich countries. And countries generally do not -- Leaders do not abuse human rights mostly because they’re sadists -- because they just want to. People repress -- commit repression because it’s a way of staying in power. Because it’s a way of protecting -- for the leaders and for their groups -- the economic interests that we have -- that they have. And so we see people -- ethnic groups or political groups or regional groups – marginalized, and their rights denied so that they can’t compete for those resources -- Or so that the people who are in power can maintain their control over resources. I don’t think that’s a great mystery.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Well, I think it is a mystery in a way, because it’s never talked about by the news media --
BRODY: Yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- and it’s -- if there’s institutions that, let’s say the media, who also have economic interests that --
BRODY: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- it’s in their interests to not cover it, so -- Can you speak to -- as an organization, Human Rights Watch, -- What kind of barriers do you run into when you try to get this information out there?
BRODY: Well, of course it’s very difficult to -- I mean, human rights is not "hard news," first of all. Unless the government has made it into "hard news." And it’s not – You know, we have to go out and kind of make that into news. And as -- I think you have -- I think there are there are a few factors at work. One is that there is just a lot of fatigue with those kinds of stories. That it’s – you know, this just not the agenda that has been set. And -- I’m going to have to think about that a little more. -- By the way, I can’t do this for too much longer --

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay... Go through the – the long-term plan of justice for bringing, let’s say, Saddam Hussein specifically to justice. The first step would be to indict him. And then, go through what would happen next -- The arrest, the trial, and then the prosecution --
BRODY: Sure.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- and the justice. So those different steps that could have happened as a viable alternative to --
BRODY: Or that -- You’re not talking about what will happen now -- the process that started yesterday --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No. -- that could have happened before the war --
BRODY: Okay.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- So in the context of leading up to the war. Another option to war could have been "this, and then, this, this and this." --
BRODY: Sure. One of the alternative ways to go might have been --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry -- alternative ways to go with? --
BRODY: Yeah. I mean, one of the ways to deal with Saddam Hussein -- the way that we proposed -- was to go the judicial route. So you indict Saddam Hussein -- now the crimes that he’s alleged to have committed – genocide, mass murder, crimes against humanity, torture, war crimes -- are crimes of universal jurisdiction in the sense that any country has the right -- sitting as a court of the world community -- to indict Saddam Hussein for those kinds of crimes -- just like Judge Garzon in Spain indicted Pinochet for crimes committed in Chile. So you have a European court that indicts Saddam Hussein for genocide and -- or crimes against humanity – that conducts an investigation -- that hears witnesses who come to that place -- that issues an indictment that perhaps freezes his assets -- and that begins a process of delegitimizing him. So that other countries then are called on to respect the indictment -- not to deal with Saddam Hussein. And you begin a process of undercutting his regime and undercutting his authority.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And then, if he -- How does justice eventually happen? You know, a lot of people that when I’ve told that to them, they’ve said that ‘We have to go in and get him.’
BRODY: You know, that’s certainly one way to do it. And I think, you know --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry, what is? --
BRODY: I’m sorry. Certainly one possibility -- One possible end game for a justice strategy is that you do get a UN resolution to go in to get Saddam Hussein. Now, maybe in the political -- Maybe the political route would have worked differently had the goal of the process been the capture and the trial of Saddam Hussein rather than the overthrow of a regime and the occupation of Iraq, which is one possibility. The other possibility is that, you know, slowly, slowly, slowly -- as in Yugoslavia -- the people would have -- or the army would have overthrown Saddam Hussein. I mean, it’s hard to predict. There’s no guarantee that the justice route would have worked. But it would have played out differently. And the interests -- would have been a legal interest. And so it would have been perhaps perceived as a victory for the rule of law, rather than undermining the rule of law.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And you see the court that’s happening now as having less legitimacy? Or do you have any viewpoints at all on the current form of justice that’s being --
BRODY: Yeah – There are very few people in the world who so richly deserve to be brought to justice and be put on trial as Saddam Hussein. But the process by which he’s being brought to justice increasingly appears political. It looks like the United States is really calling the shots, pulling the strings here behind the court. And unfortunately it may not have the legitimacy that one would hope the trial of an alleged mass murderer would have.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
BRODY: Okay?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Great.