The trial of Saddam Hussein will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Will the U.S. get stuck paying for it? Very possibly, if its tried before the new Iraqi War Crimes Tribunal and the death penalty is on the table:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan closed the door last week to U.N. support for any tribunal that included the death penalty as a punishment. "This tribunal will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if it's done professionally," says Scheffer. "It's extremely important that [the Iraqis] recognize that imposing the death penalty will shut the door to any U.N. or European effort to support the court."

Without funding from the international community, the United States could find itself in the awkward role of underwriting an Iraqi tribunal, thus creating the unwanted appearance of U.S. control.

Some more problems with an Iraqi tribunal:

We have no idea if this is true or not, but it sounds plausible. A British paper is reporting that Saddam was held by the Kurds, drugged and left for US troops to capture.

Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

Update: DEBKAfile says Saddam Hussein was not in hiding, he was a prisoner. The Sydney Morning Herald has more on the Kurds' claim.

One member of the Iraqi Governing Council is calling for a life sentence for Saddam:

A senior Iraqi Governing Council member, Jalal Talabani, yesterday urged fellow Iraqis to reject President Bush's suggestion that Saddam Hussein should face the death penalty for his crimes.

"I want Saddam put in jail for life," Mr. Talabani said in an interview. "I want him to suffer daily as he realizes how his people hate him. Let him see how we build a new Iraq free from his evil grip."

The Iraqi Kurdish leader, who called Saddam's capture "the beginning of the end of terrorism inside Iraq," has been a leading opponent of Saddam and has jointly run a U.S.-protected ministate in northern Iraq since 1991.

So why did an informant cough up Saddam's whereabouts? According to this article, "torture lite" played a role.

CNN explained: "It is unclear whether anyone will receive the $25 million bounty because the information leading to his capture came under duress." A "senior administration official" confirmed to Newsday that the man "didn't provide any information willingly." Col. Hickey told reporters that the informant first gave false information, and "there was three or four hours of questioning before he blurted Saddam's location."

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In Iraq war news today,

U.S. troops blasted down the gates of homes, raising cries of women and children inside, and smashed in doors of workshops and junkyards in a massive raid Wednesday to hunt for pro-Saddam Hussein militants and stamp out the increasingly bold anti-U.S. resistance.

Meet your new boss, same as the old boss? (credit to The Who.)

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Via Liberal Oasis:

From last night's Diane Sawyer interview with Bush, as she pressed him on the Administration's earlier comments that Iraq definitely had WMD:

SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still --

BUSH: So what’s the difference?

Changing course from yesterday, President Bush now says Saddam deserves the "ultimate penalty" --death. We disagree. It's one of the reasons--the others being shortcomings in newly established the Iraqi Governing Council--that we prefer Saddam be tried in an International Criminal Tribunal, such as the one in Sierra Leone which combines local and global justice.

That's what we said on Hannity and Colmes tonight--in addition to panning torture for Saddam. Looks like the New York Times agrees with us, here's their editorial for Wednesday, Trying Saddam Hussein:

The Bush administration rightly endorses openness, Iraqi participation and international legal norms, but it has expressed a preference for a trial conducted by Iraqis. It should instead support an internationally sanctioned tribunal based on the model of the one in Sierra Leone, which uses a mix of local and international jurists.

We said it first! We'll post our comments when the transcript comes out tomorrow. Actually, we can't take all the credit, we got the idea here.

An internationally led tribunal would be a far better option, whether a fully international tribunalor, more likely, an internationally run tribunal with significant domestic participation, such as the special court set up for Sierra Leone. Because its personnel would be selected by the United Nations rather than by Washington's surrogates, an internationally led tribunal is more likely to be seen as legitimate. And because it can draw from a global pool of talent, it would be better able to secure the experienced and fair-minded jurists than a court that must look only to Iraqis. An internationally led tribunal could still conduct trials in Baghdad and involve Iraqis as much as possible, but it would be run by international jurists with proven records of overseeing complex prosecutions and scrupulously respecting international fair-trial standards.

Update: Death penalty for Saddam has critics.

The Vatican weighs in on the arrest of Saddam and its opposition to the death penalty:

A top Vatican cardinal said Tuesday he felt compassion for Saddam Hussein after seeing video pictures in which, the prelate claimed, American forces treated the captured Iraqi leader "like a beast."

In the first Vatican comment on Saddam's capture, Cardinal Renato Martino said Saddam should face trial, but he stressed the Church's opposition to the death penalty. He told reporters the Vatican hoped Saddam's arrest would "contribute to the pacification and the democratization of Iraq."

Martino said he felt "compassion" for Saddam, even if he was a dictator, after seeing images of "this destroyed man" being "treated like a beast, having his teeth checked" by an American military medic.

As we opined here, the playing and replaying of the medic's exam of Saddam was over the top- and downright offensive.

Britain will not participate in a trial of Saddam if the death penalty is an option:

Washington's closest Iraq war ally Britain said Monday it would play no part in any trial of Saddam Hussein that might lead to his execution. But London -- which abolished capital punishment 40 years ago -- also made clear it would reluctantly accept death for the captured ex-dictator if that was what an Iraqi tribunal ruled.

"The United Kingdom is against the death penalty," Britain's senior envoy to Iraq Jeremy Greenstock said. "So we would have no part of a tribunal or a process that had the death penalty as one of its penalties."

Texas Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee stands firm in her opposition to the war despite Saddam's capture.

"I believe we should have had a congressional vote before declaring war, and we should have allowed U.N. inspectors time to finish their work," Jackson Lee said during a news conference at Bush Intercontinental Airport. "As to WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), the fact they have not been found I believe shows I was right."

In other Saddam news, he remains sarcastic and defiant during interrogation attempts.

As to his trial before the Iraqi Governing Council, the likelihood of international acceptance seems slim:

General Kofi Annan expressed hope Monday that Saddam Hussein's capture will accelerate reconciliation among Iraqis, but he said the United Nations could not support bringing Saddam Hussein before a tribunal that might sentence him to death.

....Annan stressed that any trial for Saddam must meet international norms and standards and he reiterated the United Nations' longstanding opposition to the death penalty in any U.N.-sanctioned tribunal. ''As secretary-general, as the U.N., as an organization, we are not going to now turn around and support the death penalty,'' he said.

The AP reports:

Saddam Hussein could be tried "in the next few weeks" and could be executed if convicted, an Iraqi Governing Council member said Monday. Other council members said the televised trial would likely begin later, perhaps by summer.

The trial will begin "very soon, in the next few weeks," Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim council member, told The Associated Press.

President Bush said Monday it was up to the Iraqis to determine Saddam's fate but said the United States will "work with the Iraqis to develop a way to try him that withstands international scrutiny."

The Red Cross has asked to see Saddam Hussein and check on the conditions under which he is being held:

A Red Cross spokesman, Florian Westphal, would not comment directly on Rumsfeld's comments. But he said Saddam "was the commander in chief of the Iraqi army, which seems to indicate that he should at least be presumed a POW." "We expect any state bound by the Geneva Conventions to live up to its commitments," he told The Associated Press.

....Westphal said while the Geneva Conventions allow captors to interrogate POWs, the prisoners do not have to answer questions. They are only obliged to give the information familiar from movies - name, rank and serial number.

Westphal said nothing in the Geneva Conventions stops POWs from being tried for war crimes or regular offenses, although they cannot be charged simply for taking up arms against the enemy.

Westphal would not comment on whether the U.S. authorities had violated the Geneva Conventions in transmitting video images of an unshaven Saddam being examined by a doctor shortly after his capture.

Article 13 of the 1949 Conventions, which set basic standards in armed conflict, says that prisoners should be treated humanely and should "at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."