by Greg Weiher

On Sunday, Iraq announced that it would try Saddam Hussein and three others for the deaths of 140 Iraqis in Dujail, the site of an attempt on his life in 1982. National Public Radio's story about the announcement was a masterpiece of understatement.

NPR reporter Tom Bullock allowed as how it might seem strange that Saddam was being tried for a relatively minor crime compared to gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds or the brutal repression of Iraq's Shiite majority after the first Gulf War, actions that killed thousands of Iraqis. But he explained that Iraqi investigators "are . . .