The trial of Saddam may not unfold at all in the way that just about everyone has always assumed it would.

Two fundamental problems can now be identified, entirely apart from the more obvious one of whether Iraqi judges can be, and be seen to be, fair and impartial.

The first is that almost all the reports about Saddam's atrocities have come from exactly the same sources — exiles, dissidents, local opposition like the Kurds — who provided all the grossly inaccurate information about Saddam's programs of weapons and mass destruction and about his links to Al Qaeda.

It may seem hard to credit that Saddam could escape the charge of genocide.

But conclusive evidence for it may not be that easily amassed.

Saddam's worst offences were in the Anfal campaign of 1987-88 against his own Kurds. But no mass graves have yet been found in Kurdistan.

Mass graves do exist in Iraq. But these appear to be of Shiite rebels trying to overthrow Saddam, which, while cruel, isn't genocide.

Certainly, Iraq, the region, the world, are all better off for Saddam's downfall. He was a brutal tyrant.

But these benefits, although real, simply cannot justify the costs — human, political, diplomatic, economic, financial and moral — of the war. And, in the continuing insurgency, those costs are by no means yet completed.

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