Saddam Hussein’s defense team has lost 1100 lawyers. Like the old joke of what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start.

I was some combination of amused and befuddled by this. I had no idea that he had so much legal ballast that could be tossed. It would seem that the trial will require a soccer stadium just to hold the defense team. How many lawyers are left?

I suppose the next step is for his remaining lawyers to move for a mistrial on the basis of lack of adequate legal representation.

[Update an hour or so later]

The more I read this story, the stranger it seems, and I have to wonder at the reporter who passed it on without asking the obvious questions.

How did these people become Saddam’s “lawyers”? Why so many of them? Who is paying for them? I don’t know what percentage of the population of Iraq is lawyers, but don’t they have something better to do, anyway? Has there been a lot of lawyering not going on because of the large contingent on Saddam’s defense team?

And if so, is this not actually bad news for the Iraqis, since they’ll now, being relieved of the burden of defending the former predator-in-chief, return to their own predation on the wealth and welfare of the country?

[Update at 10:15 AM PST]

Fox is reporting on the story now. No answers to my questions, but they do say that the presiding judge claims that “…the withdrawals will have no effect on the work of the court.”

Heh.