Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who gassed and tortured his own people en masse, will be sentenced on Sunday. Instead of seeing the conclusion of the trial as an instrument of justice, Bush critics have put on their tinfoil hats to ply more nutball conspiracy theories:

A verdict in the first criminal case against Saddam Hussein is expected two days before a key US midterm vote that has become a referendum on the Iraq war — but any benefit for President George W. Bush’s Republican Party was unclear.

The verdict is to be presented on Sunday, just ahead of Tuesday’s vote in which Bush’s Republicans appeared poised to lose control of Congress…

… On the Internet, in US leftist discussion forums and among some bloggers, there is a strong suspicion that the date was chosen on purpose to benefit the Republicans.

“Given the Bush administration’s history of timing national security-related actions to the political calendar, has the date for the verdict’s release been set to provide maximum political benefit for the administration and congressional Republicans?” asked a blogger on the DemocraticUnderground.com discussion site.

Tom Engelhardt, writing in the leftist The Nation magazine, notes that the verdict comes “curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections. It’s the sort of the thing that — you would think — any reporter with knowledge of the US election cycle … would at least note in an article. But no, you can search high and low without finding a reference to this in the mainstream media.”

US Ambassador in Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad rejects the charges, insisting that the date was set by Iraqi judges and that Washington had no role in the decision.