The U.S. has been urged to start working on war crimes trials for Saddam Hussein and his cronies. But work is going slowly in that direction. One reason is that the U.S. has compiled a list of at least 200 senior officials that qualify for the label, "war criminal." The problem is that many of these 200 could make an invasion of Iraq a lot easier if they could be persuaded to switch sides. Publicly putting these people on a list of war criminals either forces them to remain loyal to Saddam to the end, or encourages them to negotiate a better deal. Since "negotiating with the enemy" is a capital offense in Iraq is a capital offense, the only other option is defecting. But that removes one more senior guy who might have turned on Saddam when we invaded and made our job easier. This is a clear cut case of Information War, and the problem is, what information do you let out and in what way. American lives are at stake, depending on how this large war criminals list is compiled and used.
