Charles Krauthammer thinks that the United States and the Iraqis are bungling Saddam's trial by allowing his theatrics to become the story of the trial rather than his crimes. He argues for a glass booth, like Eichmann, so that he won't be able to shout out and interrupt the witnesses and judges.

Why have we given him control of the stage? We all remember the picture of him pulled out of his spider hole. That should be the Saddam Hussein we put on trial. Instead, with every appearance, he dresses more regally, emerging from cowering captive to ordinary prisoner to dictator on temporary leave. Now he carries on as legitimate and imperious head of state. He plays the benign father of his country, calling the judge "son," then threatens the judge's life. Hussein shouts, defies, brandishes a Koran. The judge keeps telling him he's out of order. He disobeys with impunity, the guards not daring to intervene.

What kind of message does that send to Iraqis who have been endlessly told that Hussein and his regime were finished? "The performance has heartened his followers," writes The Post's Doug Struck from Baghdad. "In Tikrit . . . a large crowd of demonstrators chanted their loyalty on Tuesday. Several marchers said they were emboldened by his courtroom bravado."

This is absurd. If anything, Hussein should be brought in wearing prison garb, perhaps in shackles, just for effect. And why was he given control of the script? He shouts, interrupts and does his Mussolini histrionics unmolested. Instead of the press being behind a glass wall, it is Hussein who should be. Better still, placed in a glass booth, like Eichmann, like some isolated specimen of deranged humanity, symbolically and physically cut off from the world of normal human values.

Instead, he struts. And we are witness to a political test of wills between the new Iraq represented by an as-yet incompetent judicial system and the would-be tyrant-for-life defiantly raising once again the banner of Baathism, on a worldwide stage afforded him by us .

Until now the Baathists who constitute the bulk of this Sunni insurgency had no symbolic presence, no political platform, no visible leadership. We have now given that to them, gratis.

These are good points and I hope someone is paying attention. They could give him one last warning and when he violates it, as he will, bring out the glass booth. Ramsey Clark will go whining to the press, but he'll do that whatever is going on. Instead, let's switch the focus back to the suffering of Saddam's victims.