PeterDavid.net

PAD,
why are you oppsed to Capital punishment? this man killed thousands of people, sureley he deserves death.

if a person killed and tortured one of your children or your wife, would want that person executed and pay for the crime?

Joe V.

sorry, it should have read

"wouldn't you want".

Joe V.

I don't mind this. While I know there are sometimes errors with capital punishment, there is no doubt about the artocities that he did (unless it's like the end of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and a Hussein double was executed while the main man pretends to be his own double.)

As for Hussein as a martyr, I don't think so. He was such a notorious secularist that Bin Laden refused to work with him, and Hussein was caught hiding in a hole, not going down in a blaze of glory. Martyrs are willing to die for their cause (and somteimes hope to); Hussein tried to sneak away.

I wasn't too cheerful about the news either. Something about taking pleasure in the demise of another human being... not really my thing. I mean, what's the point of killing him? He was caught!

And now he's free. Oh well.

This has been very peculiar for me watching the lead up to all of this.

I've never been die-hard anti-death penalty. I can envisage many situations where I think it is justified to kill a person. But I do remember being impressed with Illinois governor George Ryan's decision to commute the sentences of everyone on death row, saying "I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death", effectively that he's not God and therefore is not qualified to make decisions on who should live and who should die.

That impressed me because here it was coming from someone who had previously supported the death penalty, and during the course of carrying it out came to an epiphany that changed his perspective. And his reasoning behind it, chiefly that the death penalty is fundamentally wrong because A) Rich defendants have a better chance at saving their lives with fancy lawyers and B) Even the chance that you could get it wrong, and death isn't something you can take back.

So that's the point where I began to think, okay, maybe whatever we get from this isn't worth the potential moral cost to ourselves.

Today kind of solidified that feeling, not because of who the defendant was, but because of the surrounding circumstances. We see killing going on there every day. It's not stopping. Where's the perspective on this? I see the media treating this as one more celebrity event. I think that strips us of our humanity; let's put aside Saddam who one can easily understand dismissing; this kind of circus dehumanizes the Iraqi people, the media, and us, the viewers. It's not something that should be in any way entertainment or a spectator sport, and yet that's what it's been from the start; all the commentary about why this was necessary has been about satisfying the masses, perhaps not just in Iraq, but also here, so we don't feel like all our soldiers died for nothing. That just doesn't sit right with me, and makes me feel more certain that this is the wrong course, not just in this particular case, but the wrong way for us as human beings. It's dragging us backward. I want us to get better, so we can one day look back at today the way we now look back at the justice and morality of the Dark Ages.

I couldn't agree more. This is not a good thing.

"if a person killed and tortured one of your children or your wife, would want that person executed and pay for the crime?"

No, because I don't think the law should be about personal vengeance.

Years ago, my dad explained it to me thusly:

If taking the life of another person is truly the most heinous crime one can commit - and I think many people agree that it is - then is it ever justifiable for the state to do just that?

Granted, it's an open-ended question, but my answer is no. An injustice (or even thousands) cannot be rectified by another injustice. And this doesn't even go into issues like executing innocent people, which I think is safe to say is an unrelated topic to Hussein.

I definitely wouldn't say taking the life of another person is the worst crime someone can commit; torture, slavery, etc are all worse I think.

As far as a vengeance... this is another area where I am not 100% anti-death penalty. Let's say one of Saddam's victim's relatives had, at any point, shot him. Should that person be prosecuted? Traditional law says yes, my gut says no. On some level, I think there is a moral right to seek vengeance for certain crimes, even if the law says otherwise.

But a big media/government-promoted exhibition like this is something else entirely.

I was surprised by how much it affected me. I am 100% opposed to the death penalty, but I didnt think the death of a man like Saddam would bother me that much. It has 'though, and I suppose thats a good thing

I'm actually in favor of the death penalty. It's under-utilized here in the States. I fully believe that all persons convicted of rape should be quickly and mercifully put to death. Recidivism for sex crimes is all too common. Locking them these predators for life is a cruel waste of resources better spent on educating our children and providing healthcare for the poor.

But Saddam Hussein?

Like you, Peter, I don't see how this helps Iraq. to quote Robert Deniro, "I see bad t'ings."

Aron Head
www.EvilBastard.net

I just want to know if they played any music when the witnesses were supposedly dancing around the body.
Someone queue Men Without Hats!

I can't see why any rational person would be against the death penalty. It's the only thing that has been proven 100% effective in preventing repeat offenses.

What are you going to do, put them in prison for life? I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve.

Had they been put to death, they wouldn't have been able to escape and kill again.

Locking them these predators for life is a cruel waste of resources better spent on educating our children and providing healthcare for the poor.

15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. A murderer jailed at 20 would have to live to 80 for the death penalty to be cost effective. Citing cost as a merit of the death penalty is riculous.

This is a terrific thing because:

1. All his victims will now come back to life.

2. We won't have to spend the next few decades listening to all his tired stories about his warm relationship and "understandings" with Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jim Baker, and Bush Senior.

Way to bring civilization to the heathen, Dubya!

Also, "atrocities" are acts committed during war.
"Artocities" are committed by Rob Liefeld.

My guess?

BushCo. will use the death of Hussein as proof of Iraqi independance at work and use it as an excuse to strategically disengage from Iraq.

I can't see why any rational person would be against the death penalty.

While blacks are the leading victims of murder, death rows are dominated by convicts who kill whites. A rational person would oppose the death penalty because it's a racist practice.

I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve.

Had they been put to death, they wouldn't have been able to escape and kill again.

If you were really interested in saving lives, you'd be for the execution of the tobacco executives who lied to congress they didn't think cigarettes caused cancer. 400,000 people in the US die from cigarettes every year -- twice as many people than Saddam Hussein killed in his lifetime. Where's your outrage against them?

The A.P. is running a photo with a caption that says that it shows a vandalized mural of Saddam Hussein. The problem is that it isn't quite what I would call vandalized in any real sense of the word that I grew up with. The writing says, "Long live Saddam and the Baath [Party]."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16396338/

I'm all for the death penalty. Got no problems with it. This one I have a problem with.

Saddam was tucked away in his cell. He was a frail shadow (courtroom hellfire and brimstone aside)of what he was a few short years ago. He would have become even less in the coming decades. Age and hardships in jail would have made him, in propaganda ways, a beaten mouse of a man in time.

Now he may get to become a lion in death.

I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that he doesn't become a symbol for a new and stronger wave of attacks in the coming new year. I really hope all of us seeing this as a strong possible outcome in Iraq's future are wrong. If this adds more fire to the odd group of loyalists or to some of the remaining Saddam hardliners in a country already trembling on the edge.... The Iraq war is lost for sure.

If anyone deserved the death penalty it was him, but it's never a good idea. If you want to show you've got the moral highground this isn't the way.

And when it comes to North American crimes like rape and murder, no it's not 100% effective because the correct person isn't convicted 100% of the time. Innocents are in prisons for crimes they didn't commit and guilty folks go free because of loopholes and money. Throw the death penalty into that mix and you've got an unethical system.

Did he deserve to die? Probably. But that's not my call to make. I'm squishy about how I feel towards the death penalty. I don't want to sentence somebody to die, but I don't think some people deserve to live either.

Regardless, I can't fathom why someone wants to dance around a dead body. I can understand relief and gratefulness it's over, the courts agreed these crimes were wrong but... to rejoice and celebrate death? I'd rather mourn the reason Saddam hung. I know hundreds of thousands that need to be remembered tonight.

Peter, I've heard an interesting argument tonight. Someone said the bible (Christian King James Version) said "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Another corrected this person by saying the original hebrew meaning was "Thou Shalt Not Murder". Their point was that you can kill justly without murder. Is this a correct meaning of the original commandment to the best of your knowledge?

First off, let me preface everything by saying two things. I don't think the death penalty works. On the other hand, if I ever got my own hands on certain people, their lives wouldn't be worth an hour's purchase, and I feel guilty about thinking that way.

Now, as far as Hussein goes--I was relieved when his sons, especially Qusay, were killed. From everything I've heard or read, those two were MUCH more dangerous than their father. But as far as Saddam Hussein himself--I'm neither Muslim nor Iraqi, so I don't know that I can really understand their point of view. Isalmic justice(again, this is just from what I've read) doesn't seem all that different from pther religions or groups. One thing that is laid out, though are what they call Qisas, which means equality. With this, a person's victims are entitled to do the same thing to the person as the person did to the victim.

I don't know that Saddam Hussien will that much more effective as a martyr now that he's dead. But like I said, I'm neither Muslim nor Iraqi. I don't know.

I believe in capital punishment to a point: it should be used on those who are obviously guilty (such as when there is no question of guilt) in murder cases, but not on those that are not blatantly obvious (such as cases where men on death row are now being cleared by DNA evidence).

Yes, that is a fine line, but we know what Saddam did (hell, we gave him the means to do it), and he deserved far worse than what he got.

So, no, I make no bones about the fact that I can smile and laugh away at the fact that three dictators (Milosevic, Pinochet, and now Hussein) have all bit the big one in the last year. And if one of them needed to be helped along, all the better.

If Mike's facts are anywhere near the truth, then it's a perverse problem in our system that needs to be fixed: people should not be on death row for decades, and it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg to see justice served once and for all.

Posted by John Judy:
"Artocities" are committed by Rob Liefeld.

You forgot Greg Land.

> 15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a
> convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail
> him was less than $30,000. A murderer jailed at
> 20 would have to live to 80 for the death
> penalty to be cost effective. Citing cost as a
> merit of the death penalty is riculous.

Mike, don't get me wrong. The cost of death penalty cases is ridiculous and requires reform as well. I wholly believe in innocent until proven guilty. But once guilt is determined, punishment should be swift (and cost effective).

I'm sure that someone will point out how many innocent men are on death row, later vindicated by dna testing. I also believe that the laws surrounding evidence should be adjusted as well to require dna testing wherever feasible. Every step should be taken to ensure that those convicted are indeed guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

At the end of the day, though, suffer not a rapist to live.

Aron Head
www.EvilBastard.net

> And when it comes to North American crimes like
> rape and murder, no it's not 100% effective
> because the correct person isn't convicted 100%
> of the time. Innocents are in prisons for crimes
> they didn't commit and guilty folks go free
> because of loopholes and money. Throw the death
> penalty into that mix and you've got an
> unethical system.

Ian, by that logic it makes no sense to imprison the convicted much less execute them. If we are constantly second-guessing judgements, perhaps it's more merciful to set them all free?

Of course there are flaws with our system! Of course it requires reform! But at some point you have to say "this is as good as it gets, let's move forward."

I would not presume to implement a more frequent application of the death penalty without first correcting some of the appalling shortcomings of the existing system.

Aron Head
www.EvilBastard.net

I'm with PAD here. I mean I know, I KNOW that Saddam inflicted worse suffering than what he endured during his execution. I'm aware of that...and yet emotionally, for reasons I can't understand, I feel a little sorry for him.

For one thing, hanging is neither a quick death nor a painless one.

For another, he was described as a "broken man" in one report I read. No ranting, no defiance, no acting evil. He was just a pitiful shell of his former self.

Then he was executed and people danced around the body.

If somebody were watching that scene and didn't know who Saddam was or what he'd done, they would probably be horrified by the actions of the spectators and the executioners.

If capital punishment must be used, it should be to remove a threat from the world and make people safer, NOT to satisfy somebody's bloodlust. The executioners should not resemble the criminals, not in any way, shape, or form. There should be no cruelty, no sadism, no joy taken in somebody's death. That is--supposedly--what separates civilized people from sociopaths.

The other thing Mr. David said: we don't need another martyr. If Saddam came across as sympathetic to me, even if it was just on an emotional level, can you imagine how his Sunni followers feel right now? Trust me, if they are in a position to make people pay, they will do so. This is gonna get worse before it gets better, if it ever gets better.

I hate to bring up comics during a serious discussion but as far as I'm concerned, a lot of what I learned about capital punishment or death as revenge, etc has been explored in Batman and other similar titles.

Great, now he's dead--does that really bring back those he's killed? Has it really made anything right? Or will everyone he's affected still have that pit of emptiness inside them?

I'm not saying he shouldn't be dead, you have no arguments from me. And I'm not saying I'm against capital punishment, there are people in this world that truly are hard-wired for evil tendencies (what is evil and what isn't discussion notwithstanding) and I think death sometimes is called for (though I don't know if I'd ever be strong enough to pull the level, etc) However, I'd rather Saddam's death have happened in battle and not after a circus of a trial. As Peter said, he's one of the ultimate martyrs.

> I mean, what's the point of killing him? He was caught! And now he's free. Oh well.

The point? Maybe the fact that there's one less monster in the world? The fact that Mandella was 'caught' and still managed to inspire an, admitedly non-violent, uprising in South Africa from jail?

>If anyone deserved the death penalty it was him, but it's never a good idea.

Beg to differ. Considering the violence in some prisons (and I don't mean Hollywood's version), it's clear some people aren't 'safe' to have around even behind bars.

> If you want to show you've got the moral highground this isn't the way.

Given how many people have been executed in Iraq over the last few decades (Hussein even had his own SON executed), one more really isn't exactly taking the low road.

Yes, I have no problems with the death penalty, in limited cases, and where there can be no doubt of guilt. Consider the Canadian couple (upper-class yuppie husband/wife) who were convicted of raping, killing a couple of teen girls - one of them the wife's own kid sister. I'd have not lost any sleep if Canada had the death penalty and applied it to them. Possible judicial error? Not bloody likely when they videotaped themselves committing the atrocities.

So? They aren't dead. They're alive. In fact the sick wife is out on parole. Having to move a lot. Seems wherever she relocates to, her neighbours don't seem pleased to have her around for some reason.

This is 'justice'? Yeah, sure.

I hate to bring up comics during a serious discussion but as far as I'm concerned, a lot of what I learned about capital punishment or death as revenge, etc has been explored in Batman and other similar titles.

I don't think bringing comics into it makes it any less serious, Tom. The argument about whether or not killing is ever justified has been addressed in comics. Spider-Man and the Punisher have gotten into it, and so did Storm and Wolverine back in the day. That's just the times I can think of off the top of my head.

I'd feel better if he'd died in battle too. Maybe it comes from seeing how villains were portrayed in fiction all my life: villains would capture good guys and torment them while they were helpless. Perhaps I came to associate that with villainy.

Saddam has been helpless for a long time now. I won't even speculate how he was treated while he was locked up. And in the end, we had this guy who had been beaten and we (technically the Iraqi government acting on our behalf) killed him in cold blood. I almost wrote the joke from X-Factor about how that's like warm blood except with the air conditioning on, but decided there wasn't anything funny about this.

I don't feel right about the killing of a helpless, defeated victim. Realistic or not, I have preconceived notions about what the good guys will and will not do, and when the U.S. or its proxies fail to live up to that I feel great disappointment and disillusionment.

Back to comics...Norman Osborn is one of the meanest, nastiest, most sadistic mofos in the Marvel Universe. He has put Peter Parker through hell. Nevertheless, when I saw him being dragged away in "Civil War: Frontline" to a fate he was absolutely terrified of, I pitied him, despite all he had done. Because he was helpless and scared.

I don't care who somebody is or what they've done--even the worst of the worst only deserve to suffer so much before you call off the dogs, figuratively speaking.

Posted by Robert Fuller

"if a person killed and tortured one of your children or your wife, would want that person executed and pay for the crime?"

No, because I don't think the law should be about personal vengeance.

That's close to my position - however, my position is that the law shouldn't get in the way of personal vengeance in cases like that.

Given how many people have been executed in Iraq over the last few decades (Hussein even had his own SON executed), one more really isn't exactly taking the low road.

Starwolf, if you're saying we're not as bad as Saddam was...that's not saying very much, pal.

We see killing going on there every day. It's not stopping. Where's the perspective on this? I see the media treating this as one more celebrity event. I think that strips us of our humanity; let's put aside Saddam who one can easily understand dismissing; this kind of circus dehumanizes the Iraqi people, the media, and us, the viewers. It's not something that should be in any way entertainment or a spectator sport, and yet that's what it's been from the start; all the commentary about why this was necessary has been about satisfying the masses, perhaps not just in Iraq, but also here, so we don't feel like all our soldiers died for nothing. That just doesn't sit right with me, and makes me feel more certain that this is the wrong course, not just in this particular case, but the wrong way for us as human beings. It's dragging us backward. I want us to get better, so we can one day look back at today the way we now look back at the justice and morality of the Dark Ages.

To which I can only say: amen.

StarWolf posted:
Given how many people have been executed in Iraq over the last few decades (Hussein even had his own SON executed), one more really isn't exactly taking the low road.

Sorry, but Hussein did NOT have his own son executed. Saddam had two sons (Qusay and Uday) and a possible third, Ali (one of Hussein's daughters claims Ali is actually her son, and therefore, Saddam's grandson) and three daughters (Rana, Raghad, and Hala). Saddam did have his wife's BROTHER (and childhood friend), Adnan Tuffah, executed, and he withdrew his protection from the husbands of his daughters, Rana and Raghad, after they defected from and then returned to Iraq (Saddam had pardoned them, but the men were killed by other clan members who felt they were traitors).

Peter, you're one of my grander role models, but I'm afraid this is going to be one of the rare instances in which I disagree with you.

I am absolutely pro-death penalty, especially in extreme cases such as this. I was once called upon to define "evil," and I came up with "one who deliberately and without remorse harms another sentient being."

In cases of those who have raped and murdered, I am not only for the death penalty, I am for the victim or the victim's loved ones to be able to decide how it should be carried out. I am all over the Code Of Hammurabi.

However, I DO think the current judicial system is in need of a MASSIVE overhaul before these standards can be applied and applied JUSTLY. I know I am trying to compare justice to vengeance here, but I believe in the extent of the punishment fitting the extent of the crime. Should a thief have his hands cut off? No, but he should recompense the victim in fair value and spend a little time in jail, dependent on the value of the stolen good(s). Pretty much what's in place now.

Serial rapists ought to have their feet and genitalia messily removed, all I'm sayin' there.

It is totally effed up that we should kill to prove killing is wrong, but sometimes it is well and truly the most fitting punishment. The bereaved of the deceased oftentimes know no peace until they have the assurance that the monster who killed their loved one is gone forever; a boogeyman that has well and truly been banished.

I do think that VERY STRICT standards ought to be placed on the death penalty, and that it ought to be an extreme rarity - even more so than it is now. There should be unexonerable (did I just make that word up?) evidence that the accused is, in fact, guilty. It would be much fairer to all those involved. Like a lot of people are saying here, we can agree or disagree on our stance on the death penalty, but I think we're all nodding that yes, the judicial system needs a hell of a lot more refined strictures.

And Saddam TOTALLY got off light, but that's just IMHO, as you internet folk like to call it. :)

Considering how many people suffered and died because of Saddam, I'm pleased as punch he's dead. Pitiful end or not, he was a monster.

I may not agree with HOW Bush went about taking him out of power, but removing the psycho remains the one and only thing Bush has done that I agree with.

So with his death, I'm free to hate Bush equally as much for all his scummy actions getting innocent people maimed, killed, and traumitized for life.

"Ian, by that logic it makes no sense to imprison the convicted much less execute them. If we are constantly second-guessing judgements, perhaps it's more merciful to set them all free?"

If future evidence clears someone wrongly convicted you can free them. If you kill the person, they're still dead.

And I have nothing against second guessing judges. Checks and balances are a positive.

I have no problem with Death Penalty, I think we should use it more. Especially in "open and shut" cases with DNA evidence, VIDEO taped crimes, etc.

I believe we have every right to make that judgement, because there is no "God" to mete out punishment after death.

15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. A murderer jailed at 20 would have to live to 80 for the death penalty to be cost effective. Citing cost as a merit of the death penalty is [ridiculous.]

Mike, don't get me wrong. The cost of death penalty cases is ridiculous and requires reform as well.

Oops, I made a math error: $9 million / $30,000 isn't 60 years. It's 300 years. A convict would have to serve that long for the death penalty to be cost effective.

Considering Governor George Ryan's reservations, reform would obviously increase the expense to execute someone.

I was once called upon to define "evil," and I came up with "one who deliberately and without remorse harms another sentient being."

Like Harry Truman?

"why are you oppsed to Capital punishment? this man killed thousands of people, sureley he deserves death."

I don't doubt it. But murder is murder is murder. I'm not convinced that becoming that which we despise is morally or ethically a good thing. We have advanced so much as a society from hundreds of years ago; I don't see that an inability to move beyond taking human life is a good thing.

"if a person killed and tortured one of your children or your wife, would want that person executed and pay for the crime?"

Yes. Absolutely. In fact, if they offered me the opportunity, I'd want to pull the switch on the electric chair myself. Hell, hand me a baseball bat and give me ten minutes with him.

But I shouldn't have that right. I shouldn't have the right to take another's life any more than they have the right to take the life of one of my family.

PAD

"What are you going to do, put them in prison for life? I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve."

And I can point to many examples of guns used in accidental shootings. Yet I daresay those who favor unfettered gun ownership would be unimpressed by it.

PAD

Regarding Saddam Hussein in particular, I'm surprised that he was killed this quickly, but I don't think it will make any major difference to the civil unrest in Iraq.

Meanwhile, I don't have any strong feelings about the death penalty in general. I can understand why PAD doesn't agree with it, and the "Crazy Eight" story from Hulk does provide a pretty compelling argument against it. On the other hand, it doesn't generally bother me if I hear about someone being executed, any more than I mourn for "2 people killed in motorway crash".

When I was younger, I used to think that there was a logical flaw in a system that said "Killing people is wrong, so to prove it we're going to kill you." However, I now think that there's a way to construct an internally consistent logic for this, based on the concept of human rights vs human privileges. For instance, suppose that "not being tortured" is a fundamental right whereas "not being killed" is a privilege. If you kill someone else then you surrender your own privilege, and therefore if the state kills you then they haven't done anything hypocritical.

As for cost, I think it cuts both ways. For instance, I read a report a while back (URL no longer functioning) which said that it cost £40,000 per year to keep someone in a high security prison in 2000/2001. Meanwhile, according to the Guardian:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,755717,00.html
the average teacher's salary in 2002 was £26,400 yer year. In theory, I think that there would be a short term benefit to diverting all of that money from prisons to education, hopefully reducing the future need for prisons. In practice, the process (in America) does sound a bit more complicated/expensive than just paying a guard to walk around with a shotgun one morning.

Incidentally, I live in the UK, and we don't have a death penalty here at the moment, so the issue of "people who support it are being racist" doesn't apply because that's a specific detail of the way the policy has been implemented elsewhere.

There's a scene at the end of "The Demolished Man" (by Alfred Bester) where one character basically says "The death penalty was a really stupid idea, and I'm glad we got rid of it. If you're smart enough to plan a crime like this, then you could be a great asset to society once you're rehabilitated." I can understand that approach (and I enjoy reading the comic "Thunderbolts").

However, my concern in other cases is "What's the best case scenario?" E.g. suppose that Ian Huntley (a British guy who killed two schoolgirls in Soham a few years ago) saw the error of his ways, and became a changed man. Would he be released? I very much doubt it. Back before Myra Hindley died, I doubted that she'd ever be released, since it would be political suicide for whichever Home Secretary allowed it. And I suspect that a similar thing applies here, although it's a bit early to say (it depends how many people remember this in ten years). So, if he's not released, what will he do? The best case I can think of is that he writes a book, and convinces other would-be child killers to mend their ways. But I think that's unlikely.

More generally, suppose that someone who committed a less emotive crime is released. Quite frankly, I think that a lot of criminals are very stupid, and poorly educated. So, even after release, the best career path they're likely to have is working at the local MacDonalds. So, perhaps there is a question of value for money, when we're comparing prison to education. When Thompson and Venables were released (the two boys who killed James Bulger), I remember an interview with a girl the same age as them (I think she may have been at school with them, but I'm not certain about that). Anyway, she was rather bitter that they'd received a far better education than she had (effectively private tuition for 12 years).

The related issue is "how much protection should the state provide for prisoners like Huntley?" Arguably, one valid approach would be to take them out of solitary confinement, but put them with people who are near the end of their sentences. Then say to the other prisoners "If you behave yourself, you'll be out on probation next month. If you kill him, you'll stay here for another 10 years." That might even provide a useful test of how well they've been rehabilitated.

"I do think that VERY STRICT standards ought to be placed on the death penalty, and that it ought to be an extreme rarity - even more so than it is now. There should be unexonerable (did I just make that word up?) evidence that the accused is, in fact, guilty. It would be much fairer to all those involved."

You're asking for something that's impossible: Degrees of guilt. "Yes, we find the defendant guilty, but not SO guilty that we're sure enough to execute him. But, oh, this guy over here (dark skin, presumably, without the money for a top flight defense attorney), we're absolutely positive that he's definitely so guilty that HIM, we can execute.

A funny thing about giving a government the right to do something in very, very limited circumstances: Over time, they will expand the right to do it in more and more circumstances. I know that theoretically it may make sense to say that we only give the death penalty to a guy who, in full view of six people, murders a cop, then rips out his heart, eats it, and is arrested with blood all over his face and bits of heart in his teeth while singing, "Happy days are here again because I killed a cop and ate his heart." But in short order the black guy who was picked up off the street by a witness who saw a perp for two seconds while he was fleeing the scene is going to go to the chair while insisting on his innocence. And justice, being blind, will see no difference, because guilty/not guilty is a binomial situation. It's either/or.

"And Saddam TOTALLY got off light, but that's just IMHO, as you internet folk like to call it. :)"

And it's my opinion as well, which is kind of the point. I'm a big believer in Kathleen's concept: That the murder should be incarcerated for life in a cell while being forced to watch, 24/7, videos of the lives of those he killed. Image after image after image of births, birthday parties, graduations, weddings, over and over and over, with the volume turned way up, so they can experience every laugh, every cry, every moment of celebration. More often than not, murderers dehumanize their victims. This way they spend the rest of their natural existence faced with the inescapable fact that their victims were human beings.

I appreciate the philosophies of Hammurabi, but we can't confine our view of justice to the best thinking that was available centuries ago. Not if we're to advance as a race.

PAD

Pretty good points, John.

But in this issue there is a lot of emotion, there are religious issues, there is ideology, it's a pretty hard issue to discuss rationally for all of us.

I have to say it bothers me a little how many words and thoughts and energy will be spent on discussing Saddam's death, while most of his VICTIMS' deaths (not to say the deaths of everyone who died in the Iraq Invasion and afterwards) are only statistics.

People humanize Saddam Hussein, and yet most of the nameless victims in this conflict remain nameless, dehumanized.

I can't deny it, when a formerly powerful man that commited so much evil is killed, I still feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

I know full well that the Dubya invasion was a mistake and mostly likely a crime, I know full well that Saddam's death at this point will not make things any better, but who can say what will make things any better in this messed-up world we live? I'm just glad when monsters die.

Having said that, PAD's suggestion on how to punish murderers sounds pretty good to me too. Forcing them to confront the humanity of their victims. That is pretty brilliant!

The only problem is that that wouldn't work so well against that minority of truly messed-up psychopaths that are utterly unable to connect emotionally to human beings. They would, at most, just be annoyed at being forced to watch their victims' birthday parties and weddings.

"15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. "

Thanks to liberals that wanted to add stipulation upon stipulation. It sure didn't cost $9 million to execute Hussein, did it?

"If you were really interested in saving lives, you'd be for the execution of the tobacco executives who lied to congress they didn't think cigarettes caused cancer. 400,000 people in the US die from cigarettes every year -- twice as many people than Saddam Hussein killed in his lifetime. Where's your outrage against them?"

I LOVE watching people flail about like this when they can't come up with an intelligent argument. Tobacco executives did not go to these people's homes and shove tobacco in their mouths, did they? No. Smokers made a decision to smoke. Tough for them that they have to pay for it now. Anyone that doesn't realize that sucking smoke into your body is bad for you is someone that I don't really want in the gene pool anyway.

"And I can point to many examples of guns used in accidental shootings. Yet I daresay those who favor unfettered gun ownership would be unimpressed by it."

Good dodge of my point, it's pretty much what I've come to expect from the anti death penalty crowd.

I'm against the death penalty, with the same exceptions PAD mentions--were a family member killed I'd want to...well. Don't like the government having so much power.

That said, this was Iraq's call to make, not ours and given the usual way such people are noramlly handled in most of the Muslim world his was a relatively gentle end.

There is, however, an argument to make for his execution, that certain crimes against humanity demand a punishment far greater than mere imprisonment. Eichman may never have personally bloodied his hands directly but I lose no sleep over his execution by the Israelis. Same for all those executed at Nuremberg. Had Pol Pot been strung up a tree (or Mengele or Pinoche or, still reputedly among the living, Castro) I'd see it as quite justified.

One could argue that keeping him alive would have had a far greater risk of making him a martyr or at least a potential focal point of terrorism than killing him. That carzy blind shiek who recently died was said to have continued to influence events even behind bars.

What I really wish is that when they found him in that spider hole they had tossed a few grenades down the hatch.. I've heard a number of commentators saying the same thing--butthen doesn't that imply that it isn't the death penalty one objects to but rather the formal use of such?

Moral considerations aside, there's a simple, practical reason any intelligent person should oppose the death penalty. However airtight you believe your case to be, you can never be 100% sure. Take the case over here of the Birminghan Six, who were arrested and convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings in which dozens were killed and maimed. Forensic tests 'proved' they had been handling nitro-glycerine so this was clearly an a open-and-shut case. Not so, as it turns out. It was later proven that the test was flawed, that it also gave a positive result for nitro-cellulose, which is used to coat playing cards. Guess what they had been doing before they were arrested?

They served 16 years for a crime they did not commit. Had we not disposed of the barbarity that is the death penalty they would have been hanged. This was the case that finally convinced then Home Secretary Michael Howard, a Tory and a lifelong believer in the death penalty so no liberal he, that it was wrong. As he put it, an apology and compensation would always be inadequate but these were far superior to "the cold comfort of a posthumous pardon".

"15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. "

Thanks to liberals that wanted to add stipulation upon stipulation. It sure didn't cost $9 million to execute Hussein, did it?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but without looking at anything online, I'm pretty confident saying that the last 3 years have cost us QUITE A BIT financially, not to mention military or civilian lives lost. I've heard $2 billion a month, and over 3 years since the start of the war.....who wants to research it for me and find a dollar number for The Debacle Factor?

I'm anti-death penalty, and while I don't agree with what happened here, I can see the logic of this.

Alive, there's always a chance of him getting free, rising to power. Death, there's no chance of that.

Alive, he can communicate to his followers, and give orders. Again, hard to do dead.

Alive, he gives motive and power to the Baath for many years. Dead, while a martyre, I expect his influence will still be shorter lived.

I think alive he increased the chance for escalation (even further) of the civil infighting in Iraq. While I wouldn't be suprised for some short term retaliation, I expect in the long term this will help.

My personal preference would have been having Sadam placed in US custody, and moved to Camp X-Ray, out of Iraq, and let him rot for life. But to say there's no logic in his death I think is wrong.

"That said, this was Iraq's call to make, not ours "

Actually, that's another aspect that bugs me; no matter how the White House is trying to spin it, it wasn't an Iraqi affair by any means.

We invaded their country. We overthrew him. We hunted him down and captured him. We helped set up the government that tried him. He remained in our hands right up until we turned him over for execution. We built the freakin' gallows. The Iraqi government was the public face of this for obvious political reasons, but there's no way we can say this was their operation.

So responsibility for his execution and how it was handled has to lay largely with us. Remember, he was an international war criminal. He killed far more Iranians than he did Iraqis, and he also attacked Kuwait and Israel. We would have been perfectly justified turning him over to the same international court that convicted Milosevich, but we chose to participate in setting up an ad hoc court with serious questions about due process, basically for political expediency. So that's another moral issue that makes me feel a bit queasy about this whole escapade.

"And I can point to many examples of guns used in accidental shootings. Yet I daresay those who favor unfettered gun ownership would be unimpressed by it."

"Good dodge of my point, it's pretty much what I've come to expect from the anti death penalty crowd."

It was actually precisely on target, a fact that you yourself have dodged, which is pretty much what I've come to expect from the gun loving crowd. The point is that no system is perfect, but if the choice is taking the risk that, in an aberration, convicted criminals might escape, as opposed to systematic application of the death sentence to people of color who might well be innocent, I'll err on the side of not sentencing innocent people to death. Just how many death-row inmates need to be freed upon the revelation, via DNA testing, that they're innocent, does one require to make the point?

In other words, if the notion that killing someone is wrong is insufficient, certainly the notion that killing someone who did nothing to deserve it must carry SOME weight.

PAD

"Alive, he gives motive and power to the Baath for many years. Dead, while a martyre, I expect his influence will still be shorter lived."

Funny. In the TV drama "I, Claudius," a Roman senator dismissively says much the same thing to Claudius about an executed Jew names Joshua Bar Joseph, or "Jesus" to his followers. When Claudius says, "So he DOES have followers," the Senator says, "Oh yes, yes...it's a cult. There are ALWAYS cults."

Obviously Saddam isn't Jesus. But never underestimate the rallying power of the dead.

PAD

I don't think he mattered much either way; that's why I think his killing was more about us than it was about him.

Saddam being executed is not something I would have gone with. He got away with a lot of stuff for years because it was expedient for 'us' to let him get away with it, we put him out of business and it's not like he was about to re-offend any time soon. On t'other hand, it does send a clear message to other dictators that we will get our hands really dirty if we have to.

Death penalties... my ten cents worth, if you're going to have a death penalty then the jury have to ask for it, and they all have to push a button before the current flows. If the people tasked with determining guilt are certain enough to do the deed themselves it should reduce the 'what if he's innocent' ratio and still have a real deterrent factor if criminals knew they could be executed.

For some crimes though, a sentence of life imprisonment should mean life, and a bit more emphasis should go on protecting citizen safety than on the rights of people who have deliberately chosen to opt out of social behaviour.

The latest figure I just Googled in Scotland shows a 60% re-offending rate for violent crimes. Prisons over here are either at or close to capacity and many cases are being shuffled through the system with an agenda driven by a need to avoid imposing jail sentences.

If we need more prisons, and need more "cost-effective" prisons we should bite the bullet and address that need. Hell, if worse comes to worse, dump 'em on one of our islands and leave 'em to it...

Cheers.

"Obviously Saddam isn't Jesus. But never underestimate the rallying power of the dead."

Agreed. Of course, I don't expect Sadam to rise from his grave on Sunday...

While I'll grant your point, I think history lends us more examples of people having more influence alive, than dead. If we too quickly accept the power of Matyredom, then we better be careful about dropping bombs in Afganistan, for fear of accidently killing Osama and making him a Martyr.

>>Given how many people have been executed in Iraq over the last few decades, one more really isn't exactly taking the low road.
>Starwolf, if you're saying we're not as bad as Saddam was...that's not saying very much, pal

No, but remember: we didn't kill him. His own peoples' tribunal found him guilty, assigned and executed the penalty. (At least that's the impression I got from the cursory reading I had time to do while dealing with a family illness at this end.)

>Sorry, but Hussein did NOT have his own son executed. ... Saddam did have his wife's BROTHER (and childhood friend), Adnan Tuffah, executed,

Ah, my mistake. But still, not much of an improvement.

> I don't doubt it. But murder is murder is murder. I'm not convinced that becoming that which we despise is morally or ethically a good thing.

Can't entirely agree there. We put down rabid dogs because they are an ongoing menace. Why shouldn't the same apply to a rabid/pshycho human? To my mind, not guilty by reason of insanity is a tricky proposition. They are a greater threat because a sane individual might be reformed, might be argued with. An insane one probably can't.

>A funny thing about giving a government the right to do something in very, very limited circumstances: Over time, they will expand the right to do it in more and more circumstances.

Well, yes. That's something I keep telling people. That new law they propose sounds harmless enough, but what would happen if it was expanded to include ... or altered to go to this extreme...? And people keep saying I exaggerate. Sure. But I'm not usually wrong. History has shown this. Give them an inch and so forth.

>Image after image after image of births, birthday parties, graduations, weddings, over and over and over, with the volume turned way up, so they can experience every laugh, every cry, every moment of celebration.

I do have a problem with that. I could see that driving someone insane, and thus making them an even worse threat. Especially in a volatile place such as Iraq where the individual still has lots of supporters who'd have loved to get him out of jail. This may be why they opted to finish it fast before a plan to save Hussein could have been completed and successfully executed.

Who benefits? The neocons who hopefully can get their own intimate associations with Saddam pushed further out of the light; the madmen who hope to help unite the warring parties in Iraq against the U.S., and to rally anti-Americanism (and anti-Israelism) everywhere; and the Christian religious fanatics who are hoping to spark the end of the world through their actions in Iraq.

That's who benefits from Saddam's death. Not a good guy among them, but that's to be expected: Evil acts (and capital punishment is one) bear evil fruits.

"15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. "

Thanks to liberals that wanted to add stipulation upon stipulation. It sure didn't cost $9 million to execute Hussein, did it?

If you are going to execute someone, you better make damn sure that you're killing the right person and the appeals process reduces that likelihood. The "stipulation upon stipulation" help prevent the possibility that another injustice is not committed by executing a man innocent of the crime. Statistically , I understand that the system has almost certainly commited that injustice more than once.

The attitude of "shoot 'em in the back of the head as soon as they've been found guilty" isn't one worthy of a society that claims itself civilized.

"What are you going to do, put them in prison for life? I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve."

"And I can point to many examples of guns used in accidental shootings. Yet I daresay those who favor unfettered gun ownership would be unimpressed by it."

"Good dodge of my point, it's pretty much what I've come to expect from the anti death penalty crowd. "

Well, I'm FOR the death penalty and found your original point to be... well... pointless. Seven guys were in prison for life and escaped to cause mayhem. Ok, $**t happens.

In 1984, James and Linwood Briley, Lem Tuggle, Earl Clanton, Derick Peterson and Willie Jones escaped from Mecklenburg Correctional Center. If you don't know Virginia history, that was the 1984 escape from death row. Guess what that means? They weren't in prison for life. They were waiting to die when they escaped. And lots of fun was had by all until they were recaptured.

It's such a nice memory. I was thirteen at the time and got to be told that I was an "at risk" individual. My father was one of the Petersburg officers that helped to put some of those animals away. They, and several others involved in their crimes but were not part of the escape, swore in court that they would escape and kill the families of the people that put them behind bars.

Escapes happen. One day, another big escape will happen. It means exactly squat other someone at a prison got sloppy. It also adds nothing to a debate on the death penalty.

Anybody who wants to know what those animals were...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briley_Brothers

A couple thoughts:

1) If this is how we treat our "great ally", is it any wonder our nation has fewer friends than ever before?

2) If this is the punishment for killing 148 of your own citizens, then what is the punishment for killing more than 20 times that number of your own soldiers (according to the official Pentagon count)?

3) Can that punishment be applied as quickly as Saddam's was?

"I was once called upon to define "evil," and I came up with "one who deliberately and without remorse harms another sentient being.""

That's a pretty broad definition, one that includes soldiers in war, boxers, rape victims who fight back, pretty much anyone using force to defend themselves from attack, and, depending on your definition of "sentient," hunters, slaughterhouse workers, etc. That's a lot of evil. And are we just talking about physical harm, or does it also include emotional or psychological harm (which can often be even more harmful than the merely physical)?

I agree. I appose capital punishment as well. Period.

A government should not have the right to take a life, mass murderer or not. Look up Optimus Prime's saying on his toy box.

I would like to throw my 2 cents worth here... To paraphrase "With great freedoms come great responsibilities". I believe whole heartedly that if and when you choose with those freedoms to violate the civil and human rights of others, your forfiet alot of your own.

So if someones actions lead to a place where they have violated someones human and civil rights, can we please stop behaving like the criminals have more rights than the victim.

As Peter said he should not have the right to take a mans life in vengence, and truthfully no man should have that right, but goverment is not one man. Through out history goverments purpose is to get done what individuals either can not or should not be allowed to do.

Sure I admit goverment may not always get it right but thay have a better track record than most vigilanties

all that bieng said, I will not shed a tear over saddam, other than he will now have to wait so long in hell till he finaly gets to meet dubya!!!!

As with many important decisions in life, the decision to execute Saddam has both downsides and upsides.

For example, for those who argue Saddam's execution will foment Saddam's supporters into a killing spree, all I can say is, "Yeah, right." After all, Baghdad can't get much worse than it already is, and the same people making the threats are no doubt the people who are already killing fellow Muslims with ruthless abandon just because of a difference of opinion regarding who is and who is not the true successors of Mohammed. Thus, if you think executing Saddam will make these radicals hate "non-believers" more than they already do, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell to you real cheap.

Heck, one could just as easily argue that with the symbolic head of the past Iraqi regime gone, it might weaken the resolve of the Sunni radicals rather than strengthen it. The fact is, NO ONE knows what the long-term effect of the execution will be.

Sparing Saddam just because one dislikes capital punishment, when capital punishment is a legal recourse in Iraq, boils down to nothing more than a difference of philosophical opinion. In my opinion, at its core, capital punishment is not an act of vengence any more than removing a malignant tumor from the body is an act of vengence. It is a legal and viable option.

On a related note, I am often surprised by the number of people I meet who say they are against capital punishment, yet have absolutely no qualms about abortion (even late-term abortion) and/or state-assisted suicide. That makes no logical sense to me.

Anyone here subscribe to the "mob hit" theory?

And it's my opinion as well, which is kind of the point. I'm a big believer in Kathleen's concept: That the murder should be incarcerated for life in a cell while being forced to watch, 24/7, videos of the lives of those he killed. Image after image after image of births, birthday parties, graduations, weddings, over and over and over, with the volume turned way up, so they can experience every laugh, every cry, every moment of celebration. More often than not, murderers dehumanize their victims. This way they spend the rest of their natural existence faced with the inescapable fact that their victims were human beings.
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SER: Arguably, that would fall under mental torture and thus cruel and unusual punishment (c'mon, you know a clever lawyer would love to may hay of this). Also, I honestly think that this would have no effect on your more callous criminals -- other than annoyance, like being forced to watch bad movies all day. It's the MST3K punishment. The murderers would wind up creating robots to help them riff on the more tedious moments in the home videos.

Here's where I stand on capital punishment: As an atheist, I don't believe in a heaven or hell, so this world is the only one there is and everyone gets only one shot. Also, philosophically, pretty much anything is better than death (granted, I do consider some of the more painful diseases and illnesses up there but we go back to cruel and unusual punishment if we were to inflict them on the murderers). I have a hard time imagining the justice in a murderer in prison for the rest of his life still able to read books, listen to music, see a sunset, when his victim never will again. There's nothing really humane you can do to a killer that would completely remove some of the simple joys that exist is simply being alive.

That said, I don't see how religious people justify a belief in capital punishment. Sure, they might be in a hurry to get the bad guy to hell but I think the anticipation of what's coming would be enough punishment.

Of course, the system is corrupt enough right now that I agree with not having a death penalty. In a perfect world, with absolute certainty of guilt and fair trials, sure, but we're nowhere near that day.

As for Hussein, forgive me if I don't dance for joy that we executed a 69 year old man who would probably not have been the leader of Iraq for much longer had we intervened or not. All we did was spare him a future of Depends.

In all the posts I've seen so far, there is a point missing. Nobody thinks about the Kurds. So I will:

Saddam was hanged for one crime only, the murder of a hundred or so villagers. However, he did worse to the Kurds, using chemical weapons to do so. A trial for that genocide was ready to go, but it will never happen now. And this is really dangerous, for two reasons.

a) By not allowing this trial to happen, the Iraki courts, and by extension, the Iraqi government (and, some would say, the US government) are sending a very bad message to the Kurds. They're saying in effect: "Sorry, but you don't rate. You have been victims of a genocide, but you won't get what other victims of genocide deserved and got: a chance to see the crimes made against you being tried, a chance to see your victims being vindicated". Now, the Kurds could well think that, if they don't rate for the Iraqi government, they could as well secede and form their own state. And that would bring Turkey and Iran into an already stinking mess.

b) There was no trial also for the armenian genocide. So, who wants to bet that some people will start saying that the Kurd genocide never happened, the way the Turks claim that the Armenian genocide never happened?

In all the posts I've seen so far, there is a point missing. Nobody thinks about the Kurds. So I will:

Saddam was hanged for one crime only, the murder of a hundred or so villagers. However, he did worse to the Kurds, using chemical weapons to do so. A trial for that genocide was ready to go, but it will never happen now.

Considering that the US government sold Saddam those weapons and involved members of the current administration, such a trial would have been very, very embarrassing for the Bush Administration.

Thus the "mob hit" theory.

You're asking for something that's impossible: Degrees of guilt. "Yes, we find the defendant guilty, but not SO guilty that we're sure enough to execute him. But, oh, this guy over here (dark skin, presumably, without the money for a top flight defense attorney), we're absolutely positive that he's definitely so guilty that HIM, we can execute.

I think you might have misconstrued my comment - it's not a matter of "degrees of guilt" but rather "overwhelming proof of evidence" that I was calling for. I think in instances of murder and rape, the death penalty should be applied but ONLY WHEN there is undeniable evidence - DNA matches and so forth - of guilt. So I wasn't talking so much about levels of guilt rather than levels of substantiated accusations. As rare as the death penalty is, it does have potential for errors and loopholes, i.e. in the execution of someone later posthumously exonerated through evidence. It's happened before, but I think if stricter preventative measures are taken, then it can be used justly and fairly.

One more thing about my post above: What I think should have been done is one big trial, where Saddam would have been tried for every crime, and not one trial for each crime. That way, every one of his victims would have been vindicated. It worked at Nuremberg, right?

My beliefs on the death penalty have changed over the years. In my late teens/early twenties, I thought it was a no-brainer. If you're put to death by the state, you must be guilty. But in my late thirties, I know this is not the case. I'm against the death penalty not because of the morality of the situation (an eye for an eye), but because of the finality of the situation. Once that person is gone, they're gone, and if later evidence shows doubt, you can't do a do-over. There's should be no "Ooops!" when you put a person to death. It annoys me when death penalty advocates use the term "flaws" when talking about post-execution exonerations. That's so cold and distant when talking about taking a human life in error from a far-removed position, not so much different from our former allies Saddam or Pinochet.

I recently caught the British film "Pierrepoint" at the Human Rights film festival held at New York's Lincoln Center. It's about England's last public hangman during the 1950's. I highly recommend it should they release it in America under the alternative title "The Last Hangman." It shows the emotional toll taken on Albert Pierrpoint after notoriously putting hundreds of people to death in his career. On his deathbed, in the 1970's, he recanted the use of capital punishment. Timothy Spall, the actor who plays him in the movie, did a Q&A after the film. He pretty much states how PAD, myself and a good deal of people feel: that, hell yeah, if we had a moment alone with our loved one's killer, who wouldn't lash out, but that after it's all over, it's still wrong and belongs out of the context of personal revenge.

I'm sure that years from now there will be new techniques that will make DNA identification look kind of outdated, and that absolute certainty of the truth may be closer to attainability, but it still won't level the playing field for everyone, in particular minorities and people from lower economic backgrounds.

I can't remember who said it (maybe it was Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson) but I always go back to the quote of, "I would rather let 20 guilty men go free than take the life of one innocent man." And yes, Hussein was certainly a mass murderer, but now that he's gone, isn't his death a hollow victory for America since we've spent about 3,000 plus and counting in soldiers trying to bring him down not to mention the roughly high five figures of Iraqi civilians as well?

I can't remember who said it (maybe it was Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson) but I always go back to the quote of, "I would rather let 20 guilty men go free than take the life of one innocent man."

I've heard this but it really doesn't make sense--nobody is saying "let them go or kill them". There are otehr options.

One thing that might make the death penalty less attractive would be if getting life imprisonment really meant you spend your life in prison. I hate it when a guy gets 50 years and they add that he's eleigoble for parole in 10. F that. Unless in 10 years his victim is somehow undead or unraped I say he serves the full monty.

Considering that the US government sold Saddam those weapons and involved members of the current administration, such a trial would have been very, very embarrassing for the Bush Administration.

The point has been made many times and hasn't meant much. The Chinese might do some atrocity tomorrow with the money you and I send them every time we go shopping, I doubt either of us will be wearing a sackcloth. If we chose to engage with unsavory characters--and the only other option would be pretty much isolationism since that descriobes most of asia and africa and a good chunk of europe--this is what happens.

Saddam was hanged for one crime only, the murder of a hundred or so villagers. However, he did worse to the Kurds, using chemical weapons to do so. A trial for that genocide was ready to go, but it will never happen now. And this is really dangerous, for two reasons.
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SER: They tried him for one crime because they wanted to actually see him punished. Basically, if they tried him for each atrocity, he would have died in prison. Heck, given the list of crimes, that could have happened if he were 39 rather than 69.

Since the goal was to hang him, they figured they would go for the "easiest" murder charge.

While blacks are the leading victims of murder, death rows are dominated by convicts who kill whites. A rational person would oppose the death penalty because it's a racist practice.

But would the same rational person therefore support

I think there are good reasons to oppose capital punishment, but that isn't one of them. For one thing I think it's philosophically and intellectually dishonest, as applied, when people claim they oppose the death penalty as it's applied, because most of the time the person making that claim is a death penalty abolitionist who just doesn't want to admit it. Most people in the US believe that capital punishment is appropriate in at least some circumstances, so death penalty opponents know they won't get very far if they attack capital punishment head on; far better to erode it from the boundaries by attacking its application racially or haggling over the lethal injection process. I don't know you from Adam so I don't know if that's what you're doing; I'm just saying that most of the time that argument is a tactical use of a half-truth. (And I should know a tactical use of a half-truth when I see one-- I'm a lawyer, it's my stock-in-trade.) I also think it's dangerous to argue over what's essentially a math problem when that problem allows a solution you don't like. (Ask a group of death penalty supporters if they'd be fine with putting more white murderers on death row. I suspect the answer will be yes. Problem solved!)

Nuts. Formatting problem. The first paragraph of my post was supposed to be italicized as it is. The second paragraph was to read, "But would the same rational person therefore support the death penalty if those problems were addressed? If the system were reformed to put more white convicts on death row, and more convicts who killed minority victims, would you really be okay with capital punishment? At a minimum, you should agree that the capital case that's coming up in my district in February, involving the serial rape and murder of two black women, presents few complications under your theory, so my boss is probably not oppressing anyone by going forward."

The rest was inadvertently italicized. Oops.

Haven't commented here for over a year, but I did want to weigh in on this.

I've thought about it a lot, and I am disappointed with us still executing people. It might come from all those Star Trek reruns, or SciFi, but I guess I feel that no matter how many atrocities someone has comitted, I always think we, as a people, are better than executing our problems, no matter how deserved it is. I've always thought we've failed a little as a society when we have to resort to execution to handle our problems.

Considering that the US government sold Saddam those weapons and involved members of the current administration, such a trial would have been very, very embarrassing for the Bush Administration.

The point has been made many times and hasn't meant much. The Chinese might do some atrocity tomorrow with the money you and I send them every time we go shopping, I doubt either of us will be wearing a sackcloth. If we chose to engage with unsavory characters--and the only other option would be pretty much isolationism since that descriobes most of asia and africa and a good chunk of europe--this is what happens.

I'm sure you'll agree that there are universes of difference between a). the Chinese, as a theoretical example, gassing a bunch of recalcitrent Tibetians with WMD created and paid for by the profit they make from our borrowing money from them and b). selling chemical weapons to a man, who was expected to primarily use them against a proxy enemy, who uses it to gas his own people.

What I was noting was that trying Saddam for the atrocity of gassing the Kurds, a war crime that (I suspect) many more people around the world would have recognized and have expected Saddam to have been tried for, would have been a exercise in embarassment for the Bush Administration since a number of people in his administration sold those weapons to Hussein.

However, I now think that there's a way to construct an internally consistent logic for this, based on the concept of human rights vs human privileges. For instance, suppose that "not being tortured" is a fundamental right whereas "not being killed" is a privilege. If you kill someone else then you surrender your own privilege, and therefore if the state kills you then they haven't done anything hypocritical.

Life is not a privilege simply because, if it is a privilege, it's one given at the pleasure of mothers not the state, and even mothers cannot legally revoke life.

"...I live in the UK, and we don't have a death penalty here at the moment, so the issue of "people who support it are being racist" doesn't apply..."

Strawman. "To death penalty is a racist policy" is not the same as "people who support it are being racist."

15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000.

Thanks to liberals that wanted to add stipulation upon stipulation. It sure didn't cost $9 million to execute Hussein, did it?

It cost the US $½ trillion, and as many US lives as were lost on 9-11. The reports I've been seeing on the main news sites haven't been estimating $2 billion a month for the war, but $2 billion every 1 or 2 weeks.

I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve.

Had they been put to death, they wouldn't have been able to escape and kill again.

If you were really interested in saving lives, you'd be for the execution of the tobacco executives who lied to congress they didn't think cigarettes caused cancer. 400,000 people in the US die from cigarettes every year -- twice as many people than Saddam Hussein killed in his lifetime. Where's your outrage against them?

I LOVE watching people flail about like this when they can't come up with an intelligent argument. Tobacco executives did not go to these people's homes and shove tobacco in their mouths, did they?

Review the bolded text. Pitiful.

Anyone that doesn't realize that sucking smoke into your body is bad for you is someone that I don't really want in the gene pool anyway.

Like George Bush and Dick Cheney? George Bush smoked at least into his father's presidency, and he still may be smoking cigars, and Dick Cheney smoked himself to at least 4 heart attacks.

We put down rabid dogs because they are an ongoing menace. Why shouldn't the same apply to a rabid/pshycho human?

If the standards for putting down a dog should apply to executing humans, why shouldn't the same standards be applied to dismantling corporations? Corporations have the rights of a citizen, with no criminal liability. What's more sociopathic than that?

Heck, one could just as easily argue that with the symbolic head of the past Iraqi regime gone, it might weaken the resolve of the Sunni radicals rather than strengthen it.

My understanding is that the local culture does not honor living heroes, and if I'm wrong, it's not an extreme exaggeration.

In my opinion, at its core, capital punishment is not an act of vengence any more than removing a malignant tumor from the body is an act of vengence.

No, removing the malignant tumor is analogous to life imprisonment. Removing the malignant tumor and paying 30,000% to microwave the tissue is analogous to capital punishment.

I think there are good reasons to oppose capital punishment, but [selective ethnic application] isn't one of them. For one thing I think it's philosophically and intellectually dishonest, as applied, when people claim they oppose the death penalty as it's applied, because most of the time the person making that claim is a death penalty abolitionist who just doesn't want to admit it.

"Equal but separate" was a justification for segregation until the supreme court ruled against it, because "separate but equal" was not how segregation was practiced.

Considering the challenge to segregation was itself founded in the selective availability of services among ethnicities, the challenge to the death penalty over its selective application among ethnicities is no more philosophically and intellectually dishonest than the documented supreme court ruling.

On a tangent related to punishment for heads of state.... is anyone else frustrated by the lack of coverage of the revelations in Bob Woodward's just-released interview with Ford?

"I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma," Ford said in the interview.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/28/AR2006122801247_pf.html

So in other words... with everyone for years in the media going on and on about Ford's great legacy in doing this grand and self-sacrificing gesture of "helping the nation move on" by pardoning Nixon... he did it for the most basic political reason of all; cronyism.

The President of the United States commits multiple criminal acts to intimidate and undermine his political opposition, he puts his buddy into a position where he can get him off scott free... and then said buddy is hailed as a national hero, with wall-to-wall coverage, no questions asked.

Does this trouble anyone else? Doesn't this bode very, very badly for the future of our country? Anyone else get the feeling we might see a repeat performance of this all too soon?

Didn't we just recently learn once again the price of not questioning the "official version"?

I guess not.

.
I can't see why any rational person would be FOR the death penalty.
.

I can't see why any rational person would be against the death penalty

.
Quote:
"Now, as far as Hussein goes--I was relieved when his sons, especially Qusay, were killed. From everything I've heard or read, those two were MUCH more dangerous than their father."
----------
Well, from everything I've read, there were weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was behind the airplanes destroying the World Trade Center, and Iraq was going to give us our very own mushroom cloud.

Not that I am saying his sons were altar boys, but that we have to realize that at least half of the stuff we were told was probably false.
.

.
Quote:
"It sure didn't cost $9 million to execute Hussein, did it?"
----------
So far it has cost over $200 billion.
.

The world is better off with Saddam dead.

But let us get to the real reason he was executed so quickly after his conviction.

So he couldn't testify in a higher court (such as the World Court) about the things that Cheney and Rumsfeld told him to do.

This was more than just bringing one man to justice, it was also about covering up other crimes.

To comment on the previously mentioned issue of the following:

"On a related note, I am often surprised by the number of people I meet who say they are against capital punishment, yet have absolutely no qualms about abortion (even late-term abortion) and/or state-assisted suicide. That makes no logical sense to me."

I'm one of those people. For me, it's a woman's right to choose, and I view the issue of aborting a fetus and not taking the life of a child, so I don't think they are related. And state-assisted suicide, for me, explains itself. It's not executing someone, it's helping someone that has chosen to end their own life.

I can't see why any rational person would be FOR the death penalty.

I can't see why any rational person would be against the death penalty

I know plenty of rational people who support either one or the other of these positions. You two need to meet more people :)

Incidentally, I suspect there are countries with far greater potential for embarrassment on the Iraq chemical weapons than us.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

It would seem the Germans provided the majority of Iraq's poison gas supplies...insert obvious grim joke here.

All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin... Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French...

Austria is said to have provided 16%, Spain 4.4%. With China, Singapore, Holland, India and Luxembourg (the hell?) also contributing to the chemical weapons program it would seem there is little room left for us...and indeed, the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq such as anthrax, West Nile virus and clostridium perfringens. Which is mind bogglingly stupid but I'm not certain any of those were used against the Kurds (though I would not doubt it).

None of which excuses us or is meant to pass the buck to our European and Middle eastern friends but the story is too often presented as though the USA just handed over every drop of chemicals Saddam ever used. The truth seems far from that (if there is evidence to the contrary please let me know).

>If the standards for putting down a dog should apply to executing humans, why shouldn't the same standards be applied to dismantling corporations?

Because that's a tangent which strays a bit more from the topic than usual. Else, I'd say that, to a large extent, I concur.

SER posted:
Since the goal was to hang him, they figured they would go for the "easiest" murder charge.

Well, they could have gone for the whole shebang since Saddam's guilt was a foregone conclusion. The irony (if I'm using the term properly) in this trial is Saddam was being tried for killing people who were accused by Saddam of being complicit in an assassination attempt.
The simple fact is that this was probably the only "charge" that couldn't have caused much (if any) embarrassment to the US government (mainly in the Reagan and Bushes I & II admins; we shouldn't forget that pic of Smilin' Donny Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand--you gotta know, old Rummy's sighing a very big sigh of relief now that Saddam can't point any fingers any more).

The upside is that Hell just got a little more crowded. Given the assumption that the previous sentence is true, therefore Hell just got marginally more inconvenient for Saddam, Satan, and all the denizens who are damned there for all eternity.

I defy anyone to find a downside in that argument. DEFY, I say!

>I can't see why any rational person would be >against the death penalty.

I refer you to my earlier post about why previously pro-DP conservative Michael Howard changed his mind.

James Lynch Said: "(unless it's like the end of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and a Hussein double was executed while the main man pretends to be his own double.)"

Well, thank you for the spoiler (kidding ^_^).
While I am not against the death penalty for the most heinous[sp] of crimes [mass murderers and the like]; I also feel that killing Saddam will eventually end up making things worse. Initially, however, it doesen't seem like they care as much as we thought (I guess they have been too busy over the past 4 years shooting at each other, and us, to hate Saddam).

Hi Peter, I met you several years ago at a book signing in London, you gave me some fantastic advice, and wrote an incouragement that Stephen King once gave you. I've still to be published, and do not have as much time to write as I used to, but I do still have a few projects on the boil, and I am now a self-employed art consultant. I had a question for you that I have not seen an answer to elsewhere. I absolutely love your New Frontier series (I wish they'd filmed it rather than Enterprise), and I was wondering. Mackenzie is the name that M'k'n'zy adopted when he joined Starfleet, but I was wondering, how would the Xenexian name be phonetically pronounced? Was it intended to be a tetragrammaton that could not be pronounced?
Best wishes for all your future projects,
Tim

Posted by Peter David at December 30, 2006 08:42 AM
"What are you going to do, put them in prison for life? I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve."

"And I can point to many examples of guns used in accidental shootings. Yet I daresay those who favor unfettered gun ownership would be unimpressed by it."
PAD

The only way this would make sense is if,
A. The Texas 7 accidentally killed the people after escaping from prison.
B. The inanimate guns came to life, developed conscious thought and morality, and then accidentally killed people of their own volition.
C. Statistics showing the deaths of people from ladder accidents similarly don't impress those in favor of unfettered ladder ownership.

Posted by: TallestFanEver at December 31, 2006 04:32 AM

I defy anyone to find a downside in that argument. DEFY, I say!

As was depicted on South Park, Satan and Saddam could become lovers.

All of this is moot. Hussein's dead, yes. Executed by a puppet government under the control of the Halliburton Corporation, which effectively runs this country. Corruption all around, yes. A martyr to the Sunnis and Baathists, yes.

A guilty, evil, nasty little tinpot dictator, hell yes. Put in power by the American government, what else is new? We've been propping up one crappy banana republic after another for over a century. And when they get too greedy or too aggressive, we kill them and stick some other punk in power, one who'll do what we tell him to. And to stress our point, we'll tell the new fish to look at what we did to his predecessor, take a good look, boy, because that'll be you if you don't toe the line.

Yes, the death penalty is awful. Eye for an eye would leave us all blind. Sadly, retribution is sometimes called for. When someone commits a crime for which there is no recompense, what else can we do? Lethal injection, which is pretty much the normal method of execution now, is expensive. It's designed so that no one person has the karmic burden of knowing that he's ended the life of another. It's supposedly painless.

But the person being executed has caused pain to his victims and their families, and should be repaid in kind. And while being in a cell for the remainder of his life, forced to watch home movies of his victims sounds like apt punishment, I'm afraid most lawyers would call it cruel and unusual.

There are no easy answers to this. There never have been, and never will be. We can't mindwipe these people, like Ben Reich was in The Demolished Man. All we can do is blunder on the best and worst we can. And that means more people will die, for good or ill.

Incidentally, I suspect there are countries with far greater potential for embarrassment on the Iraq chemical weapons than us.

All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin... Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French...

...indeed, the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq such as anthrax, West Nile virus and clostridium perfringens. Which is mind bogglingly stupid but I'm not certain any of those were used against the Kurds (though I would not doubt it).

None of which excuses us or is meant to pass the buck to our European and Middle eastern friends but the story is too often presented as though the USA just handed over every drop of chemicals Saddam ever used. The truth seems far from that (if there is evidence to the contrary please let me know).

As embarrassed as the Germans and French should be, George Bush led the cover-up to bury the truth.

Who Armed Iraq?
...the U.S.-led Security Council censored the entire dossier, deleting more than 100 names of companies and groups that profited from Iraq's crimes and aggression. The censorship came too late, however. The long list -- including names of large U.S. corporations -- Dupont, Hewlett-Packard, and Honeywell -- was leaked to a German daily, Die Tageszeitung. Despite the Security Council coverup, the truth came out....

Alcolac International, a Maryland company, transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq. A Tennessee manufacturer contributed large amounts of a chemical used to make sarin, a nerve gas implicated in Gulf War diseases....

The inspection process is spawning a host of questions about U.S. policy.

• Why aren't U.S. and European scientists, who invented and produced lethal materials for Saddam Hussein, subject to interrogations like their counterparts in Iraq?
• Are U.S. companies sending their deadly material to other dictators?
• Why are there no congressional hearings on the U.S. role in arms proliferation?
• And how many senators (like the voice of Connecticut's arms industry, Sen. Joe Lieberman) are taking contributions from the world's arms dealers?

And of course, related to the corruption of this administration, Dick Cheney took $73 million from Saddam Hussein for quadrupling his oil revenues when Hussein was publicly offering bounties after Gulf War I to the families of suicide bombers.

When someone commits a crime for which there is no recompense, what else can we do?

As long as my point about the selective application of the death penalty based on the ethnicity of the victim goes unrefuted, I have no reservation against repeating where it applies.

While blacks are the leading victims of murder, death rows are dominated by convicts who kill whites. While the burden to the families of white murder victims is too severe, I guess it's just too bad for the families of black murder victims that they're just shit out of luck.

As embarrassed as the Germans and French should be, George Bush led the cover-up to bury the truth.

the U.S.-led Security Council censored the entire dossier,

So when the UN does something one doesn't like it's suddenly the US led Security Council. And since Bush leads the US it's him doing the leading. This seems a bit slippery.

I've still seen nothing to support the contention that the US gave Saddam the chemical weapons used against the kurds--at best we were a small part of that, if we were any part at all. Which does not excuse it but it would behoove those who critisize us to give the whole picture, if they wish to be taken seriously.

The upside is that Hell just got a little more crowded. Given the assumption that the previous sentence is true, therefore Hell just got marginally more inconvenient for Saddam, Satan...
I defy anyone to find a downside in that argument. DEFY, I say!

Easy.

Remember the tag line from Romero's famous DAWN OF THE DEAD film? "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

Maybe we should start to worry? ;-)

...the U.S.-led Security Council censored the entire dossier...

So when the UN does something one doesn't like it's suddenly the US led Security Council. And since Bush leads the US it's him doing the leading. This seems a bit slippery.

Why is it slippery to say the obvious?

When was the US chastised for something the UN went along with? What are you complaining about?

"All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin... Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French..."

...indeed, the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq...

...the story is too often presented as though the USA just handed over every drop of chemicals Saddam ever used. The truth seems far from that (if there is evidence to the contrary please let me know).

Alcolac International, a Maryland company, transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq. A Tennessee manufacturer contributed large amounts of a chemical used to make sarin, a nerve gas implicated in Gulf War diseases....

I've still seen nothing to support the contention that the US gave Saddam the chemical weapons used against the kurds...

Oooh, somehow giving chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein is worse than profiting from their sale. That's Totally Normal Psychology.™

"What are you going to do, put them in prison for life? I refer you to the case of the Texas Seven, where men that were in prison for life managed to escape and murder a policeman on Christmas Eve."
*************
SER: So, by this argument, you would support the death penalty only for those who might arguably do so again? That occasionally factors into sentencing but not always. I don't recall that being an issue in the Scott Peterson case, for example. The prosecutors basically stated that he needed to die because of the crime he committed. There was no convincing argument made that Peterson was so great a threat to the public that life in prison would endanger innocent lives. Frankly, if that was part of the process and burden of proof on those seeking the death penalty vs. life in prison, I imagine we would see far less people sentenced to death.

It is true that Alcolac International, a Maryland company, transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq.

Go to http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:99ppToBo4I4J:www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/iran/iran-chemical-1998.html+Alcolac+International+mustard+gas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a
for a bit more detail. An interesting section:

In January 1989, a U.S. Customs Service investigation revealed that an Iranian diplomat posted in West Germany, Seyed Kharim Ali Sobhani, had brokered three shipments of thiodiglycol, a precursor of mustard gas and a controlled commodity, from the United States to Iran in 1987 and 1988 through a West German company. The Iranian agent had instructed the German firm Chemco GmbH to purchase the chemical from Alcolac International of Baltimore, and shipments were routed through third countries (30 tons through Greece in March 1987 and 60 tons through Singapore in June 1987) to conceal their final destinations.

The Customs Service intercepted a third Alcolac shipment of 120 tons in April 1988, substituted water for the chemicals, and tracked the shipment through Singapore and Pakistan to a Tehran firm M/S Ray Textile Industries, that U.S. officials said was a front company for chemical purchases. The responsible officer at Chemco GmbH was arrested and pleaded guilty to violating U.S. export law, but subsequently jumped bond and fled to West Germany, where he could not be extradited or prosecuted under German law. The West German government, under pressure from the United States, forced Tehran to withdraw the Iranian diplomat from its embassy in Bonn.

Alcolac pleaded guilty to a single count of violating U.S. export law for manipulation of documents by its export manager, Leslie Hinkelman, to conceal the fact that the 120-ton shipment of thiodiglycol was destined for Iran. It was later revealed that Alcolac exported four other shipments of thiodiglycol totaling more than 400 tons through Nu Kraft Mercantile Corporation of New York, which were ultimately diverted via Jordan to Iraq.

Hmmm...y'know, a person might, just might get the impression that instead of "The US giving Saddam chemical weapons" we have a US company breaking the law and using every trick in the book to hide this fact. One wonders why these details--which seem to me to be fairly important, wouldn't you agree, Mike?--were left out of the SFgate article. Lack of space, no doubt.

And perhaps there is reason to believe that the US government was totally aware of these crimes and actually behind it. Haven't seen it yet though.

Of course, if one is willing to ignore all logic one could pretend that any and all actions of any and all US companies are henceforth to be considered The Offical Government Policy Of These United States and go on from there.

It is true that Alcolac International, a Maryland company, transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq.

Go to h**p://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:99ppToBo4I4J:www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/iran/iran-chemical-1998.html+Alcolac+International+mustard+gas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a
for a bit more detail. An interesting section:

In January 1989, a U.S. Customs Service investigation revealed that an Iranian diplomat posted in West Germany, Seyed Kharim Ali Sobhani, had brokered three shipments of thiodiglycol, a precursor of mustard gas and a controlled commodity, from the United States to Iran in 1987 and 1988 through a West German company. The Iranian agent had instructed the German firm Chemco GmbH to purchase the chemical from Alcolac International of Baltimore, and shipments were routed through third countries (30 tons through Greece in March 1987 and 60 tons through Singapore in June 1987) to conceal their final destinations.

The Customs Service intercepted a third Alcolac shipment of 120 tons in April 1988, substituted water for the chemicals, and tracked the shipment through Singapore and Pakistan to a Tehran firm M/S Ray Textile Industries, that U.S. officials said was a front company for chemical purchases. The responsible officer at Chemco GmbH was arrested and pleaded guilty to violating U.S. export law, but subsequently jumped bond and fled to West Germany, where he could not be extradited or prosecuted under German law. The West German government, under pressure from the United States, forced Tehran to withdraw the Iranian diplomat from its embassy in Bonn.

Alcolac pleaded guilty to a single count of violating U.S. export law for manipulation of documents by its export manager, Leslie Hinkelman, to conceal the fact that the 120-ton shipment of thiodiglycol was destined for Iran. It was later revealed that Alcolac exported four other shipments of thiodiglycol totaling more than 400 tons through Nu Kraft Mercantile Corporation of New York, which were ultimately diverted via Jordan to Iraq.

Hmmm...y'know, a person might, just might get the impression that instead of "The US giving Saddam chemical weapons" we have a US company breaking the law and using every trick in the book to hide this fact. One wonders why these details--which seem to me to be fairly important, wouldn't you agree, Mike?--were left out of the SFgate article. Lack of space, no doubt.

And perhaps there is reason to believe that the US government was totally aware of these crimes and actually behind it. Haven't seen it yet though.

Of course, if one is willing to ignore all logic one could pretend that any and all actions of any and all US companies are henceforth to be considered The Offical Government Policy Of These United States and go on from there.

The funny thing is that rolling from "Amazon.com was running a mad sale on Garman GPS devices" to the death of Saddam Hussein are inextricably linked and until we recognise this relationship we're forever condemned to repeat it. It's our love of cheap, bargain stuff, of irresponsible consumption that leads to these resource wars and thus toppling once favoured dictators. It's our greed, our need for junk we don't really need, is what keeps perpetuating these problems. Although collective responsibility is a blunt instrument we do, at some atomic level, share some of the blame for this chaos. I think Western hyper-consumption is incredibly dangerous and frankly, stupid.

Hmmm...y'know, a person might, just might get the impression that instead of "The US giving Saddam chemical weapons" we have a US company breaking the law and using every trick in the book to hide this fact. One wonders why these details--which seem to me to be fairly important, wouldn't you agree, Mike?--were left out of the SFgate article. Lack of space, no doubt.

The Alcolac bust? Clinton-era.

Sheltering Alcolac by censoring their mention from the Iraq Weapons Declaration? Bush-era.

"The US giving Saddam chemical weapons" and "any and all actions of any and all US companies are henceforth to be considered The Offical Government Policy Of These United States?" Strawmen.

Pitiful.

In January 1989, a U.S. Customs Service investigation revealed...

Oh, crap, I gave the Future™ an inaccuracy. W shelterd a company busted under his dad's watch.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

ok, just so I'm clear, we've gone from "The USA gave Saddam the chemicals used to kill the Kurds" to "GW Bush, using his svengali-like pwers to make the UN do whatever he wants, helped to hide the fact that a US company illegally sold chemicals to Iran and Iraq until they were caught."

Once again, the power of the web. Remember when we had to take people's word on things, trusting that they would have the integrity to include all the salient details?

Also, please in the future add the name of hans Blix to your list of evildoers--"UNSCOM had a practice of not revealing names of companies of suppliers of equipment to Iraq because they often had the possibility of getting information from these companies, and the best way to get these companies to talk to them was not to publish their names to start with," Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, told CNN. I smell cover-up!

(What was the vote in the security council on this? Considering how so many other countries were in this up to their eyeballs to a far greater degree than we were this might be an interesting detail...one Mike's source left out, allowing the careless reader to come away with the impression that it was the US that suppressed this report (though even THEY didn't go so far as to claim it was a GW Bush coverup))

So despite your best efforts, it would seem at this point--someone less interested in snark and more interested in facts may well come up with something to convince me otherwise--that we can lay to rest the old "The US supplied Iraq with those very same WMDs that Saddam was accused of using" chestnut.

Oh, crap, I gave the Future™ an inaccuracy. W shelterd a company busted under his dad's watch.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

Don't feel obligated to tell the truth on my account, Mike. It should be something you wish to do just because it's, you know, the right thing to do.

Bill,
I think there is a tendancy to conflate together the fact that Saddam used WMD in the late 80's and the fact that the US prefered Saddam to Hummeni in the Iran-Iraq conflict. So far you've focused on what chemicals and technology Iraq got from the west. But perhaps you could elaborate on the nature of the relationship between Saddam and the US during the Iran-Iraq war. I don't know much about it.

We stupidly sided with Saddam, which, given the fact that we had come close to war with Iran is understandable but was still a mistake. There is a penalty to be payed for supporting thugs and mass murderers, even if they may be temporarily on your side. It might be unavoidable, as it was with Stalin, but there will always be a price. Personally I don't think it was even close to worth it and that would have been the case even if Gulf wars 1 and 2 hadn't happened.

Those who now are making pilgrimages to Iran to be photoed with a smiling Ahmadinejad would do well to remember that. If the miserable little madman lives up to his ambitions...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31, 2006 — The latest video of Saddam's execution, with a soundtrack that shows that his guards were taunting him up to the last moment before the lever was pulled and he fell to his death, has been burning through cyberspace in Iraq and across the Middle East.

It is not only the bad taste of mocking a man about to die that has been getting angry reactions here: The worst aspect is the sectarian nature of the insults.

The guards shout "Moqtada, Moqtada," as Saddam is reciting a prayer with the noose around his neck: They are referring to Moqtada al Sadr, the extremist Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army is the most feared militia in Iraq, widely thought to operate death squads targeting Sunnis.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=2762610&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Beautiful.

"We stupidly sided with Saddam."

Do you know what was the nature of the support? Did he get money? Conventional weapons? Good oil deals?

The people who claim that the US supplied Iraq with WMD assume that that was part of the support Iraq received from the US during that time. I don't know if it is true or not. But I think you'll have to address the issue of WMD from this angle too if you want to refute the allegations that the US is somehow responsible to tthe WMD of Iraq. In public opinion you are guilty until proven innocent.

Bill & Micha,

I think you're dealing with what has become sloppy debating technique. Some facts get discussed so often that they become condensed and shorthanded in discussions with the passage of time.

I'm not sure what Mike (I have a wonderful new policy of just skipping his posts) is saying, but, from what you've reposted from his posts, I think there is a 50/50 point between what you're saying and what he and many of the way-far left are saying. The U.S. didn't actually sell Iraq or Saddam fully finalized WMDs. However, "we sold Saddam the weapons" has become the shorthand version of the full argument (and even I'm guilty of often saying it to save time rather then going into all the details.)

The argument is based on a long series of events from the early to mid 80's. Back in 1982, during the Iran/Iraq war, the Reagan-Bush administration took Iraq off its list of countries that support terrorism and sold Saddam conventional weapons. By 1983, Iraq launched chemical weapons attacks on Iran. The U.S. State Dept. said that the United States strongly condemned the prohibited use of chemical weapons wherever it occurs, but this condemnation was not backed by any official action. Actually, Reagan-Bush then restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, supplied Iraq intelligence information to help fight Iran, allowed American corporations to sell Saddam dual-use technologies and biological materials suitable for weapons use and then extended Iraq more than $1 billion of loan credits. This is where many start to see "the U.S. giving Iraq WMD's."

Rumsfeld didn't even criticize the use of WMD's in his infamous visit with Saddam. All he did was, if all reports are true, mention in passing that use of such tactics made U.S. support of Iraq more difficult.

By 1988, Saddam had used his illegal weapons stockpiles against the Kurds. Many in the Senate wanted resolutions for sanctions against Iraq, but these were blocked by the White House under Reagan and Bush Sr. We then had U.S. companies sell even more questionable items to Saddam with a nudge, a wink and a blessing from Reagan and Bush Sr.

(Slightly condensed) Michael Dobbs, Washington Post (12/30/03):
Iraq's gassing of the Kurds "provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Dept. and White House were also outraged - but not to the point of doing anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad. "Although US arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as precursors for chemical weapons and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. In December of 1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq which could be used as chemical warfare agents."

If you, Bill, have a history of setting fire to the houses of people you hate, then we shouldn't give you the materials to set more fires. The law steps in and says that no one is allowed to sell you matches, lighters or flints. I want to make money. I go to you and sell you magnifying lenses, paper thin balsa wood slats and alcohol. Hey, they 're all things that a teacher can claim legitimate work uses for. Sure, they're duel use. Yeah, they can be used to set the odd noontime house fire. But I know that you, despite your history, would never (nudge, nudge) use them in THAT manner. My conscience is clean.

Same with the U.S. and Saddam from before 1983 and up through Gulf War I. We knew what he was and we knew what he would do. We didn't actually sell him WMD's, but we damn sure gave him all the tools, support and basic supplies to crank out huge amounts of biological and chemical weapons right after he showed the world just how much he liked to use them.

And why did we do this? Per National Security Defense Directive 114 and a sworn affidavit from former National Security Council official Howard Teicher, "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes is a strategic defeat for the West."

Like many U.S. actions in the Middle East, our leaders were on shaky moral ground and just didn't care. They did things and allowed things that common sense would have told a five year old was the wrong thing to do. But they once again screwed us all over by dealing with "their" devil over "a" devil for "the greater good."

All of that often gets shorthanded by people into being "the U.S. sold Saddam the WMD's that he used in his crimes" or "we still have the receipts." Some of us use the shorthand version but will explain some of that mess if asked and some (who are less lazy then I and will do craploads of net searches) will go into even greater detail with links out the backside. Others, who shall go nameless and unmentioned, say it because they actually seem to believe that we sent Rumsfeld himself over there with the weaponized WMD supplies stuffed in his carry on luggage bags and personally handed them to Saddam.

From what I've found the nature of most of the support Iraq got from the USA was of "dual purpose" nnature--computers, etc, things that could be used for peaceful purposes but easily converted into something more sinister. Even the biological agents were supposedly for vaccine manufacturing and may well have been used as such--I still wouldn't be sending someone like that anything of that nature. If anthrax is such a big problem for him he shouldn't have any trouble getting his own samples.

I'm not much interested in refuting the perception that we gave Saddam his chemical WMD--nothing I can say will convince some of those who have invested too much into this idea. Isn't there a quote somewhere about how impossible it is to use logic to change someone's mind from an opinion they arrived at through illogic? What interests me is that I had assumed there was much more to this idea than there seems to be. You keep hearing people say something and you assume there has to be SOMETHING to back it up.

"What interests me is that I had assumed there was much more to this idea than there seems to be. You keep hearing people say something and you assume there has to be SOMETHING to back it up"

There is quite a bit, but it's evidence of a very subjective nature. I think it depends on your personal biases.

You hear an odd and disturbing sound come from the house next door. You look out your window and see a young woman covered in blood and carrying a large butcher's knife walking slowly down the steps and then slowly down the street. You call 9-1-1 and then, after losing the fight with your better judgment, head over to the house. You step inside the house and enter the living room where you see a man, unmoving and quite dead, laying in a pool of his own blood. The multiple knife wounds are easy to see.

What has just happened?

With just that little bit of information, can you say that you know what happened for sure? No. But your biases are going to lead you to your first guess (and strongest belief) about what has transpired.

She killed him in cold blood.

He was beating her and she acted in self defense.

She walked into the house after a day out and found her loved one dead on the floor. She screamed, saw the knife, picked it up, stared at it for a few moments and then staggered away as her mind shut down due to extreme shock.

He got bit by a "bum" the night before and got ill, died in his sleep, re-animated by morning and then attacked her. She killed him again, but not before receiving fatal wounds herself. The blood on the floor is actually hers and not his. She then re-animated later that day and staggered out the door while still clutching the knife she stabbed into his undead brain with before dieing herself.

Who knows? If you never get any more information then that, you never will know for sure what happened in that house before you arrived. That won't stop most people from talking about what "actually happened" for years to come.

It's kind of the same here. Tons of stuff happened in Iraq and in our White House and much of it was documented in that eight year period. Lots of it has been put on display. None of it is truly definitive. Your own bias is going to color how you see it. I tend to see it as showing that the powers that be in the U.S. intentionally allowed Saddam to be specifically equipped to produce the same weapons that we've come to condemn Saddam for possessing and using. I know people who look at all of that stuff and more and say that it means exactly squat.

Barring a complete declassification of all White House and government documents from that era or a deathbed attempt to wipe past sins clean, we'll never be able to truly make a completely definitive statement about what happened in this time period and why. But we can have so much fun arguing about what it all actually means for years and years to come.

:)

Jerry, one thing I wanted to make clear--my last post was written before I could read your second to last one, it wasn't a reply.

You make good points and your view on things is far more persuasive than the "shorthand" (which, by leaving out any detail that doesn't support it, ends up looking weak).

I tend to see it as showing that the powers that be in the U.S. intentionally allowed Saddam to be specifically equipped to produce the same weapons that we've come to condemn Saddam for possessing and using. I know people who look at all of that stuff and more and say that it means exactly squat.

I still think this is going to far--were that the case they should have left those companies alone instead of stopping them. And those companies sure went through a lot of trouble to appear as though they were doing something that did not have the sanction of the US government.

I would also point out that it is not terribly logical to intentionally allow even an ally to make and stockpile, much less use, chemical weapons. Even if one assumes the very worst of our government, such a policy makes no sense. Why encourage the use of weapons we can't sell? I'd sooner believe the argument that our only objection to chemical and biological weapons is purely a financial one--better to sell them guns and rockets and replacement parts. WMDs are for those too poor to afford a decent defense.

I'm always willing to listen to conspiracy theories and the like but at the very least one should demand that they have an internal logic. When they make no sense--"Johnson killed Kennedy and the CIA has murdered everyone who has come close to the truth including Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe and Malcolm X but they have left me, Joe Whackjob, alive because they know if they kill me the secret will be out."--they lose me.

All this does make me wonder about something I alluded to before--given how our old relationship with Iraq blew up in our faces how can anyone seriously suggest, as many now do, that we must engage Iran and Syria? Given the nuts in charge there now, given what they have said and done, it doesn't take Jean Dixon to predict that any such actions could be even more of a disaster. Ditto the Palestinians--hell, how much of the money that has gone to them has been either stolen or used for crimes against humanity?

If we condemn--as perhaps we should--former leaders for looking the other way when dealing with yesterdays thugs, how can we seriously suggest the likely repetition of that error today?

Anyway...Jerry, Bill, PAD, Sasha, Micha, Craig, Tim, Bobb, the professor and Mary Ann, and the rest, heck, even Mike and the Squirrels--Have a Happy New Year. Here's to 2007. May it not suck.

Will things be better with Saddam executed. I doubt it. Will they get worse? I am skeptical, but only because it is such a mess already. (Yes, even though I support the war, I do believe it is a mess.)

Was justice done? Absolutely. There is a case to be made that the death penalty is not necessary or always the best option. But after much thought, I am convinced the death penalty is just when it is applied to the right person. In this case, there is no doubt.

While governments are not perfect, as PAD points out, I believe there is an important difference when a government executes someone versus an individual.

Bottom line, with all due respect to PAD, I don't seem much downside to Saddam's execution.

Iowa Jim

"I still think this is going to far--"

Maybe, maybe not. As I said, there is more info and details out there. Some of it is of a stronger nature of persuasion and some of it is weaker. My personal bias in these cases tends to make me go with the more pessimistic of the choices when looking at what may have been done and why. And this particular bias isn't a Republican VS Democrat kind of thing. This one is more along the lines of my not really trusting most of the people in the halls of power up on the big hill, R or D, to do the right thing when given the chance and from working so closely around so many politicians from all sides of the isle.

"--were that the case they should have left those companies alone instead of stopping them."

P.R.? Deniability? How much has come out about what the government has done or allowed to be done on the sly that it shouldn't have or that it denied in just our lifetimes? They've had to change the official start date of the Vietnam War on a number of memorials because quite a few years ago the "official" date the war started was moved back to an earlier starting point with the declassification of government papers. Why? Because we were over there when we were being told that we had no men in that country and we were doing things that our leaders of the time claimed that we wouldn't be doing. Iran/Contra was a huge public mess when it leaked. How many total $**th***$ out there have been backed and praised by the U.S. only to turn out to be just slightly less vile then the "bad guy" that we chose not to back?

"...logical to intentionally allow even an ally to make and stockpile, much less use, chemical weapons."

Ohhhhhh. You want to use a logic based ideal when talking about our government's actions and decisions and the U.S. government's history of foreign policy blunders? Well, I guess it's a novel concept that ought to be tried at least once in a while. I'm just not to sure that the powers that be share your ability for logic. Thus my bias towards the idea that government did (and still does) really dumb and shortsighted things because it seems like a swell idea to someone in charge at the time.

Hmmmm. That last paragraph is not meant to be as drippingly sarcastic towards you as it probably reads. It's actually meant to be drippingly sarcastic towards our many "leaders" from the last several decades. I just can't quite write it right.
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Anywho....

Happy New Year to everybody here. Here's hoping that ALL of you stay healthy and well and may the upcoming year give us even more fun stuff to gripe and moan about in these electronic pages. Jeers.

I think the whole idea that Saddam as a high-profile martyr arguement is a little silly. These people have a hated each other for around 1500 years. They don't need martyrs. They may say they are doing it for Saddam but they would still do what they will do regardless, they would just use a different excuse.

I haven't had time to read the entire thread so I can't comment on anything of substance yet. I can only say this...

It's 2007 and what's the first thing I notice in PAD's blog? Yet another reference to squirrels. This, I am sure, will be my epitaph.

Nevertheless... Happy New Year everyone!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy New Year, Evil Twin, and to all the blogzombies herein.

Jerry C's bit about figuring out the details of a killing, the chick with the knife he was talking about in an earlier post, reminds me of something in a Chris Moore novel; there's a bit in, I think, Bloodsucking Fiends, where a cop is lamenting the simple days of open-and-shut cases, when you'd walk into the crime scene and there'd be a man with a smoking gun in his hand, standing over the body of his dead wife, and all he can say is "Liver and onions"...

And of course, my damaged brain, all cross-circuited, immediately switches over to the bit in Moore's "Lust Lizard", where our pothead constable, Theophilus Crowe, is trying to explain to the EMTs that the late Bess Leander was not Amish, that she was just a neatfreak who liked that style of decor, whereupon one of the EMTs tells the other that she was Mennonite. Amish with blenders.

Sorry. I'm a little loopy this morning. Galloping cats at 0400. One cup of coffee. Matt Broderick and Nathan Lane sang me to sleep last night. The Producers is on HBO.

I really need to do the Arthur Clarke thing and move to a tropical island as far away from other humans as I can. Mornings like this I'm a danger to humanity and myself. Maybe another cigarette will help.

ok, just so I'm clear, we've gone from "The USA gave Saddam the chemicals used to kill the Kurds" to "GW Bush, using his svengali-like pwers to make the UN do whatever he wants, helped to hide the fact that a US company illegally sold chemicals to Iran and Iraq until they were caught...."

So despite your best efforts, it would seem at this point--someone less interested in snark and more interested in facts may well come up with something to convince me otherwise--that we can lay to rest the old "The US supplied Iraq with those very same WMDs that Saddam was accused of using" chestnut.

Bill, I'm searching for the quotes you are citing and can't find them.

Is your denial "the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq such as anthrax" grounded in reality?

...and I don't mean the quote as standalone:

It would seem the Germans provided the majority of Iraq's poison gas supplies...insert obvious grim joke here.

All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin... Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French...

Austria is said to have provided 16%, Spain 4.4%. With China, Singapore, Holland, India and Luxembourg (the hell?) also contributing to the chemical weapons program it would seem there is little room left for us...and indeed, the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq...

If you're going to hold other countries to what their corporations do, holding the US involvement only to the actions of the government does not qualify as Normal Psychology.™

I notice a lot of "pro-lifers" are also in favor of the death penalty. Case in point:

In the clone thread Iowa Jim states "the staunch pro-life crowd (of which I am a part)", but in this thread he says "I am convinced the death penalty is just when it is applied to the right person.".

Dictionary.com defines Staunch as "Firm and steadfast".

Where is the dividing line between "staunch pro-life" & "okay to kill", and who decides it?

Well, "the video" is all over the web (as predicted by one Mike Malloy) and I have to give it two thumbs down. Unnecessary, unsettling, and pointless...kind of like certain political figures and pundits I can think of.

15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. A murderer jailed at 20 would have to live to 80 for the death penalty to be cost effective. Citing cost as a merit of the death penalty is riculous. >>>

It cost 10 bucks to buy a rope from Home Depot, and probably fifty bucks to build a stage to toss someone over and hang them from it.

60 bucks vs 9 million. I think Iraq went the cheap route there.

It cost 10 bucks to buy a rope from Home Depot, and probably fifty bucks to build a stage to toss someone over and hang them from it.

60 bucks vs 9 million. I think Iraq went the cheap route there.

Don't let anyone stop you from packing your bags and moving there.

"I notice a lot of "pro-lifers" are also in favor of the death penalty. Case in point:

In the clone thread Iowa Jim states "the staunch pro-life crowd (of which I am a part)", but in this thread he says "I am convinced the death penalty is just when it is applied to the right person.".

Dictionary.com defines Staunch as "Firm and steadfast".

Where is the dividing line between "staunch pro-life" & "okay to kill", and who decides it? "

Michael, I disagree with Iowa Jim over many things. But I think the arguments of 'our' side should be fair and honest.

1) We all agree that adults (and children up to a certain age) who have committed crimes should be punished.

2) We all agree that babies are innocent (leaving aside the original sin issue) and should not be punished, certainly not killed.

3) We all agree that life is sacred (or an equivalent secular word I can't think of right now).

The disagreements are about:
1) Whether or not execution is a proper form of punishment for criminal adults (and children up to a certain age).
2) At what stage should fetuses be considered babies.

There is no contradiction in opposing abortion and supporting capital punishment, or vice versa. If we argue about these issues, as we should, we should use proper arguments.

As a personal favor to me, as much as possible, please don't use dictionary definitions to make your point. It doesn't really help.

...I think the arguments of 'our' side should be fair and honest....

There is no contradiction in opposing abortion and supporting capital punishment, or vice versa. If we argue about these issues, as we should, we should use proper arguments.

Opposing abortion and supporting capital punishment are contradictions when your stated reason for opposing abortion is to preserve life. Otherwise, what secular standing does anyone have to oppose abortion?

"Opposing abortion and supporting capital punishment are contradictions when your stated reason for opposing abortion is to preserve life. Otherwise, what secular standing does anyone have to oppose abortion?"

To preserve innocent life (or at least something they consider innocent life).

Neither pro-lifers nor those who opppose capital punishment are not necessarily pacifists, although wars also involve the loss of life.

To preserve innocent life (or at least something they consider innocent life).

You don't seriously expect to get credit for a qualification you can't define, do you?

You don't seriously expect me to start another pointless, going around in circles debate with you?

Bye bye Mike.

You don't seriously expect to get credit for a qualification you can't define, do you?

You don't seriously expect me to start another pointless, going around in circles debate with you?

Bye bye Mike.

I don't blame you for leaving. If we aren't supposed to go by anything you say, why do you bother posting here?

"why do you bother posting here?"

I post for the benefit of having serious discussions with serious (but sometimes fun) people. I'm not leaving.

why do YOU bother posting here?

If you oppose abortions because you say "all life is sacred", then supporting the death penalty is a contradiction, because now you're saying that some life isn't sacred.

And yes, I know prisoners occasionally escape, but it's an extremely rare event.
--------

To preserve innocent life (or at least something they consider innocent life).

Since the fanatic anti-abortionists who kill doctors & other women's clinic employees use this argument, it brings me back to my original question:

Where is the dividing line between "staunch pro-life" & "okay to kill", and who decides it?

One person's preserving innocent life is another person's murder.

why do YOU bother posting here?

Why do you ask?

You removed the qualifier to my question. Why don't you answer my question in its Context™?

Bill, I'm searching for the quotes you are citing and can't find them.

I thought that was fairly obvious to anyone who's been following the thread. Did I make the second one insufficiantly stupid sounding? Oh well, my bad.

Is your denial "the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq such as anthrax" grounded in reality?

I think that's a statement, not a denial. And what part is unreal to you?

If you're going to hold other countries to what their corporations do, holding the US involvement only to the actions of the government does not qualify as Normal Psychology.™

Wow, that one crack really got under your skin, eh? Must be a great story there--tell it to someone some time.

And I see from your arguing with Micha that you're really taken with the whole TM superscript joke. Well, good for you. The Lennie stuff was getting a bit shopworn. But don't overuse it or you'll have to come up with something else. How about "...NOT!"

I don't hold the German government necessarily responsible for the actions of a few rogue companies...though you must admit they seem to be far less vigilant than the US has been in keeping tabs on their companies.

My point, which I think is not hard to grasp, was that the oft repeated chestnut about the USA being the source of the chemical weapons used against the Kurds is simplistic at best, a deliberate lie at worst (assuming we have all the information, of course). That should only bother those who have a vested interest in portraying the United States in as bad a light as possible.

Re "pro-life" and capital punishment---It does sound ludicrous to be "pro-life" and in favor of killing someone...but it's also ludicrous to be "pro-choice" and be against my being able to choose to buy Playboy, which would certainly describe most of the hardcore feminists I went to college with.

Just as the "choice" they are for is confined to one particular issue, the "life" the pro-lifers are pro about is a particular kind of life. But these are pretty minor points on an issue that is already full of too many distractions.

Bill, I'm searching for the quotes you are citing and can't find them.

I thought that was fairly obvious to anyone who's been following the thread. Did I make the second one insufficiantly stupid sounding?

Thank you for admitting your use of strawmen was deliberate.

No one should believe anything you say, not even "Hello."

• Hmmm...y'know, a person might, just might get the impression that instead of [quote no one said] we have a US company breaking the law and using every trick in the book to hide this fact.
• Of course, if one is willing to ignore all logic one could pretend that [point no one made] and go on from there.
• ok, just so I'm clear, we've gone from [quote no one said] to [quote no one said...]
• So despite your best efforts, it would seem at this point--someone less interested in snark and more interested in facts may well come up with something to convince me otherwise--that we can lay to rest the old [quote no one said] chestnut.

Don't feel obligated to tell the truth on my account, Mike. It should be something you wish to do just because it's, you know, the right thing to do.

Pitiful.

Is your denial "the worst thing I've been able to find was our sending biological samples to Iraq such as anthrax" grounded in reality?

I think that's a statement, not a denial. And what part is unreal to you?

That Alcolac shipping 400 tons of mustard-like gas to Saddam Hussein, for one example, somehow does not exceed the severity of "sending biological samples to Iraq."

To preserve innocent life (or at least something they consider innocent life).

Since the fanatic anti-abortionists who kill doctors & other women's clinic employees use this argument, it brings me back to my original question:

Where is the dividing line between "staunch pro-life" & "okay to kill", and who decides it?

One person's preserving innocent life is another person's murder.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you have to grasp for the most extreme examples of the lunatic fringe who claim to share your opponent's views, you've pretty much admitted that you've got no real ammo for your side of the debate. No one here has said that killing doctors to protect the unborn is a good thing.

I'm for the death penalty while being against some forms of abortion and some aspects of it. I have a number of friends who are pro-death penalty and wildly anti-abortion. It's very easy to hold the two ideals without moral or ideological contradictions presenting themselves.

At some point in its development, even pro-choice people recognize what's in a woman's womb is a viable life. An unborn baby has done nothing to anyone and committed no crime. It has earned itself no form of punishment for any of its actions.

A murderer HAS committed a crime. A murderer has committed what many societies throughout history have long seen as one of the ultimate crimes. Thus, a murderer has earned one of society's ultimate punishments. The murderer's own life is now forfeit. The murderer is put to death.

Now, someone here has asked how society committing a "murder" is somehow right and just if the murderer doing the same is wrong. Simple. The death penalty is not murder. It's punishment. We've passed laws that say that you can not take another person's life without facing punishments for that crime that can include death itself. Our laws are also quite clear that it is the State's job to carry out those punishments.

I find it funny that the anti-capital punishment crowd throw that one out there but don't hold other legal rulings or punishments to that standard. Murder is illegal - State sanctioned murder must therefore be wrong as well. Well, it's illegal to hold someone against their will in this country. It's a crime. Wouldn't life in prison be the State breaking the law by holding that person against their will? Why wouldn't that be wrong too? Hey, a crimes a crime. Why not at least be consistent with your arguments?

If a woman finds out that she's pregnant and decides to have an abortion at around her eighth to tenth week, then, according to the pro-choice crowd, she's just made a choice to terminate her pregnancy and that's fine and dandy. If a man mugs a woman in the park who is in her eighth to tenth week and causes the death of the fetus, then he's committed an evil and more vile crime then the mugging, killed her baby and must receive a greater punishment for this crime. Both those positions are basically fine with me. Why? Intent and circumstances. If the woman who was mugged intended to give birth to the child then that changes the circumstances of the child's death and the guy killed her baby.

Some may attack the concept of intent and circumstances as weak, but it is something that comes into play when discussing laws, crimes and punishments. Killing someone in the heat of the moment is not seen as the same level of offense as the pre-planned murder of an individual. Planning to kill Joe Average is seen as a different level of offense then planning to kill a political or religious figure in order cause panic, riots or some form of societal breakdown. All of the above is "murder." It's just the intent of the murderer and the circumstances around that act that changes how we view the crime.

Intent and circumstances also comes into play in other areas. You take out your rifle, you aim at a man's head and you introduce his brains to the outside world. If you do that from your bedroom window while aiming at some random guy on the street, then you're a murderer. If you're a Special Forces Sniper who is taking out a hostile target who's continued existence guarantees the deaths of thousands of innocents and a prolonged military conflict, then they call you a patriot. If you're a Police Sharpshooter who takes out a man who has just killed eight hostages and is about to kill another, then they call you a hero. It's a matter of intent and circumstances.

One of my things with capital punishment is based partly on intent and circumstances. The murderer's intent is to take a life for, likely, no very good reason. The State's intent in performing capital punishment is to remove one of the lowest of the low from society. The circumstances are doing so after the individual has been tried by a jury of one's peers, been found guilty and then sentenced to death.

There are lots of other arguments out there as well. I'll give you one of the stranger ones I've heard just because I've never come across it anywhere else.

I have a friend who has a weirdly novel argument for support of the death penalty that I don't quite agree with, but it's kind of interesting in a strange way. He feels that the death penalty is just fine because a murderer has chosen to die through his actions while the victim didn't. He looks at it like theft vs gambling. He feels that people have a legitimate complaint when they've had money stolen from them. He thinks people should just shut the hell up around him when they're moaning on about they $500 they lost on vacation while trying to get more money by gambling. They knew that the big risk with gambling with that $500 was that they could walk away with nothing. He feels that a murderer is basically gambling with their life rather then their cash. They knew the risks, they knew that they were gambling their own life if they got caught, but they still did it. They get caught and they end up maybe walking away with nothing.

Like I said, I don't quite agree with him. The concept is, bizarrely, kind of sound, but it does take a really strange turn somewhere.

Thank you for admitting your use of strawmen was deliberate.

No one should believe anything you say, not even "Hello."

I see your New Years Resolution to be as useful as possible to those Abnormal Psychology Students From the Future (APSFTF) is holding up nicely. Good job!

Why don't you trademark "thank you for agreeing with me that (stupid point nobody but you would make)" and "pitiful" while you're at it? I think you could make a good case that, at least here on this board, when we see the word "pitiful" yours is the first name we think of. That's effective branding!

That Alcolac shipping 400 tons of mustard-like gas to Saddam Hussein, for one example, somehow does not exceed the severity of "sending biological samples to Iraq."

Yeah, putz, the worst thing I found in my search was the bilogicals. You found the article that, whatvere its other falws, DID bring up Alcolac. I accepted this as a fact. So what's your problem?

No, the other problem.

No, no, not that problem either...oh forget it.

I find it funny that the anti-capital punishment crowd throw that one out there but don't hold other legal rulings or punishments to that standard. Murder is illegal - State sanctioned murder must therefore be wrong as well. Well, it's illegal to hold someone against their will in this country. It's a crime. Wouldn't life in prison be the State breaking the law by holding that person against their will? Why wouldn't that be wrong too? Hey, a crimes a crime. Why not at least be consistent with your arguments?

Oddly, I agree with that (and I'm anti-death penalty). Never really liked the "this makes us no better than they are" argument.

But...I still think it's dangerous to allow the State to have such power. Easily abused and, unlike imprisonment, no possibility of restitution exists.

Michael Brunner, Jerry Chandler did a better job than I could replying to you.

"If you oppose abortions because you say "all life is sacred", then supporting the death penalty is a contradiction, because now you're saying that some life isn't sacred."

I believe there are some people who actually oppose capital punishment and abortion on the basis of the sacredness of life. For example the Catholic Church. But others only oppose the killing of what they consider innocent babies, but support the killing of guilty criminals. There is no inconsistency there.

I'm pro-choice and anti capital punishment, I don't want to use facile arguments to make my case.
Just as I don't want somebody to tell me that if I support the choice of a woman to have abbortion I should support her choice to kill her one year old baby, (or I should support the choice of people to own firearms without any restriction), similarly I don't want to present the pro-life argument in such simplistic terms. I'd rather argue with them on the merits of their point of view.

"why do YOU bother posting here?
Why do you ask?

You removed the qualifier to my question. Why don't you answer my question in its Context™?"

Mike, are you Jewish?

Answering questions with questions is a stereotype associated with Jews (and psychiatrists). Of course, in the case of Jews it's usually associated with a sense of irony and humor. Maybe you're just half-Jewish? (I hope you understand that this is irony and humor.)

I also hope you are not going to copyright the word context. Something tells me I'm going to continue needing it if you're going to remain on this board.

Back to the original issue. apparently the Muslim world is in an uproar because Saddam was executed on the Id al Adha (the holiday of the sacrifice). This is considered extremely inappropriate. But apparently the Shia did it in order to stick it to the Suni, because the Shia celebrate the Id al Adha a day after the Suni.

I hope everyone had a nice (insert politically correct holiday greeting). As someone who works in state government, I see the kind of people who work here and there's no way I'd trust any of them with the power to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die. And that's what you do when you give states the power of a the death penalty. So, I am against the death penalty for that reason: the incompetence of government.

That said, I can see Saddam's execution as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, he's now a martyr for his supporters. On the other, the people who feared his possible return to power can rest assured now.

BTW, if anyone saw Michelle Malkin's blog last week, I think she had a full-on orgasm when Saddam was executed.

Don't feel obligated to tell the truth on my account, Mike. It should be something you wish to do just because it's, you know, the right thing to do.

Bill, I'm searching for the quotes you are citing and can't find them.

I thought that was fairly obvious to anyone who's been following the thread. Did I make the second one insufficiantly stupid sounding?

Thank you for admitting your use of strawmen was deliberate.

So what's your problem?

As an admitted deliberate liar, by what virtue do you continue to debate anyone here?

why do YOU bother posting here

Why do you ask?

You removed the qualifier to my question. Why don't you answer my question in its Context™?"

Mike, are you Jewish?

Answering questions with questions is a stereotype associated with Jews (and psychiatrists). Of course, in the case of Jews it's usually associated with a sense of irony and humor. Maybe you're just half-Jewish? (I hope you understand that this is irony and humor.)

You admitted to "[starting] pointless, going around in circles debate[s.]" That is the basis for me asking why you post here. On what grounds do you ask me the same question?

I also hope you are not going to copyright the word context. Something tells me I'm going to continue needing it if you're going to remain on this board.

What "continue?" When are you going find one instance where I've excluded part of the discourse that surrounded a quote I've cited crucial to the quote's interpretation?

At some point in its development, even pro-choice people recognize what's in a woman's womb is a viable life. An unborn baby has done nothing to anyone and committed no crime. It has earned itself no form of punishment for any of its actions.

Oooh. "An unborn baby has done nothing to anyone and committed no crime."

Didn't the Governor of Illinois put a halt to executions because the death penalty killed people who weren't guilty of the crimes they were convicted of?

Doesn't that unambiguously mean opposing abortion to preserve innocent life and supporting the death penalty the kills people for crimes they haven't committed is inherently inconsistent?

"...by what virtue do you continue to debate anyone here?"

Bill Mulligan continues debate people here by the same "virtue" that you, and everyone else who participates in this blog, does: by "virtue" of Peter David's willingness to allow us to do so.

As an admitted deliberate liar, by what virtue do you continue to debate anyone here?

Bill Mulligan continues debate people here by the same "virtue" that you, and everyone else who participates in this blog, does: by "virtue" of Peter David's willingness to allow us to do so.

No one else is unapologetically lying while holding others to the standard of The Right Thing To Do.™

Blaming everyone but Bill for what Bill does. Pitiful.

"You admitted to "[starting] pointless, going around in circles debate[s.]" That is the basis for me asking why you post here. On what grounds do you ask me the same question?"

There are other people on this board except you who are interested in engaging in serious but fun and friendly discussions. I post here because I enjoy conversing with them. I'm also reading some of Peter David comics, and enjoy them very much. I'm a fan of his work. And you know what, Mike. In your own way you also provide me with some form of entertainment, although not in the form of interesting discussions. So hppy new year.

I asked you why you post, because I don't really understand the worth of drawing people into snarky, pointless, going around in circle arguments. You are clearly not interesting in enriching yourself or others by such posts. And since you tend to be nasty to most if not all, having compllete disregard to their points of view or feelings, I doubt you seek friendly conversation. it's a shame really.

"When are you going find one instance where I've excluded part of the discourse that surrounded a quote I've cited crucial to the quote's interpretation?"

As you recall in one infamous thread you totally ignored the context of a significant term, thus misusing the term. It was this case, in which taking things out of context was the most blatant and reprehensible. This was the only time where I actually went to a great effort to show how you were using the term out of context. This prooved pointless, since your purpose in the discussion was not to understand better this significant historical term as much as to play language games. In any case, that's the first and most significant example.
In the same thread you have also misrepresented the opinion of another person, trying to make it seem as if he's supporting your position, although he was doing exactly the opposite, as he himself repeatedly stated. In this case it was clear you were not interested in his opinion,as much as you enjoyed reversing it by ignoring the ironic context of his statement you were quoting. That's the second example.
This disappointing discussion started because you insisted on reading a well articulated position by Bill Mulligan about Hate Crime laws as racism, which included quoting one of his statements out of context of his whole argument. This was probably you original sin, instead of debating Bill on the merits of his argument, you went on and on attaching an out of context meaning to a few words you took out of his posts. That three.
The fourth example was when you were engaging Bill Myers in a discussion about empeacing Bush. Many people in that thread presented good points of view about why Bush should or should not be impeached and removed from office, or just go through the process of impeachment in order to cause him to change direction. It was quite interesting and enriching. But you prefered to ignore Bill Myers coherent arguments in order to make it seem that he does not know the meaning of the term inpeachment, although it was clear that he does.
The forth case was the strange attempt during a discussion about a statement incorrectly attributed to Bush, to make it seem that Bill Mulligan agrees with you, while at the same time condemning him for not agreeing with you.

In all these cases you could have seriously debated on the issues addressing people's opinions as stateted in their posts, and presenting your own point of view. But instead you chose to grab segments from what they were saying, or from a dictionary definition, and ignore the context in which they appeared. This has made serious discussion with you pointless.

This post is probably pointless too, since I take it for granted Mike, that you will respond in your usual manner. But there is something I'm trying to avoid doing, and this is as good a way as any.

PAD wrote: “I'm a big believer in Kathleen's concept: That the murder should be incarcerated for life in a cell while being forced to watch, 24/7, videos of the lives of those he killed. Image after image after image of births, birthday parties, graduations, weddings, over and over and over, with the volume turned way up, so they can experience every laugh, every cry, every moment of celebration. More often than not, murderers dehumanize their victims. This way they spend the rest of their natural existence faced with the inescapable fact that their victims were human beings.”

Works for me. Of course, to my way of thinking these images should be visible everywhere in the murdererer’s cell. Let him or her spend decades “haunted” by those he or she killed.

The part of me that leans toward vengeance would be tempted to go one step further, however. With the exception of emergency medical treatment, a convicted murderer would be isolated from all direct human contact. Visitors? Sure, but he or she couldn’t see them, and could only hear them through a one-way speaker. It would be, in some ways, analogous to the victim’s family visiting his or her grave. The family can “talk” to their loved one, but even assuming there’s some sort of afterlife in which he or she can “hear” what’s being said, the dead loved one can’t reply. Similarly, the murderer could hear news about his or her own family, but they couldn’t hear anything he or she might say in response.

If given the power to put such a system into place, the part of me that leans toward vengeance would not only be tempted to do so, but I’d be sorely tempted to keep the murderer’s family from _both_ seeing and hearing him/her. However, I’d probably not go that far. It would unfairly punish the family members; and they didn’t commit the crime. So, I’d at least let them see him/her.

Also like PAD, I don’t support the death penalty; but like him (and I suspect pretty much anyone) I’d want to take matters into my own hands if anyone harmed someone important to me. And in such a scenario, most murderers would find the electric chair, lethal injection, even the gallows, preferable alternatives to how I’d be tempted to... dispatch them.

But that’s the emotional level. On an intellectual level, I know vengeance ultimately lacks satisfaction. Also, it shouldn’t be left to individuals to mete out justice and/or vengeance. What if you’re wrong?

Rick

The problem with the images of birthdays etc of their victims, is that a truly sociopathetic/sadistic killer would probably enjoy being given such "momentos" of his crimes. That's why lots of serial killers/serial rapists take trophies from their victims, so that they can relieve the attack later.

Of all the arguments I've heard against the death penalty, there is one -- and only one -- that has ever resonated with me. Human beings are imperfect. Any institutions and systems we create will thus be equally imperfect. If we carry out executions against convicted murderers, sooner or later we will execute the wrong person. It's happened many times in the U.S., and will continue to happen as long as some states have a death penalty. As others have pointed out, you cannot undo an execution.

That said, I have no pity for Saddam Hussein. He was a vicious piece-of-crap thug who did far worse to people than what was in the end done to him.

I oppose the death penalty on principle. But that doesn't mean I need to shed any tears when a truly guilty person is executed.

I asked you why you post, because I don't really understand the worth of drawing people into snarky, pointless, going around in circle arguments.

Care to cite one of my comments that qualifies?

As you recall in one infamous thread you totally ignored the context of a significant term, thus misusing the term.

My argument depended on the plainly-worded definition written by the person who coined the word. The original definition supported my interpretation of the term and various dictionary definitions you claim I misused. Your simple wish against the facts do not change this.

The reason the thread is infamous was with no contribution by me. You participated in the troll-flood (including a pitiful attempt to mischaracterize Wittgenstein's aim as language-obfuscation) that prompted a writer who raises money for the CBLDF to shut it down. My posting frequency to it slowed to 3 times in 3 days, and I hadn't even posted to it for 24 hours when it was shut down.

You admitted to "[starting] pointless, going around in circles debate[s.]" That is the basis for me asking why you post here. On what grounds do you ask me the same question?

There are other people on this board except you who are interested in engaging in serious but fun and friendly discussions.

Then why do you feel the need to persistently mischarcterize what I say?

In order to do that Mike quotes Bill Mulligan's words out of context, thus muddling Bill's rguments completely, as can be seen by anyone who has read Bill's original posts.

I've invited you before to "find an instance where I've excluded a part of the discourse that surrounded such a quote crucial to its interpretation." Care to make this a first?

I believe I have discussed this issue at length in a previous post most of us would rather not revisit. If you must, you'll have to go there on your own. In order to avoid any repetition of that thread, this is my last word.

Pitiful.

Pitiful.

Yes, that sums up your posts in a nutshell.

Oh. That big block of text was meant to be 5 paragraphs.

In the same thread you have also misrepresented the opinion of another person, trying to make it seem as if he's supporting your position, although he was doing exactly the opposite, as he himself repeatedly stated.

He plainly said the phrases matched. I asked a simple question, and he answered it. He never retracted that simple act. Strike 2.

This disappointing discussion started because you insisted on reading a well articulated position by Bill Mulligan about Hate Crime laws as racism, which included quoting one of his statements out of context of his whole argument.

Considering your documented habit of simply mischaracterizing what I say, care to cite what you are referring to?

The fourth example was when you were engaging Bill Myers in a discussion about empeacing Bush. Many people in that thread presented good points of view about why Bush should or should not be impeached and removed from office, or just go through the process of impeachment in order to cause him to change direction. It was quite interesting and enriching. But you prefered to ignore Bill Myers coherent arguments in order to make it seem that he does not know the meaning of the term inpeachment, although it was clear that he does.

Considering your documented habit of simply mischaracterizing what I say, care to cite what you are referring to?

I just asked for one exemple, not 5 strawmen.

Pitiful.

Yes, that sums up your posts in a nutshell.

Feel free to help Micha find one example of what he keeps accusing me of.

Moving away from the issue of Mike and back to the issue of capital punishment, I like Rick's and PAD's distinction between the emotional level and the intellectual level.

But, I must say, I don't think I like the idea of mentally torturing somebody for his crimes, or physically torturing him. When a crime reaches a certain degree of cruelty, like rapists and serial killers, I don't want to see them tortured mentally or physically, I'm so disgusted by such person, I want to see them vanish out of existence. So on the emotional level I prefer capital punishment to PAD's and Rick's idea.

On the practical level, it sometimes seems to me that prison is a greater torture than death.

But, I have the same concern about capital punishment most people here seem to have, the uncertainty of guilt, that capital punishment is not reversable, the concern that capital punishment is used in a discriminatory way against poor people.

On this topic, I saw the movie Dead Man Walking. [Spoilers ahead].

So long that I, as a viewer, did not know if the convict was actually guilty, I had reservations about him being executed. But when the movie revealed that he was guilty, and the nature of his brutal crime, I felt releaved that such a person no longer existed. But of course, in the real world we don't have flashback scenes that can show as with complete certainty if and how a crime was committed.

Dead Man Walking as a brilliant piece of film making. Holding the reveal to the end enabled the viewer to feel sympathy for Sean Penn and hope that maybe he could deserve to be spared.

On the other hand, I thought the similar reveal in the Life of David Gale was a load of horse pucky. Maybe it's a matter of subtlty. The former movie let the viewers get to know the characters and feel for them as people rather than political props. The latter was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

If I think Saddam Hussein dead is better for the world? No doubt. If I agree with the way it was done? No way.

But, if I recall, a lot of Nazis got hung for the same crimes he did... Of course the only difference is that this particular war isn't using soldiers, but car bombs and cowardly terrorists who kill innocents. There's no frontlines.

So, the options? If you kept him alive, there would be always someone wanting to liberate him, using terror as a weapon and killing innocents. If you killed (murdered or whatever) him, you would create a martyr - which was what happened.

So, which was the better option? It was losing deal from the start. Now it's gone and someone chose option one. No one won, regardless all the right reasons to say Saddam dead is better for the world.

I think it is a lose lose situation.

Kill the man and make him a martyr for more violence. Place him in prison forever and the new government may never truly be accepted.

I am a veteran (served this country proudly) and I don't see the logic in this war.

I noticed that we didn't invade North Korea after they detonated a nuke on October 9, 2006. At least in this case WMD exist.

I believe that we (as a country) should vacate the premises tout de suite...

I don't want to see anymore Americans killed.

Regards:
WSJ3

As an admitted deliberate liar, by what virtue do you continue to debate anyone here?

Whaaaaaaaa...do you ever get tired of being you? You can't win on wit, you can't win on the the points, so you resort to dopey stunts. And yet, has anyone here ever shown the slightest indication that they are impressed or convinced?

You manage to obnoxiously fight with people who agree with you on the issues, people who disagree, and anyone in between. You've been doing this for years. This is your nature. This is what you are.

And THAT is truly pitiful.

I got a great satisfaction when this man was executed.

I kinda felt a bit sick when McVeigh was-I felt some sorrow that he had wasted his life and could have, had circumstances been different, gone down a different path.

But I shed no cheers for Saddam. I wouldn't call it happiness, but supreme satisfaction.

and i find the martyr thing a bit weak. Alive, he makes statements to the press, encourages kidnappings for his release, and attacks to free him, and fear among those (who were many-including I think him) who believed he would ultimately get back to power. Punishment can't be imposed based simply on what may happen later-whether martyrdom or otherwise. Heck, otherwise we couldn't even arrest a high profile target, after all they may encourage kidnappings and the like.

Anyway, I believe he deserved death, and he got it. Whether the death penatly is appropriate for smaller scale crimes, I'll leave for another day.

Some interesting things from the news today:

The sources said the U.S. military sought to delay the execution of Saddam until after Id Al Adha. But the sources said Al Maliki insisted that Saddam be executed without delay. He was hanged on Dec. 30.

"Their refrain — and we have heard this before whenever they want to make a point — was 'It's our necks. It's our decision.'" a U.S. officer said.U.S. forces had kept custody of Saddam since they captured him three years ago, partly over fears about his treatment by the Shi'ite Muslim majority he oppressed while in power and now the main force in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

Officials, witnesses and journalists attending his trial over the past year were subjected to rigorous background and security checks before entering the court and U.S. troops handed Saddam over to Iraqi guards only at the last moment on Saturday.

Americans flew him by helicopter from the Camp Cropper jail at Baghdad airport to the former secret police base in the north of the capital where he was hanged after negotiations between Maliki and the U.S. ambassador that lasted late into the night.

The Americans screened an official delegation before escorting them to the execution site.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad urged Maliki to delay the dawn execution for two weeks, till after the long Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, a senior Iraqi government official told Reuters. But he relented when Maliki insisted and provided an authorisation also from Iraq's Kurdish president, the official said on Monday.
A senior Iraqi court official nearly halted Saddam Hussein's execution when supporters of a radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader taunted the former president as he stood on the gallows.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who is heard appealing for order on explicit Internet video of Saturday's hanging that has inflamed sectarian passions, said on Tuesday he threatened to leave if the jeering did not stop --

(Advertisement)
and that would have halted the execution as a prosecution observer must be present by law.
"I threatened to leave," Faroon told Reuters. "They knew that if I left, the execution could not go ahead."

Bill, my late birthday gift to you. I give you my New Year's Mike Policy. This is, in simple terms, the act of skipping all text between seeing the blog generated

Posted by: Mike at...

and then resuming reading again when I see the blog generated

Posted by: (any poster who is not Mike) at...

Works wonders for me. For one thing, I tend to not get dragged into going around in circles in debates that only make any sense on Planet M. It's also nice as I now tend to only post posts that further the thread or mini debate in the thread or little side posts to people I like rather then flushing down the crapper time, blog space and debate points by posting responses the Mad One that end up really doing nothing but feeding his need for attention.

You can open this gift or not as you see fit. Me? I've found it to be one of the best gifts that I've ever given myself. Not as cool as the gifts I just found out about today though. Bug Myers to forward my email to you and you'll see what I'm burbling on about.

Oh, and be safe this next week. All those shambling things coming back into your care after, what, a week and a half or more off? Do they even remember what a school looks like, let alone how to act in one? Hell, it used to take us at least a couple of weeks to remember what that funny looking little man in the front of the classroom was supposed to be if we got more then three days in a row off.

:)

I find it hard to derive "satisfaction" from the death of Saddam Hussein. Saddam was not the world's first murderous tyrant, nor will he be the last.

Moreover, his execution was more about convenience than about justice. The U.S. was willing to turn a blind eye to Saddam's crimes when he was useful to us. We toppled his regime because he had in the eyes of the Bush administration outlived his usefulness.

I would like to believe that bringing people to answer for "war crimes" represents a dramatic leap forward for humanity. But I can't bring myself to ignore the fact that both sides commit atrocities during wartime, but only the vanquished are held accountable for theirs. While I shed no tears for the Nazis who swung from the gallows for their role in the Holocaust, I cannot help but think for the most part trying people for "war crimes" is merely another one of the spoils of war.

Ultimately, I find it hard to believe anyone could take satisfaction in the execution of Saddam because it has not made things better for the Iraqi people. More Iraqis are suffering and dying now than before we toppled Saddam. Was Saddam good for Iraq? Heavens, no. But the anarchy in Iraq is even worse than his tyranny.

I find that unsatisfying.

Like I said, i found it greatly satisfying that he had the noose around his neck, and died. Your mileage may vary. Sure, there are other murderous dictators out there. There are other terrrorists out there too-but it will feel good if and whem OBL gets killed. There are other murderers out there, but it feels satisfying when one of them is captured and convicted and imprisoned. Just like I am sure Hitler's death, and Nazi trials, felt satisfying to some degree, despite Stalin being alive and having ultimately probably killed more people directly. Just like if you hear some kid was rescued from a kidnapper, there is some joy, despite thousands of other kids still kidnapped. (All the other stuff you wrote, to me, is tangential. Iraq will get beetter only if Iraqis choose to stop killing each other, allies for one administration may change to enemies when circumstances or administrations change, or when someone at the time, like with Stalin, seems better than an alternative that is either worse or more pressing, that's life, that's reality).

I can't deny the feeling I had-pure satisfaction (and some people I know were practically giddy-and no they weren't right wingers at all). He got what was coming to him, come what may. If Iraq was at peace right now, I would have been extremely happy Saddam's neck snapped. But I am still satisfied. He seemed to feel fear, and I am glad for that.

The problem, spiderrob8, is that Iraqis have never had the chance to learn to govern themselves. That doesn't happen overnight. America was under colonial rule for quite some time before we decided to cut our ties with Great Britain. Iraq, on the other hand, had the rug pulled out from underneath it.

So, no, the stuff I mentioned isn't "tangential." It's a direct result of Saddam being removed from power. And it's why I find it tough to find any satisfaction in his execution.

A murderous dictator is dead, that was a good news break for me, at any rate.

To me, it is not that they couldn't govern themselves. It's that a minority, mostly Sunnis, chose to kill their countrymen, rather than except the truth-that they are a minority in that country and their "people" would no longer be the prime movers and shakers, but they could still get a fair piece of the power in the nation, just not ultimate power. They couldn't accept that. They've chosen death and destruction for them, their fellow citizens, their children, etc. Very, very stupid. In the end, despite the casualties we've suffered, they are the ones who have and will continue to suffer, greatly, by their refusal to bow to reality, work with other people in the nation, and move forward. Cause in the end, we'll leave, and they will suffer the consequences of their decisions to move toward chaos.

Or to put it another way, when bad people get what's coming to them, I can feel satisfaction in that. No, I do not expect it to solve all or even any of the problems. But they'd be there alive or dead. The fact he is dead is, to me, a positive thing. A good thing. There are many others who deserve his fate, but that is neither here nor there. He got what he deserved in the end

Don't feel obligated to tell the truth on my account, Mike. It should be something you wish to do just because it's, you know, the right thing to do.

Bill, I'm searching for the quotes you are citing and can't find them.

I thought that was fairly obvious to anyone who's been following the thread. Did I make the second one insufficiantly stupid sounding?

Thank you for admitting your use of strawmen was deliberate....

As an admitted deliberate liar, by what virtue do you continue to debate anyone here?

Whaaaaaaaa...do you ever get tired of being you? You can't win on wit, you can't win on the the points, so you resort to dopey stunts.

Against you, everyone wins on points. As an admitted liar, you have no credibility. A million points times zero is still zero.

Den--I'm right with you with the Life of David Horse Pucky thing.

Bill and Spiderrob's post above remind me of something that happened the other day. A guy at work was talking about just get it over with and brng our guys home. I was going to reply to him that it's not that simple, but he's one of those people that's utterly convinced his worldview is RIGHT, so I saved my breath and myself the aggravation. Anyway, on to my thought, A lot of people think that either the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, then the country sprang into being. It wasn't until 1783 that the country was completely free of outside influence in regards to rule, then another three to four years AFTER that was the Constitution written and ratified. Creating a new nation from the ashes of an old one is NOT a rapid process. There are a LOT of things to work out. Throw into the equation variables like foriegn insurgency and old-government loyalists, the process can get even more delayed.

BTW, anybody else find the fact that someone actually filmed this somewhat nauseating?

As an infamous internet troll you are simply not significant enough to waste this much time over. Jerry, I'll take that gift.

I think what pushed me over the line was his reply to Craig.

Feel free to help Micha find one example of what he keeps accusing me of.

This after Craig calls him pitiful. Wow. Anyone who has been here and paid any attention at all knows that Craig can be harsh, Craig can go for the throat, Craig can zing with ther best of 'em--I've been the target of a few of them and will possibly be so in the future--but one thing that even a planarian worm could figure out is that Craig does not suffer the people he considers fools lightly.

Yet here is "nutty Mike Leung" (TM), practically begging him to please please pay attention to him. Where does this neediness come from? Who knows? Who cares?

Mike, unable to create a blog that could attract enough readership to make it worth continuing, would rather hijack the efforts of other, more creative people (I could just say "other people". No point in being redundant).

back in 2000 a young woman was driven to write "A correction from yesterday. Mike Leung (who is making me oh, so very tired) has been calling me a liar because I didn't ask him to leave the forum; I told him to leave the forum. Apparently this lie has hurt him very deeply. So there you have it: yes, I told him to leave. The end.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as a mail filter set up to send someone's mail straight into the trash. Really. Try it some time.

Smart woman. Smarter than me. But it's never too late to smarten up.

Oh, and be safe this next week. All those shambling things coming back into your care after, what, a week and a half or more off? Do they even remember what a school looks like, let alone how to act in one? Hell, it used to take us at least a couple of weeks to remember what that funny looking little man in the front of the classroom was supposed to be if we got more then three days in a row off.

Oh they were terrible today, and I was little better. Some days the metamorphic processes that turn phyllite to schist just don't seem that interesting, though the kids DO enjoy saying the word schist.

So what's your point? That by calling me a troll, your troll-credentials somehow don't exceed mine?

I didn't lead a troll-flood prompting a writer who raises money for the CBLDF to shut down a forum thread. And I didn't hold others to a standard of truth and then admit to lying.

My credibility at least warrants corrections from forum admins where I'm right. Your credibility is zero.

but one thing that even a planarian worm could figure out is that Craig does not suffer the people he considers fools lightly.

As you can see, I love nutshells. :)

I know it isn't a normal feature of blogs, but I would love an ignore feature here. I don't like to ignore others, but sometimes it just gets to the point where it seems like the only useful solution.

Mike goes on about credibility, and how others are trolling, yet, as he has shown time and time again, the universe revolves around him. So, I think everybody can see why his posts are so skip-worth.

Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2007 10:14 AM

As you can see, I love nutshells. :)

So do squirrels.

...

They got to you, didn't they?!?!?!

Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2007 10:14 AM

I know it isn't a normal feature of blogs, but I would love an ignore feature here. I don't like to ignore others, but sometimes it just gets to the point where it seems like the only useful solution.

True, but our eyes come with the same "function." I've decided to give myself the same gift Jerry C gave to Bill Mulligan: I'm going to stop reading Mike's posts.

Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2007 10:14 AM

Mike goes on about credibility, and how others are trolling, yet, as he has shown time and time again, the universe revolves around him. So, I think everybody can see why his posts are so skip-worth.

Amen, reverend.

They got to you, didn't they?!?!?!

I think I've been scarred for life.

Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2007 02:31 PM

I think I've been scarred for life.

Cool. I can check "scar Craig J. Ries for life" off of my to-do list.

I believe that as a guilty man can nullify his own right to life, the government of the people is qualified and empowered to judge how or if that man may live out the remainder of his earthly days.

Frankly I'd prefer a brief surge of power through an evil bastard than the dedicated constant energy and resources for supplying a means to continued life for the man.

Can even basic human rights, or the rights of a citizen, be revoked?

Hell, yes.

"15 years ago, the reported cost to execute a convict was $9 million. The annual cost to jail him was less than $30,000. A murderer jailed at 20 would have to live to 80 for the death penalty to be cost effective. Citing cost as a merit of the death penalty is riculous."

Five minutes ago I asked myself how tying a noose or sharpening a blade can cost nine million dollars.

Honestly and truly a trip to Home Depot could give me or you the means to execute Saddam Hussein. Regardless of our differing conclusions on the death penalty, your argument about the monetary cost is utter crap.

This forum's obsession with squirrels is starting to parallel Stephen Colbert's obsession with bears.

As I've said before, I am certain I will go to hell for starting the running gag about squirrels.

Who do you think it is that tells the bears of our whereabouts? The squirrels!

"This forum's obsession with squirrels is starting to parallel Stephen Colbert's obsession with bears."

It's not an obsession, it's a forward looking security policy.

I love the numbers being thrown out around here about Captal Punishment costs with no links to back them up. We've gone from $2 million to $9 million on this thread in just a few days.

I let this slide before because of the source, but other people are picking it up now. This post is for the serious posters here.

I'll go along with maybe $2 million to $5 million, but some of the extreme high ends are just laugh inducing.

"...States must also come to terms with the fact that each execution can cost between $2.5 million to $5 million..."

http://www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish

"...the extra cost of the in Texas are about $2.3 million per case..."

[PDF link]
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/NY-RCD-Test.pdf

From a 1994 report...
"In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million."
"In Florida, each execution is costing the state $3.2 million."

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=45&did=385

"In Los Angeles County, the total cost of capital punishment is $2,087,926.
In Los Angeles County, the total cost of life imprisonment without possibility of parole is $1,448,935."

http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/dp/dp-cost.html

The only link I could find with a way out there price tag was a way out there case that involved way more resources then the average capitol punishment case would.
"For example, the cost of convicting and executing Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City Bombing (see related links) was over $13 million"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/capitalpunishment/against_7.shtml

One for the heck of it...
http://www.closeup.org/punish.htm

There are tons more links that you can Google or Live Search with either "capital punishment costs" or "death penalty cost" and get lots of info. None of them, not even the most anti-death penalty, have claims of the average cost being $6 million to $9 million. Only rare examples like the McVeigh case come close to making those numbers true, but citing these as "average" cases is like saying Kitrina was just an average example of storm damage.

I've also notice that most of the anti-death penalty studies don't really use realistic math. They take the cost of life in prison and multiply it by, say, 50 years with very little adjustments for increased costs in everything involved in keeping someone in jail for 50 plus years. What, food, clothing and bills paid toward the local utilities aren't going to increase over time?

They also don't look at the extra costs created by long term increases in the prison population. It may be a somewhat small number per state, but many states already have an overcrowding problem in their prisons. Add more life long guests and you force the state to build new, larger prisons. In most cases, the cost of building a prison could wipe out years worth of cost savings from getting rid of capital punishment.

There's also added manpower needs to deal with larger prisons or prison populations. Lets say you only need one extra deputy per shift. Three shifts per day is three extra men needed. That's about $105,000 added to the payroll. That's $5,250,000 in added payroll over 50 years. And that's just going by todays costs. That number doesn't take into account any raise or bonus for the positions over time or the hidden costs that the city or state pays per employee. That final number would likely be closer to $8.5 million.

No, if you want to argue this based on wild numbers, give me links to back the wild numbers. If you give me links, then please link me to a study that a) doesn't set out to prove a pre-desired position (for either pro or con) and b)one that takes into account real world costs and figures in total.

I love the numbers being thrown out around here about Captal Punishment costs with no links to back them up. We've gone from $2 million to $9 million on this thread in just a few days.

I let this slide before because of the source, but other people are picking it up now. This post is for the serious posters here.

I'll go along with maybe $2 million to $5 million, but some of the extreme high ends are just laugh inducing.

"...States must also come to terms with the fact that each execution can cost between $2.5 million to $5 million..."

www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish

"...the extra cost of the in Texas are about $2.3 million per case..."

[PDF link]
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/NY-RCD-Test.pdf

From a 1994 report...
"In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million."
"In Florida, each execution is costing the state $3.2 million."

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=45&did=385

"In Los Angeles County, the total cost of capital punishment is $2,087,926.
In Los Angeles County, the total cost of life imprisonment without possibility of parole is $1,448,935."

www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/dp/dp-cost.html

The only link I could find with a way out there price tag was a way out there case that involved way more resources then the average capitol punishment case would.
"For example, the cost of convicting and executing Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City Bombing (see related links) was over $13 million"

www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/capitalpunishment/against_7.shtml

One for the heck of it...
www.closeup.org/punish.htm

There are tons more links that you can Google or Live Search with either "capital punishment costs" or "death penalty cost" and get lots of info. None of them, not even the most anti-death penalty, have claims of the average cost being $6 million to $9 million. Only rare examples like the McVeigh case come close to making those numbers true, but citing these as "average" cases is like saying Kitrina was just an average example of storm damage.

I've also notice that most of the anti-death penalty studies don't really use realistic math. They take the cost of life in prison and multiply it by, say, 50 years with very little adjustments for increased costs in everything involved in keeping someone in jail for 50 plus years. What, food, clothing and bills paid toward the local utilities aren't going to increase over time?

They also don't look at the extra costs created by long term increases in the prison population. It may be a somewhat small number per state, but many states already have an overcrowding problem in their prisons. Add more life long guests and you force the state to build new, larger prisons. In most cases, the cost of building a prison could wipe out years worth of cost savings from getting rid of capital punishment.

There's also added manpower needs to deal with larger prisons or prison populations. Lets say you only need one extra deputy per shift. Three shifts per day is three extra men needed. That's about $105,000 added to the payroll. That's $5,250,000 in added payroll over 50 years. And that's just going by todays costs. That number doesn't take into account any raise or bonus for the positions over time or the hidden costs that the city or state pays per employee. That final number would likely be closer to $8.5 million.

No, if you want to argue this based on wild numbers, give me links to back the wild numbers. If you give me links, then please link me to a study that a) doesn't set out to prove a pre-desired position (for either pro or con) and b)one that takes into account real world costs and figures in total.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer...

N.J. death penalty on way out
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16370503.htm
By Troy Graham, Inquirer Staff Writer

There is info in there re costs for NJ as well as the usual two sides of the coin.

And I really liked this one.

"In Los Angeles County, the total cost of capital punishment is $2,087,926.
In Los Angeles County, the total cost of life imprisonment without possibility of parole is $1,448,935."

So, what's the total dif in price in Los Angeles County to remove a mad dog killer from society and remove all chances of escapes, changes in parole laws or political winds or chances of his causing injury or death to an employee of the prison system? A mere $638,991.

$638,991. Well, I can see why people who are against the death penalty aren't using those numbers in their posts. It seems to hit with so much less impact then the million $$$ figures being thrown around here.

Also from World Policy:

A study done by the Sacramento Bee argued that California would save $90 million per year if it were to abolish the death penalty.

There are over 600 California inmates on death row, but there have only been 13 California executions since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1992.

$90 million per year at not even one execution per year is a hell of a lot more than $9 million.

Mike goes on about credibility, and how others are trolling, yet, as he has shown time and time again, the universe revolves around him.

It sure as hell beats holding others to a standard of truth, and then admitting to lying yourself.

It beats being a predator.

Jerry, I have to admit I find it equally strange to support or to oppose capital punishment based on the monetary cost.

Also, everybody talks about capital punishment, but takes our current penal system with its prison sentences for granted. I think this system where we send criminals to 'pay'for their crime by spending a certain amount of time with other criminals and then release them again doesn't make much sense. It doesn't seem to accomplish most of its goals. The most brutal criminals I'd rather not see emerging from their cages. The non violent ones shouldn't even spend one minute in them.

I don't know what's the answer. But think the current approach should be reexamined.

The widely varying estimates for the cost of executions raises the question of how these numbers are arrived at.

Do any of the links reveal just what it is that costs so much? Obviously the actual cost of the actual execution can't account for it. Is it the cost of high priced lawyers for the appeals? Certainly the cost of killing Saddam was less than the cost of keeping him in prison, since the costs would have been identical up to the day he was hung. At that point one could expect that he would be more expensive alive.

I don't think the cost of the death penalty is terribly persuasive as an argument--I've never met a death penalty opponent who would gladly switch sides if only the cost was less. It certainly wouldn't change my opposition to it.

Yeah, I guess it's just one of those things. Somewhere along the line we all develope some strongly held beliefs that can never be fully explained to the satisfaction of some.

Fine by me really. You go your way with it and I'll go mine. I like Kirk's world and some of you lot like Picard's world better.

Wussies.

:)

In Saddam's case the real question is the political-diplomatic-military cost.

There's a saying attributed to one of communist China's leaders, that has been much quoted lately in Israel, and probably also applies to the case of Saddam's execution.

When asked what he thinks of the French Revolution, the Chinese leader replied that it is too early to say.

...I have to admit I find it equally strange to support or to oppose capital punishment based on the monetary cost.

...

I don't think the cost of the death penalty is terribly persuasive as an argument...

If the cost of supporting the death penalty to your state is $90 million a year, and your state isn't even killing 1 convict a year, then the expense of an execution is effectively $90 million.

If your state drops its death penalty, and the cost of housing a non-deathrow inmate is $40,000 a year, you can afford to incarcerate that inmate you would have executed this year for 2,250 years.

If dropping the death penalty had saved the Roman Empire the equivilent expense per crucifixion, Pontius Pilate could have afforded to incarcerate Jesus Christ beyond the lifetime of anyone alive today. Plus it might have saved him a trip to hell.

To dismiss the cost to the state of supporting a death penalty is ridiculous.

Posted by: Jerry Chandler at January 3, 2007 05:34 PM

I love the numbers being thrown out around here about Captal Punishment costs with no links to back them up. We've gone from $2 million to $9 million on this thread in just a few days.

That's inflation for you.

Posted by: Jerry Chandler at January 3, 2007 09:36 PM

I like Kirk's world and some of you lot like Picard's world better.

You realize, of course, that in Kirk's world the only crime punishable by death is violation of the ban on communicating with or traveling to Talos IV? Moreover, Spock did just that and got away with it.

Or being a computer. Jesus, how many of those things did Kirk blow up? Sentient computers too, they had at least as much personality as your average red shirt.

"...in Kirk's world the only crime punishable by death is violation of the ban on communicating with or traveling to Talos IV?"
"Or being a computer."

Those, or being dumb enough to screw with Kirk, his ship or his crew to begin with. Go ahead, be a bad guy with Kirk at the helm. See it the phasers aren't set for, "laying a smackdown on your candy @$$!!!!"

Actually, Picard could rack up a pretty good body count as well. By the time he was done whining to Guinan, pontificating to Riker or holding meetings while Wesley saved the ship, his opponents often died of old age waiting for him to spring into action. I guess that could count as "killing" an enemy.

I'm not biased towards Kirk, am I?

:)

So we get a show trial followed by a hasty lynching before Saddam's put on trial for the charge that actually counts? The one that might embarrass Rumsfeld and his ilk? The only person in this shameful exercise showing any dignity being Saddam.

Yeah, that's going to demonstrate commitment to rule of law and civil rights. Really going to make that nutter think twice before strapping the dynamite on.

For those of you challenging Saddam's martyrdom, his legacy lives on.

Links from: copycateffect.blogspot.com/2007/01/saddam-copycats-2-3.html

For those of you challenging Saddam's martyrdom, children are starting to imitate him:

www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,9294,2-10-1462_2050341,00.html
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/04/national/main2329468.shtml
www.dailyindia.com/show/99808.php/Kolkata-teenager-hangs-herself-over-Saddams-execution

Links from: copycateffect.blogspot.com/2007/01/saddam-copycats-2-3.html

Death Penalty? Great idea. When it's God that's imposing it. Because anything that relies on humans to implement is going to have errors. And, Jerry C.'s experience notwithstanding, I'd rather see a hundred guilty men go free (or live out their lives in incarceration) than one single innocent man punished. When we're talking about jail time, I'm willing to accept that errors will be made, because there's always a chance that those errors can be discovered and things set to rights. Once you execute someone, that's it. There's no do-over, no reaching across the void and reanimating the body with a "sorry about that" comment. If the state kills an innocent man, that's murder. Cold blooded, premeditated, murder.

So Saddam's dead, and there's little question that he was responsible, probably personally in many cases, for murder. Here's something to consider...we know there were rumors of Saddam having doubles that would make appearances for him. How do we know this wasn't one of them? I never read about and DNA proof made that this person really was Saddam Hussein. If he was a double, then he certainly was guilty of something, but maybe not guilty of a single death. How can we know for certain?

We can't. Because we're not God.

I'm also reminded of this: "Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Keep Hussein imrpisoned, and he's harmless. Let him die a withered old man in jail, and he inspires few. Sure, some will try to free him, and use his name to rally around. But he'll die, and people will relegate him to history.

But killed by the state, and he becomes a martyr. He becomes a mythic figure that countless generations can look upon as a source of inspiration and hatred.

I'd rather see him incarcerated and subject to hard labor the rest of his life. Let him work off his debt by slowly trading the rest of his life to make his world a better place. Force him to rebuild the homes he destroyed. Serve the families of those he killed.

"Death Penalty? Great idea. When it's God that's imposing it."

God's track record is not that great either.

There's a tendancy to exagerate the power of martyrdom. People can become mythic figures without dying, and dead martyrs are not as powerful as the living using their memory.

"God's track record is not that great either."

We're not talking "what does God need with a starship" here. Or at least, I'm not. And while I'm not literally talking about God smiting people, because, really, how do you know? But the point is, only the omnipotent could really hand out final justice and not have any doubt as to innocence or guilt. We don't prove that people are guilty...we decide that beyond the shadow of a doubt (or whatever legal requirement phrase is used today) a person is likely guilty.

Killing Saddam only proved that Iraqis are merely trading one brutal government for another.

I find it hilarious that the same people who cheer this public murder get OUTRAGED when Muslims carry out public murders. "They're cold blooded killers!"

1. Saddam was convicted of killing just 187 Iraqis. How many has Bush killed? Saddam had his rationalizations, Americans have their own.

2. When a criminal kills, HE is a murderer. But when the state kills in our name, that makes US ALL murderers.

3. Capital punishment is about revenge, pure and simple. Just check out the first rationalization in this thread. ("What if your family were killed...")

4. The most damning statistic about U.S. capital punishment refers not to the race of the accused, but to the race of the victim.

5. Capital punishment is NO DETERENT. Look at the correlation between states with the death penalty and that state's murder rate. It's higher in DP states.

6. All the overturned convictions in recent years have made glaringly clear the flaws in our system. It's already happened that an executed man was found innocent due to DNA evidence. With life in prison, there is always a chance to rectify (as much as possible) a wrongful conviction. The death penalty renders those mistakes permanent.

I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess.

Convenience and expedience are the enemy of a fair trial. I don't care how many appeals the accused gets. Better to exhaust every possibility than rush to kill.

I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess.

That's a questional philosophy. Where do you draw the line? Is it better to let 100 guilty go free than imprison 1 innocent man? 1000 guilty? At what point does it cease to be of any benefit to the innocent that they are free from the risk of jail but face the liklihood of getting maimed or murdered by the hordes of the guilty?

Anyway...when was this day you speak of?

As far as the death penalty, that day is perhaps closer now: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=550605&category=&BCCode=&newsdate=1/4/2007

U.S. death sentences drop to 30-year low

Death sentences fell in 2006 to 114 or fewer, according to an estimate from the group. That is down from 128 in 2005. It is also down sharply on the 137 sentences handed down in the year after the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 and the high of 317 in 1996.

"It's already happened that an executed man was found innocent due to DNA evidence. With life in prison, there is always a chance to rectify (as much as possible) a wrongful conviction. The death penalty renders those mistakes permanent."

Really? Please give us a link for this statement to back it with facts. See, I'm a bit of a news junky, but I seemed to have missed that one. I've spent the last 25 minutes doing google and live searches on that topic and can't find so much as one link to a fact based support of that statement. Found lots of nutjob blog sites with people coming up with every reason (except DNA) we killed some poor innocent. Just nothing fact based. Please, give us the link and show that I am uninformed and you are not an idiot.

"3. Capital punishment is about revenge, pure and simple. Just check out the first rationalization in this thread. ("What if your family were killed...")"

Not true for all people. Besides, you can turn that argument on ANY form of punishment. Any claim of justice can be seen as revenge by somebody out there. People on TV with tears streaming down their faces demanding that SOMETHING be done to the person that raped their daughter don't want revenge? We should just let rapist go because putting them in jail is, in some way, an act of revenge? No. Nor should we junk capital punishment because SOME people see it more as revenge then punishment after judgement.

"4. The most damning statistic about U.S. capital punishment refers not to the race of the accused, but to the race of the victim."

Bull. I love the insane, no logic far left in this country and their never ending fight for 'true" race justice in matters like capital punishment. Too bad they really have no idea what they're talking about or saying from year to year.

The big thing with the left used to be that capitol punishment was racist (long ago a true claim in a few areas of the country) because it targeted minorities. Then the numnbers became common knowledge, thus knocking the legs out from under that argument, and the far left then shifted gears to start pointing out that more killers of whites were being sent to the chair then killers of blacks were and thus devalued the life of blacks in the justice system.

Well, think about that a moment. Most blacks are murdered by black on black crime. If we execute these killers, then we're being racist because we're putting too many minorities on death row. If we send more of these killers to jail for life, we're racist because we don't value black murder victim's lives as much as we do white victim's lives.

No matter what you do, idiots are going to cry "race" as loudly as they can. If we ended capital punishment tomorrow, the far left would then just shift to saying that we're all racist because of how many blacks were in jail for life.

Statistics

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm

In 2005, 60 persons in 16 States were executed -- 19 in Texas; 5 each in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina; 4 each in Ohio, Alabama, and Oklahoma; 3 each in Georgia and South Carolina; 2 in California; and 1 each in Connecticut, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Mississippi.

Of persons executed in 2005:
-- 41 were white
-- 19 were black

Fifty-nine men and one woman were executed in 2005.

Thirty-eight States and the Federal government in 2005 had capital statutes.

Prisoners under sentence of death

The number of prisoners under sentence of death decreased for the fifth consecutive year in 2005.

Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, white inmates have made up more than half of the number under sentence of death.

Of persons under sentence of death in 2005:
-- 1,805 were white
-- 1,372 were black
-- 31 were American Indian
-- 34 were Asian
-- 12 were of unknown race.

The 362 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death at yearend 2005 accounted for 13% of inmates with a known ethnicity.

Among persons for whom arrest information was available, the average age at time of arrest was 28; 1 in 9 inmates were age 19 or younger at the time of arrest.

At yearend 2005, the youngest inmate under sentence of death was 20; the oldest was 90.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Some of this is a few years out of date. I'm using stuff from a paper several of us did for a class back in 2002. The numbers haven't changed very much over time though.

.

82% of the murder victims in death penalty cases are white, 13% are black, a 6:1 ratio (NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), 1996). Opponents, such as Kica Matos, NAACP LDF, Steven Hawkins, Exec. Dir., National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Sister Prejean, longtime Chairperson of the NCADP and author, Dead Man Walking, present this as evidence of a capitol punishment system values white lives over black lives and sentences accordingly. However, whites represent 56% of those executed, and blacks 38% (NAACP LDF, Summer 1996) when blacks have committed 47% of all murders, and whites 38%. Whites are executed at rates nearly 50% above their involvement in murder, blacks are executed at rates 20% below their involvement in murder.

But what about the victims? Look at the federal statistics on crimes. The most relevant economic violent crime is robbery with injury, which shows a 4:1 ratio of white victims to black victims. By a 5:1 ratio, whites are more likely to be victims of rape/sexual assault than are blacks. For all property crimes (theft, burglary, auto theft), there is a 7:1 ratio of white to black victims. A comparison of only black and white perpetrators and victims reveal that whites are five times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than are blacks, or 7.5 vs 1.5 million. There is a 5:1 ratio for homicides, which by themselves, qualify for the death penalty. In death penalty states, police victim murders are capital crimes. From 1985-1994, 87% of murdered officers were white, 12% black, or 7:1 (LEO Killed and Assaulted, FBI:UCR, 1994). Whites make up a dominant percentage of multiple/serial murderers, whose victims are overwhelmingly white, thereby disproportionately and correctly raising the number of white victims in execution cases. In such death row cases, 87% of the victims are white, 13% black, or 7:1 (NAACP LDF data, 1996).

Roughly 75% of blacks and 35% of whites believe that blacks are treated more harshly than whites by the criminal justice system. This is based partly on the public use by activist leaders of a history of 400 years of slavery and blatantly racist criminal justice practices by some ares in the U.S. in the past.

However, A study of the death penalty, as imposed by Harris County (Houston, Texas, USA) juries, since 1982, found that the death penalty was imposed on white and black murderers in proportion to the capital offenses committed by those race classifications. Even in national studies, no evidence of system wide discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty exists beyond the 1950's.

Some may point out that blacks make up 12% of the US population, but they comprise just over 44% of the average national prison population. Research shows a close relationship between the racial distribution in both arrest and prison statistics and the race of offenders as described by the various crime's victims. In other words racial groups are represented in prison according to their involvement in criminal activity. Prison numbers merely reflect who commits crime and not racial discrimination.

To check out the total number of executions in the U.S....

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/exetab.htm

From the homepage of the site you refer to, if you select the "Homicide trends" link, and from there select the "Race" link, you will find stats showing black-killings slightly under white-killings (with black-killings dropping below 10,000 and stabilizing Clinton-era).

You cite "82% of the murder victims in death penalty cases are white, 13% are black, a 6:1 ratio."

Just as you introduced the source that said California spends $90 million a year to support a death penalty program that executes one convict a year, you've introduced the source that says while 47% of all murder victims are black, over four out of five death penalty case are for killing white victims. Thanks for showing us things are much worse than insane, far-left illogic could possibly imagine.

Those, or being dumb enough to screw with Kirk, his ship or his crew to begin with. Go ahead, be a bad guy with Kirk at the helm. See it the phasers aren't set for, "laying a smackdown on your candy @$$!!!!"

Actually, Picard could rack up a pretty good body count as well. By the time he was done whining to Guinan, pontificating to Riker or holding meetings while Wesley saved the ship, his opponents often died of old age waiting for him to spring into action. I guess that could count as "killing" an enemy.

I'm not biased towards Kirk, am I?

Hmm... For some reason, this just got my brain churning tonight. It occurs to me that the standard perception of Kirk as a guns blazin', shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of captain (particularly in relation to Picard) may not necessarily be borne out by evidence.

Now, I'm not about to sit and watch all of both series to collect hard numbers. I like being married far too much for that. However, looking over a list of titles and synopses, I see a lot of bluffing, puzzle solving, and yes, even diplomacy on Kirk's part. I also see quite a few times where "victory" was dependent on Spock, McCoy, or a good old fasioned deus ex machina.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing Kirk. I don't think you have to pick one or the other, anyway. Between the different political climates, writing qualities, types of foes, and episode count, it's damn near impossible to directly compare the two.

But then, if you're wanting to drop all considerations of command effectiveness, crew loyalty and survival rate, and how they deal with godlike beings, and look purely at balls-out bare-knuckle macho ass-whuppitude, there's only one true answer:

Sisko.

-Rex Hondo-

Whoopsie, HTML tag blunder.

Everything up to and including "I'm not biased towards Kirk, am I?" should, of course, be italicized.

-Rex Hondo-

Now, I'm not about to sit and watch all of both series to collect hard numbers. I like being married far too much for that.

Rex wins today's coffee on the keyboard award!

"I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess."

Well, given the fact that Saddam Hussein was not an American, nor tried by an American court, nor executed by any American, I find this judgement both premature and a little offensive. Now you might say, "Well, if it wasn't for our invasion he'd be alive!" Granted. I won't argue that. What I WILL argue, though, is that actions taken by a soveriegn government according to their own laws are actually not our place to judge or impose our values.

Well, Sean, you could also argue whether or not he lives on this planet. That line would make sense if the U.S. had no capital punishment laws and then introduced them in just the last few years. However, since we've had one since the first English boot stepped on a North American beach, he's remembering a time that never was in this country.

Hey, everybody--my last post, that first "nor" was actually supposed to be a "not", and in between judge and impose, was supposed to be "nor." Sorry, typing quick while I'm at work. You'd think an English major and a writer would be able to type, but that would mean typing AND thinking at the same time. I can only do one of those at a time. Don't ask if I do either well. (I'd think that'd be obvious....)

Jerry--I was giving the benefit of the doubt. Besides, for all I know, he DOESN'T live on this planet. That's ALL I need, an angry extraterrestrial showing up at my house while I'm trying to get my son in the car to go to school. "Come on, Brian, get in your seat!" "I am Doo from the Planet Fuzzbop, you insulted me on PAD's board, I'm here to give you a bad hair day!"

Of course, considering the fact that I'm having a bad hair life, not much would change....