Saddam Hussein is dead.

[TRI]

For TRI, I meant the secodn one.

Ah. Okay.

Only after seeing your post did I realize my own could be interpreted in either way. (I guess brevity is the soul of lingerie after all.)

*I like "Citizens Against Murder" because of the irony in their choice of name.

Heh! I'm always amused how often irony and hypocracy are half a step away from each other.

Also amusing is the implication of the possibility of a group called "Citizens For Murder."

[MixedMyth]

But balance the amount of guilty people who waste resources with innocent people who get cleared.

To me, weighing resources vs clearing innocent people implies that there is some acceptible cut off point for the resources that dictates an 'acceptible' margine of innocents lost. I can't bring myself to equate lives with money like that, or believe that such a margine is at all acceptable.

[Tynan]

I actually have a friend in law school who could talk for hours about the death penalty debate. He's doing a write up for a particular case for the national Supreme Court currently. A major problem with it that people often don't consider is that many of the methods currently used actually aren't humane at all and may, in fact, be very very painful...as witnessed by that poor sap in Florida who took half an hour to die while chemical burns crawled their way up his arms from the dual injections. With injections, shots imobilize the person...but that's just the thing, it imobilizes them. That doesn't mean they don't feel the pain and burning of the chemical injection, it just means they can't express feeling that pain. *article, mostly about California* *Requisite Wiki article* Likewise, contrary to what has been said in the past the electric chair is far from painless. Same with hanging since although the neck may snap, this does not mean the person is dead...just that they can't move their limbs.

Anyhow, pain issues aside I myself am against the death penalty in general. There's a frightening degree of error in such things, not just in the execution process but in discerning the guilty from the innocent. But even besides that, I object to the idea that killing someone somehow makes everything okay. To me, it is simply a crime inspired by a crime, an act of revenge that, I feel, is inherinty selfish. Killing them won't undo whatever it is they did, it just gluts societal bloodlust. and, after everything, it's more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in jail for life.

Buut that's just me.

Edit: it should be noted, though, that Saddam is not being tried under U.S. law but rather Iraqi law.

Edit edit: Quothe the law student, "One thing nobody's mentioning about the Florida screw-up, though, is that they gave him all of the injections, and when it wasn't working they gave them all again. If you have to give the shots twice, that's the ABSOLUTELY WRONG way to do it. They should give the first shot, and if it's not working give it again. Once they're sure that one's working (ie the dude's passed out), they should skip the second one (that's the paralytic, which has no purpose besides to make the death look tidy), and then give the third. If he doesn't die, do the third one again. Especially because the first chemical (the anesthetic) and the second (the paralytic) react with each other chemically, so they can't be in the tube or the blood stream together at the same time."

However, I do find it interest that that study in the article noted that the amount of anesthesia in the blood stream of 80% of the cases was under that required for, say, surgery.

Question: Is it still Iraqui law after the regime change and the start of American founded democracy?

[MixedMyth]

Question: Is it still Iraqui law after the regime change and the start of American founded democracy?

Yeah, that's the big question. I would initially say in this case it is to a large degree, at least, because it was not we Americans who made the policies. However, I feel that saying that shirks responsibility for what we have done, too, as there can be no doubt that the U.S. erected the Iraqi system with clear ideas of what WE wanted it to be and coddled certain politicians over others. So...it's kind of messy.

[Rock_dash]

Yay! A political thread that hasn't erupted into flames!

I'd better fix that.

[Laemkral]

Saddam Hussein: Good riddance. He's been nothing but trouble, even when we were supplying him with weapons and wealth. He's also been a major rallying focus for many Sunni groups hoping to return to a dominant power (Iraq is mostly Shi'ia).

This also provides closure for the victims of many of the families and acts as a symbolic end of the old Iraq and a definite start to a new Iraq. It may also help to galvanize together the various groups seeking to establish a stable, working government and nation.

Did he deserve the death penalty? In my mind, clearly. He violated numerous international laws and is responsible for a multitude of human rights violations. The amount of deaths this man has caused, and the amount of resulting pain he's caused others...he deserves this.

Ordinarily I'm not a supporter of the death penalty for one main reason. The possibility of killing an innocent person, even in a court situation where "beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt" is supposed to exist. We are human, and humans are flawed and liable to make mistakes. Short of a mountain of overwhelming hard evidence that basically amounts to being a step shy of God, Himself, speaking from the Heavens and going "He done it", let them go to jail in case we DO find out we were wrong. Why? The old adage "A thousand guilty people go free rather than an innocent person be in jail." The price we pay for being civilized is that we have to care about those who do not care about others, and that includes not killing criminals willy nilly. Not to mention the death penalty is NOT a deterrent for violent crimes for which it is used. I'm going to throw in "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" as a final reason.

So what makes this different? Why kill Hussein? For starters, we have that mountain of evidence. We KNOW, and I mean KNOW he killed all these people. What he did is on such a grand scale its impossible to compare to an ordinary criminal. This isn't someone who murdered 1, 5, 10, even 100 people. This is not a multitude of crimes against individuals, these are crimes against humanity. Jail doesn't cut it as a punishment, and we're above using torture as a punishment. Therefore, the only real thing to do is have him executed. Is it enough of a punishment? No. It's the best we can do, and we can only hope there's an afterlife kicking his ass.

Right, that's all. *leaves topic*

[Nyke]

I'm just as surprised as you are.

...I'll get my coat.

[Garasade]

Hussein's death is like an end of yet another chapter in this Iraq invasion. Death penalty in the Mideast is more prevalent and seemingly an integral part of the Shariah Islamic law. It is only merciful that he did not get dragged out into the streets and suffered a painful and violent protracted death, like his two sons. It is understatement that the death of this man is such an occasion for the Iraqis who claim that the former dictator has met his comeuppance for all the carnage he has wrought. But this was realized in part by a cycle of death begetting death with the onset of the Iraq invasion.I guess the Iraqis are content to sacrifice thousands of their own people just to get out of Hussein's shadow. I wonder where they will focus their wrath and frustrations next. All I saw, unfortunately, was one man getting murdered, quite inconsequential amid the backdrop of death orgies that not one day in Iraq goes without.

[Dr Neo Lao]

Did he deserve the death penalty? In my mind, clearly. He violated numerous international laws and is responsible for a multitude of human rights violations. The amount of deaths this man has caused, and the amount of resulting pain he's caused others...he deserves this.

You do realise that that exact same phrase can be applied to the U.S. President, right?

I'm morally opposed to the death penalty, but I can certainly realize why it would be needed. There all sorts of people with really messed up heads who have zero chance of functioning in a normal society, with no chance of rehabilitation. Sometimes it's just better to 'make them go away' than to try and fix the problem.

As for methods of execution, I always figured that the pre-requsite for a state-sponsored death would be that it be reliable, be painless and be quick. That's why death by firing squad seems to be the best available option to me. Not the namby-pamby five guys with only one live bullet, but ten guys emptying a clip each into the target. That makes sure that the criminal (target? victim?) dies the first try.

Of the options not available, I figured that sedation (to surgery standards) followed by an explosive attached to the back of the head would be 99.99% succesful. If there's no head, you know he's dead.

As for the mess in the Middle East, it's only going to get worse. For starters, a majority of the people are religious, so if there were truly open elections, it's almost garuanteed that a cleric would be elected to rule the country. They don't have that "seperate church and state" mantra that America has.

Second, they need to overcome hundreds of generations worth of hatred and bitterness. That won't go away in a few years, or even in a few generations.

So what's the solution? You could seal the borders, kill every female over the age of 30, every male over the age of 2 and fly in the 30 million excess males from China and Japan. That would create a new Asia/Arab state that would be more stable than the current mess.

Of course, it'd also really piss off some two billion odd people around the world (not just Muslims and people of Middle East decent, but pretty much every single sensible person on the planet), but it wouldn't work since the two groups are fairly incompatible and the neighbouring countries wouldn't stand for it....

[Dotty]

I don't think theres any question if he'll be turned into a martyr; extremists always need SOMETHING to keep people pissed off or willing to fight the fight. How effective it will be, however, is definitely something to wait and see.

[Joel Fagin]

I'm quite happy with the death penalty for extreme cases and Saddam is definitely an extreme case. Really, what can you possibly do which is suitable punishment for such a large amount of deaths?

The death penalty gets overused in America to my mind, though.

However, the most important point here is that it's a different culture. Forcing one culture on to another never works well so, yes, maybe the death penalty is bad, but let their culture evolve away from it at it's own pace. We cannot dictate to them and, for that matter, we cannot be sure that we are right and they are wrong.

I think that the best way to look at it is this: If you can't possibly find it within yourself to actually feel sorry for him then he deserved it. Arguing about principles then simply becomes nothing more than... arguing about principles.

- Joel Fagin

[Laemkral]

Did he deserve the death penalty? In my mind, clearly. He violated numerous international laws and is responsible for a multitude of human rights violations. The amount of deaths this man has caused, and the amount of resulting pain he's caused others...he deserves this.

You do realise that that exact same phrase can be applied to the U.S. President, right?

For starters, President Bush hasn't hit Saddam Husseins level yet. He's a poor leader, but he's not gone out of his way to violate major international weapons bans. He's in some way responsible for the deaths of 2000+ military personnel and more civilians than I want to keep track of, but he's not at genocidal levels yet. Granted, he has launched a war of aggression, but the US has a surprising degree of latitude under the current UN charter and various international agreements to engage in hostile military actions whilst escaping the wrath of international law in a manner not granted to any other country so technically the war is not as illegal as you might think it is.

Secondly, did I ever say it SHOULDN'T apply to President Bush or any other member of his administration (past, present, future) who has broken intl. law?

[Czar]

Well, strike one dictator.

Who's next?

[McDuffies]

I dunno... when Milosevic dies, I couldn't bring myself to care, to feel good or bad about it. I felt like he was done with the moment he was exported to international court, that he represented era that was long gone and that now he was just some old man with no power or influence whatsoever. His death simply seemed like unimportant event, and there was only bitterness that he died about ten years too late. Talking with people, I gathered that many people felt the same, it was a history that we went through already, and we'd rather look in future.
I don't know about Iraqui, I can only assume that average (ie. non-fanatical) Iraqui feels the same now.

I am generally against death penalty for various reasons, one of which being hipocrisy of the same act. You could easily argue that people who are executing him may deserve such penalty as well.
But on the other hand, Sadam is an Iraqui citizen, tried under the law of his own country (of which he was a leader, even) and I don't think that he ever objected to that law before he was executed.

Also I don't believe that he was evil. I think that, just like many people in his place, he did what he believed was best (either for his country or for the world) and had a full set of agruements to rationalize that. This doesn't get him rid of responsibility, but "evil" isn't the word I'd use outside of comics.

[Dotty]

Did he deserve the death penalty? In my mind, clearly. He violated numerous international laws and is responsible for a multitude of human rights violations. The amount of deaths this man has caused, and the amount of resulting pain he's caused others...he deserves this.

You do realise that that exact same phrase can be applied to the U.S. President, right?

For starters, President Bush hasn't hit Saddam Husseins level yet. He's a poor leader, but he's not gone out of his way to violate major international weapons bans. He's in some way responsible for the deaths of 2000+ military personnel and more civilians than I want to keep track of, but he's not at genocidal levels yet. Granted, he has launched a war of aggression, but the US has a surprising degree of latitude under the current UN charter and various international agreements to engage in hostile military actions whilst escaping the wrath of international law in a manner not granted to any other country so technically the war is not as illegal as you might think it is.

Secondly, did I ever say it SHOULDN'T apply to President Bush or any other member of his administration (past, present, future) who has broken intl. law?

The war is quite illegal, he ignored worldwide protest, even from his own people, AND the UN. He lied to his people to justify the war (there is evidence that false information was presented to him to encourage the war, but lets get real here. He finished what his father started, and theres not a whole lot of reasoning behind some dude in the shadows lying for the sole purpose of getting Saddam ousted.The American President is not just responsible for 2000+ (I thought the official number was in the 3 000s personally) military deaths, but anywhere from 200,000-500,000 civilian deaths. (This particular number is highly debated, but it's disgusting no matter what size it is.)

Am I glad Saddam is gone? Sure. Do I think the price the world is paying to get rid of him was worth it? Hell no. Nor do I think any of those civilian deaths are justified. I'm not trying to undermine what your boys do, Laem, because I would never be able to do the same thing, but I'm entirely of the belief that what's going on over there was wrong from the get-go.

Hundreds of Thousands of deaths, just for one man, and for the ideal that Democracy should be spread through the mid-east. I'm all for people adopting democracy...but this isn't adoption. This is forced, and through very brutal means.

The thing that pisses me off about it the most, is that I feel compelled to support the troops, because I'm 100% sure their reasons for being over there are justified, moral, and they probably have strong reasons in their own minds. At the same time, I hate the war, and everything about it, because it's a giant crock of shit, which makes it quite difficult to support the troops, but I -have- to, because I'm quite certain their reasons for being there are quite different than Mr. Bush's reasons.

The unfortunate thing is the ones who want to leave because the war is something quite different than what they were led to believe, or signed up for, can't. I know when you sign the dotted line, you pretty much open yourself up for this...but I don't think any person expects to go to war for the purpose of forcing American Democratic policy on foreign countries, and for the purpose of ousting a facist dictator.

...also, don't worry Laem, and don't take it so personally. We didn't say you said what you said you didn't say. ....if that makes any sense. :S

Also, I probably won't comment to anything else in here because I despise war debates. It's entirely opinion, more than likely based around political agenda, religious belief or moral upbringing...and those things are DAMN hard to step down from.

[Nanda]

Now he and Satan can finally be together.




Awwwwwww....

[Kisai]

I suppose it could be argued that these appeals and legal fees are due to rights groups interceeding and making the process complex

Bingo.

Do you mean that the long appeals process is due to these groups? Thinking back on it, I'm not so sure- every person has the right to appeal their case. These groups may assist them in doing so, I think, but the right was always there. And who in their right mind wouldn't want to appeal when faced with death? If you want an actual breakdown of costs and where they come from, here.

But I'm glad the appeals process is there. If there's going to be death penalty, I'd rather have the long appeals process and be SURE the guy is guilty than widen the margin of possible innocent deaths. Because they do happen, and because there are some really aweful judges out there. Though the appeals process itself doesn't solve everything, of course. There are enough other variables that the whole process is pretty shakey.

Better talk to florida and see how they are doing with their shoot-first-ask-questions-later law and the other 8 states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

[Prettysenshi]

Now he and Satan can finally be together.




Awwwwwww....

I <3 you Nanda.

[Rock_dash]

Does that mean Canada is going to invade soon?

[Crazy Chris]

We'd have to arrest two of their famous citizens first.