[EOM]

Yep, bad move. I really don't understand what the US is doing...

.....oh wait, did someone say "creating generations of instability in the middle east"?

Best opinion on the situation (that I heard) came from a Canadian who was interviewed on CBC after the sentence was handed down. His father was one of the 150+ who were executed in response to the botched assasination attempt. He pointed out that all this execution does is to further the cycle of successive governments in Iraq punishing the previous (many of the people whom Saddam was charged with having executed were connected to the previous ruling power).

Did someone say "We didn't hang him, just turned him over to the people he treated like his personal farm/whore-house for a few generations"?

And what the hell does Saddam's execution have to do with Electro-optic Modulators?!

how do we know that he is actually dead?

i wasnt there, and i have seen movies, so i know it can be faked.... i dont trust these people.

Erm... Snax... The US did not hang Saddam Hussein. (Mr. Hussein btw.)

The Iraqi government did. (Puppet government maybe... but still Iraqi puppets. And they WERE voted into place by the Iraqi people... deluded people maybe... but still democracy (kinda).)

...kthxbai

Ok I really don't think you can finish that run-on contradiction with a "kthxbai". You know as well as I do that if the US thought that executing Saddam Hussein was problematic for their goals in the region....

...then he would not have been executed. He was in their possession throughout the entire trial, right up until a couple hours before his date with the gallows....

Corollary: if the Iraqi people (the majority of whom Saddam of the Now Elongated C-Spine tortured/raped/oppressed/killed/etc) didn't want him dead, we'd have had to find some other way to kill him.

We didn't have to.

[He was kept in U.S. possession for simple security reasons: finding him once took a while. We'd hate to have to do it twice, or have the Iraqi people denied their chance to hang him publicly due to someone taking matters into their own hands]

Why would killing him be preferable to keeping him locked up for the rest of his life in a prison like a common criminal? Have him killed in the prison in some way if it was imperative for him to die (although this reeks of vengeance, not justice).

Executing him in such a fashion only creates martyrdom syndrome...

I absolutely agree with Lecter...

He's a symbol alive or dead. Easier to manage dead.

And do not forget the importance of revenge. Many Iraqis wanted him dead... He is dead.

And do not conflate the government with the people in your definition of the US. In general we could care less, but some were against it... some were for it. Our government (Bush et al) wanted him dead... He is dead.

Realpolitik.

I'm outta this thread....

Vengeance and Justice are not mutually exclusive concepts. Anyone who tells you different undervalues your very humanity.

Yeah, capital punishment is the one place where justice and revenge indeed come together; there's nothing to be gained by the death of the culript but slake the thirst for payback. You'll notice it's particularly insidious for dictators and madmen; Hussein was very unlikely to ever return to power if he was sent to jail for life. Likewise, Pinochet in Argentina was an old, sick person and yet people still felt cheated of "justice" when he died in the hospital; here in Mexico some are still after Echeverria's neck (and wanting to legalize the death penalty, just for him) because of his participation in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, even though, again, this is another powerless, sick old man. Or just look at the Nuremberg trials.

Mr. Hussein has simply run afoul the most serious risk of being a bloodthirsty dictator: when deposed, you're not likely to survive for long. He's lucky to have lasted as long as he did.

Of course, apart from giving satisfaction to a LOT of people (at the time it enrages some others), his death doesn't help Iraq one iota.

i have very mixed feeling about this.

as most canadians, i'm opposed to capital punishment but there are cases in history that really warrants such a slap in the face of evil doers.

where i'm torn about saddam is that yes, this guy was a sadistic bastard and really made life miserable for a lot of people. however, he was put in place by the same external government that actually supplied him with the weapons, cash and means to conduct his wars, right up until he went out of bounds on kuwait. that very same external government then decided to screw him up and play him the vilain, ousted him, sacked his country, put in a puppet of an administration in place, which then trial and executed him pronto.

pronto because they wanted to shut him up and downplay any involvement that external government had in supplying weapons, chemical ones at that, and supported (actually, pushed into) war with iran.

no bloddy surprise all hell broke loose.

edit:
here's a nice summary of hussein's career.

"What... he is dead...? High five!"

Very nice link UC... Obviously slanted in a specific direction, and yet, informative and factual. (Probably... Who knows WHAT is mis/dis/mal/non-information these days. And what a fact is has been in contention since "facts" were invented.)

In my opinion, absolutely nothing warrants the death penalty, since I think that sanctioned murder is murder nonetheless, and thus, we put ourselves on the same level as murderers if we allow it.

That said, I agree with jexkerome that Saddam Hussein's death isn't going to do anything positive, especially not in the long run.

'Murder' is the intentional, unjustified killing of a human being.

If you wish to claim that justice never, ever, requires the killing of a criminal... have the balls to state your slimy premise.

Don't get sloppy with language, you son of a bitch.

there is no justification for killing anyone. i firmly believe that.

the sob should have spent the rest of his life rotting in a cell. better yet, in a cage in a zoo for everyone to mock and throw peanuts at.

along with the people who put him in place.

Such a sheltered n00b =P