Saddam Executed

[V6Bob]

Re: Saddam Executed

ok, you guys make decent points with the anti-death penalty thing, but you also gotta realize that the US reports ALL of its executions unlike many countries where executions are on the spot and MAYBE with a trial, and it's not like we go about this hap-hazardly. we prove very much without a doubt (usually death sentences are appealed repeatedly) that they committed the crime.

The conservative Republican Governor of Illinois suspended all death sentences when it was proven to his satisfaction that Illinois had convicted and sentenced to death _at least_ twelve men for something they did not do. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that others who were executed were also innocent. Can you imagine the horror of that, on both sides?
When he left office he commuted 167 death sentences. And he wasn't exactly a nice guy, either.

You have the entire continent of Africa that regularly embraces genocide, China executes "enemies of the state" on the spot (Tienenmen square anyone?) I believe that we're very fair with our doling out of the death penalty. if i'm not mistaken, you have to be guilty of murder to be eligible for execution.

You're citing some very nasty places in the world as examples. Which is my point. Do you really want to bat in that league? Most all civilized countries have rejected the death penalty, though a few have exceptions for people like Saddam. They don't use it in ordinary murder cases.

About fairness Google death penalty fairness for lots of info. Basically poor black murderers with public defender lawyers are executed lots more often than rich white murderers with expensive lawyers. It's also dependent on the race of the victim. Any surprise? So courts throw out death penalty laws in States where unfairness is proven and States then rewrite their laws. About that, Justice Blackmun said:

" From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored...to develop...rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor...Rather than continue to coddle the court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved...I feel...obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies... "

[Camaro Dom]

Re: Saddam Executed

i'm not saying we're batting in league with china or w/e, i'm trying to point out that death penalty isnt the same around the world and some countries like china do it as a means of controlling the population, not as a form of justice. and no, the death penalty isnt always fair... its very much swayed by race and class, but no more than any other sentence. if we eliminate the death penalty, we'll be sending innocent people to rot their lives away for years on end and they'll be emotional trainwrecks not to mention they'll never get a job afterwards if they get out on parole. so you pick cuz the playing field is more or less level: destroy thier life or just end it?

[nightrider2]

Re: Saddam Executed

our death peanalty is so pussied out its not even funny...the accuessed get 10-20 years to appeal and get so many years to sit in a cell...i say we should give them 5 years to apeal...on the second day of the fifth year...done

[UDLOSE98]

Re: Saddam Executed

*****************NWS***************

off of a cnn.com story i found this video of saddam laying in a gurnee well after the execution, pretty nasty stuff.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c5daa5b733

[00 Silver 6]

Re: Saddam Executed

id almost feel bad for the guy... had he not tested biological weapons on his own people. or executed thousands of civilians.

[Mighty Thor]

Re: Saddam Executed

id almost feel bad for the guy... had he not tested biological weapons on his own people. or executed thousands of civilians.

Learn your history son:

The infamous gas attack took place in mid-March 1988 in the Kurdish town of Halabja, the crossroads of an ongoing battle waged between a joint Kurdish-Iranian force and the Iraqi army. Caught in the middle were innocent civilians, including women and children.

From Power's account:

"It was different from the other bombs," one witness remembered. "There was a huge sound, a huge flame and it had very destructive ability. If you touched one part of your body that had been burned, your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire." The planes flew low enough for the petrified Kurds to take note of the markings, which were those of the Iraqi air force. Many families tumbled into primitive air-raid shelters they had built outside their homes. When the gasses seeped through the cracks, they poured out into the streets in a panic. There they found friends and family frozen in time like a modern version of Pompeii: slumped a few yards behind a baby carriage, caught permanently holding the hand of a loved one or shielding a child from the poisoned air, or calmly collapsed behind a car steering wheel.

Halabja was the "most notorious and the deadliest single gas attack against the Kurds," killing 5,000 civilians. But as Power notes, it was just one of some forty chemical assaults staged by Iraq against the Kurdish people.

[00 Silver 6]

Re: Saddam Executed

my bad, i was under the impression that they were iraqi's. either way it doesnt really change the fact that they were innocent women and children

[V6Bob]

Re: Saddam Executed

Halabja is in Iraq. Kurds (ethnic group) are a major part of the Iraqi population.