Blue Crab Boulevard

Saddam To Hang?

It appears as if the Iraqi government is set to hang Saddam Hussein. While it really isn't something to celebrate, the sentence is justified, I think. There are some people who forfeit their right to live in the world by their own actions. Saddam is one of those.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins at sundown Saturday.

The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi government to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution. His sentence, handed down last month, ordered that he be hanged within 30 days.

I don't disagree with the sentence or the act of carrying it out. That stance will be unpopular with some folks. I can live with that. Saddam was a brutal dictator and has been playing for time. If time is up, fine.

UPDATE: Todays events are posted here and are being updated. I'll leave the comments turned on on this post, but the newer one is more up to date.

War | Gaius Thursday, 28 December , 2006

By dr. dave, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 10:28 am

I find myself surprisingly ambivalent about the whole thing… and I don’t think I’m alone. I don’t get the idea that the Ewoks will be dancing in the trees like at the end of Jedi…

The whole situation strikes me as somewhat…. tragic in a way. Not in the sense that the death of Hussein personally is tragic, more like… “Here’s humanity for you… isn’t it lovely?”
By Ferdinando, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 10:28 am

Whatever. I just can’t help that seeing people cheer executions, no matter of whom, makes me want to have never been born in this world.

I can just take some solace in the fact that people who cheer something this disgusting are confined in countries that a sizable part of the world sees as barbarian.
By Gaius, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 10:34 am

I wouldn’t exactly categorize my post as cheering. The difference is that I think the sentence is justified, you don’t. As I said, I can live with that.
By Quilly Mammoth, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 10:59 am

I once had to shoot a rabid dog. I wasn’t happy about it…I’m very much a dog lover. I felt a bit sad, not that I had to shoot the dog, but that the dog was rabid in the first place. So I shot it and moved on.
By Finnegan, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 11:05 am

I’m anti-death penalty, but I’m also a pragmatist. I wonder if executing him won’t just set off another round of sectarian violence. Wouldn’t we be better off just throwing him in a crappy Iraqi prison for the rest of his pathetic little life?
By Gaius, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 11:09 am

The problem then becomes what if his followers free him? Or does his continued existence prompt more violence?
By Tom, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 11:13 am

More Iraqis have died because of Bush’s policies than were ever killed by Saddam.
By Jesus, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 11:16 am

What would I do?
By Quilly Mammoth, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 12:01 pm

Jesus would do exactly what he did do. Promise salvation in the next life to those who believe in him. And let Ceasar do what ceasars do…just as he did at Golgotha.

As for Ted Rall and those who delude themselves as he does…::bronx cheer::
By diogenes, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 4:12 pm

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> I'm ambivalent too. Although he was an evil dictator we assisted him in his crimes. Quite a moral dilemma, eh?
By Irritated_Prof, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 6:15 pm

I wish the Administration had made Saddam an offer: we’ll get your sentence commuted if you tell us where the WMDs are. After all, we know he had ‘em, right? We just haven’t found ‘em yet, right? And if they got shipped off to Syria or someplace worse, we’d like to know, right? So why didn’t we give Saddam the chance to trade his life for ‘em?
By Gaius, Friday, 29 December , 2006 @ 6:19 pm

Would we know if such a deal had been offered and rejected?
By Jim Harrison, Saturday, 30 December , 2006 @ 10:24 am

You’d have to look long and hard to find any American left or right who is broken up about Saddam’s death. His trial, however, was a travesty. It would have been far better had he been shot in hot blood at the time of his capture. The timing of the execution on a Muslim holy day was also an inexplicable blunder: the execution will seem like a studied insult to the Sunnis, including the Sunnis that never had any use for a secular dictator like Saddam. As Talleyrand once remarked of a similar act of state murder, “It’s worse than a sin. It’s a mistake.”

It won’t be lost on many folks here and and abroad that Saddam wasn’t hanged for the worst things he did, instigating unprovoked wars against Kuwait and Iran than resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. We could have hardly allowed that charge, after all, since our own president and his men are guilty of the same crime on the same scale and an equal justice would put them at the end of a rope.
By Gaius, Saturday, 30 December , 2006 @ 10:34 am

It really is tiresome going over this time and again. Under any interpretation of just cause for a war, violation of a ceasefire is adequate justification for resumption of hostilities. Saddam was in repeated violation of the ceasefire. He was also in violation of a long list of UN resolutions.

He won’t be missed.
By Roderick, Saturday, 30 December , 2006 @ 10:17 pm

Comment by Gaius

It really is tiresome going over this time and again. Under any interpretation of just cause for a war, violation of a ceasefire is adequate justification for resumption of hostilities. Saddam was in repeated violation of the ceasefire. He was also in violation of a long list of UN resolutions

Roderick: I just love how you guys bring up the UN when it is useful to you and then bash it when it does something with which you disagree. You right wingers treat the UN like a mistress.
By Gaius, Saturday, 30 December , 2006 @ 11:01 pm

I brought the UN up only because they passed the resolutions. Nice attempt to completely dodge the issue though, Rod.
Ceasefire violation=justification to resume hostilities.

Period.