Better dead than.....just better dead.
Posted on 10/20/2005 8:38:37 AM PDT by NorthOf45
Get it over with: Saddam must die
By Peter Worthington
October 20, 2005
Toronto Sun
After 22 months in captivity, Saddam Hussein went on trial yesterday -- only to have it postponed to Nov. 28 at the behest of his so-called defence counsel.
A huge error and let's hope it doesn't happen again.
Predictably, human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch seem more concerned about what happens to Saddam and his seven co-accused than they ever were about his victims.
The trial is the easiest case to prosecute -- the deliberate, calculated murder of more than 140 people in the Shia village of Dujail in 1982, in response to a botched assassination attempt against the visiting Saddam.
The village was bulldozed into the ground, and kinfolk of those murdered imprisoned and hounded for years.
What should happen (but won't) is that if Saddam is found guilty (almost a certainty) he should be sentenced to death and executed forthwith.
We, in civilized countries that live by law and decency, like to say that the process is more important than the outcome. Certainly that was the case in the first free elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With Saddam, however, the verdict is more important than the process: Death for the despot.
Until Saddam is dead and gone, he'll haunt Iraq and that tortured region. He'd be a symbol for those who yearn for when they flourished under his tyranny.
Realistically, why go through the charade of a series of trials for his homicidal acts -- biochemical war, naked aggression, genocide, torture and atrocities beyond description?
Suffice to be rid of him as soon as he's found guilty.
No need for an O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake or Michael Jackson-style trial of legal gymnastics. Let Iraqi justice -- quick and decisive -- prevail.
I remember attending a treason trial in Baghdad after Abdul Karim Kassem became president in the 1958 military coup in which young King Faisal and his family were assassinated.
The trial of the unfortunates was completed by lunchtime. By supper time the appeal process had been completed and verdict carried out, with hanged corpses shown on TV.
That was then, this is now.
We all have an aversion to lynching, and while lynching is not law, it may well be justice in certain cases.
Removing Saddam Hussein from the ranks of the living is more important for the future of Iraq than the appearance of a Western-style trial -- which no Muslim dictatorship honours anyway. The concern for "legitimacy" is overworked.
Western critics and softhearts who tend to despise their own country note that the three-member tribunal judging Saddam and his cohorts do not have legal backgrounds.
So what? They and most Iraqis are capable of determining Saddam's guilt or innocence.
Of course the world will be watching. But it is not U.S. impartiality, fairness or devotion to rules of law that will be judged -- but how effectively and efficiently Saddam is dispatched.
What's desirable is to get Saddam's trial over and done with.
Turn the page of history, which cannot be turned while he lives. Give him his day in court, let him say what he will, then if judged guilty send him to meet 72 heavenly virgins, pronto.
Believe me, he'll be forgotten as soon as he's gone -- and his fate might influence the likes of Zimbabwe's tyrannical Robert Mugabe more than any "due process' and endless appeals would.
Ping
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his angerl Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue-to the scandal of The Sex!
Thanks Northof45.
Canada ping.
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
As much as I want to seee him gone quickly, I feel it is extremely important for the Europeans, MSM and the people of the Middle East to have to hear and see what this monster did to his own people for decades. I don't want to get it over with and forget about it quickly...I want it to linger for a year or more in the press, every single day. I want every tyrant to know that in the end, someone is watching and taking notes and they will be brought to justice for every crime they commit.
"Predictably, human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch seem more concerned about what happens to Saddam and his seven co-accused than they ever were about his victims."
Good post. Sadly, "human rights" groups care more about making political hay and playing politics than actual human rights.
Sometime, death is justice for the most monsterous among us. Iraqis will try him, judge him, and decide what his fate will be according to THEIR law. That is how it should be and is far more than his victims got.
It may be more than that - it may be a needed prophylaxis against a campaign by his fading Ba'athist sympathizers to return him to power. That they are out there and that they are motivated by his continued existence are shown by the recent threats they've made to attack U.S. bases with rocketry should the trial go poorly from their point of view.
Under normal circumstances this sort of preventative execution would be an impermissible violation of Saddam's own human rights, but in view of his outrageous violation of the human rights of at least 300,000 people (and probably several times that) I'm not sure if that is a persuasive objection anymore.
The main thing is that it isn't the Europeans', or Amnesty International's, or the UN's, or even ours to decide. That's been the deal from the beginning. The Iraqis will do this their way and in their own time. If that is frustrating, consider that it's what our people have been bleeding for and deal with it.
Agreed. Where are the Dixie Sluts on this abuser/raper/murderer of women? Let's hear that "Earle must die" refrain. Or would that would be offensive to one of their favorite "johns" in the Texas DA's office?
I am curious as to what type of Gallows they have. When we see someone hanged on tv, it's from a crane etc. They are using what is known as suspension hanging, whereas the person is lifted by the neck from the gallows platform and death comes from strangulation. The more modern way we are accustomed to is called long drop hanging. The person falls through a trap door and the jerk of the rope breaks the neck and spinal cord resulting in quick death.
Unlike in Canada, I think many Americans might not totally agree.
People do not like it when process is used to thwart or twist justice.
No one can yet predict where this trial will go.
One side of me wishes the guys who found Sadam had tossed a hand grenade in his hidy hole (he was waving a pistol around).
But it is important for the ME to see this and discuss it as nothing like this trial has ever happened there before.
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