Saddam is scum on the highest order, no question. Executing him, however, won't do a damn thing except give a lot of ragheads excuses to blow things up. That pic of him in his underwear was a death sentence for him on the international scene. Harmless? I wouldn't say that, but if we ever hope to have an Iraq at peace, someone has to stay their hand and stop the killing. Sparing Saddam and sentencing him to life in supermax security would have taken the wind out of these leftist punks and maybe given some Iraqis pause before picking up a weapon. Then again, there's no prison, Iraqi or otherwise, outside of the US that I would trust to hold him (the Euroweenies let terrorists go, remember?), and I'm certainly not footing the bill for this guy's Mach 3's.
Liberals tell us such things as a last resort—"You'll just make him a martyr!"—but it doesn't seem to pan out that way. A jailed gangster like Saddam can run his organization from jail, as John Gotti did. Meanwhile, dead is dead. Tyrants' influence seems to wane when they are in hell.
"Mumia" still excites the KGB nostalgists in this country, but al-Zarqawi has been curiously ineffective as an executive since his automobile collided with a missile some time ago.
Let's transfer this thought over to Saddam's outlaw Baathist Party. Some of Saddam's top lieutenants still run the Party's murderous insurgencies in Iraq from another country.
When Saddam is at last pushing up figs and dates from 6-feet under the remnants of his poisonous party will convolute and wiggle for a short time and then will mostly wither away and die like a beheaded snake.
Leni