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We've been having lots of ethical discussions recently...is this a just decision?

For me, it is.

About time he is an evil man. I hope they circumsize him first.

He deserves it if he's guilty of those terrible crimes , but Im not sure I agree with captial punishment even in a case like this.
Apart from that , does his removal from power and execution really justify the bloodshed in Iraq over the last four years ?

What you're really asking is are some poeple too evil to be allowed to live ?

From all we have heard through the media about this dictator he is a horrible and nasty piece of work. There is still a fairly large number of people in Iraq who still believe he is the best thing to have happened to the country. In my opinion these people are mad.

For what he has been convicted of doing then yes, this is just. Personally I wish executions were done in Iraq in a more humane way rather than a hanging. A gas chamber or injection would seem more appropriate. It doesn't send out a good message I don't think. But it is the law of the land and you could argue he has subjected people to far far worse in his time. But is an eye for an eye the best way of going forward in this world?

I tend to agree that capital punishment should be done humanely . But, arent there some states in America that still have the electric chair ?

Gav, your avatar roflmao

I agree hanging seems a bit savage but it is the law of the land and this is one of the few cases where capital punishment does seem morally applicable.

And to go back to what Al said, yes I think it does come back to Saddam being too evil to live. There is a danger he could get power again and do more terrible things. Also the country, the millions of people that live there need closure.

good, he deserves it. Good riddance to that piece of rubbish.

Until saddam, I have never agreed to the death penalty, but I will put an exception in his case.

But thinking about it again, is killing him the answer? Will it mean the insurgency in Iraq takes greater pace with him becoming a martyr to their cause? Will it herald perhaps an upturn in terrorist incidents worldwide as perhaps a possible form of revenge? Is it perhaps in the long term better to have him fade away and rot in jail? Real tough one to answer.

Good point!!!! but arent you sick of people threatning everyone with bombs everytime something doesnt go thier way.

with a blunt spoon

Ideally he should commit suicide.
Maybe by going on hunger strike or something..

Its about time the dictator got what he desrved.

Well not much pity for Saddam then, not that I would've really expected any. And neither should he!

roflmao
Trust you Lex. I was thinking more like 2 house bricks myself :o :yikes:

Let Jilly loose on him roflmao

;) Yes do. I often have wicked thoughts in my head :rolleyes:

As far as i was concerned this was a foregone conclusion - he was always going to be sentenced to death - the trial was a show-trial, there had to be a show of due process, then he was going to die. I wasn't particularly surprised by the verdict in all honesty.......

Murder is a sin. He is an evil man, but something lighter could have done I feel.

Of course he will become a martyr. And of course there will be a backlash. Killign a person who has kille dothers never solves anything at all. The onlyuse f capital punishment it to serve as a deterent for committing haenous acts in the first place, which in many cases it simply fails to do. It will NEVERr stop evil heads of state because they make th elaws in their own country anyway and they knwo that they are nto likely to be kille duntil it is too late. And many of them accept this as part and parcel of what they do - living by th sword and dyign by the sword as it were.

Saddam is an evil man wihtout a doubt, but what make sme sick is that there ar eplenty of evil people out there who espcape the death penalty. Remeber general Pinochet? Well what happened to him? Margaret Thatcher gave him a sabtuary over here that's what :angry: And Mugabe was ignored for years becasue other countries do nto want ot get involved. It's sad that these things are never applied fairly, but selctively by other so called 'good' goverments for political gain.

But what shoudl they do with him? Well they have three choices - kill him, imprison him or make some kind of use of him. Each one of these things will be considered inappropriate by someone. When he is killed I do hope that we are nto going to hear a load of nauseating poltical righteousness from Bush.

Does the Bible not say 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?"

i think you need to read a bit further in your bible SB..... roflmao

roflmao I know I was just playign devil's advocate :devil: Must be all that tobacco talking eh? roflmao

That's the troubel with the Bibel mind, it is full of contradiction and paradox. You can ALWAYS find a quote to back up your point, and someone else can just as easily argue against you with another quote.

I do love the Revelations though where the guy talks about the 66 the number of the beast. The historians say that the holy man who saw all that was of fhis head on drugs and hallucinating or something. roflmao Must have aded something to his tobacco eh? :D

Well, I just heard on the radio that he won't actually be executed, as it goes against the European convention of human rights, and both UK and Italian forces were involved in his capture, now the US can just ignore this, but that's the law :shrug:

Yes very true. I don't think it would be wise for the US to contravene that but I'm sure old George Doubleya won't give a damn. But then what theywill do with him I dont know. :shrug: No offence but they can hardly giv ehim community service and put him on the streets collection trash like Boy George did can they? roflmao

But it's the Iraqi courts handling this, not the US. I understand that the US obviously has a lot of influence, but as far as this trial, it's their show.

BTW, in reference to an earlier question, there is only one US state (Nebraska) that still has electrocution as the primary method of execution, but they haven't actually used it in almost ten years. A few other states have it as an alternate method, and there are a few prisoners in recent years who have chosen electrocution over lethal injection.

Oh . . . and for selesfan, murder is a sin, but is the death penalty murder? Some would say yes, so would say no.

Yes , its a tricky subject. Which is better, the 'eye for an eye' approach or the higher moral ground one of life imprisonment ?

Ye sit is an interesting debate. I suppose life improsonment is considered moral as it does not kill, but (and I just play devil's advocate) is it really any more moral? One could say that life imprisonment can cause more suffering than a quick death. Also, that it is immoral to make the taxpayer support a criminal liek that in jail. And the crime and punishment debate in so far as prison i ssupposed to eb about reforming a person so as they can fit into society, and in extreme cases liek this this is not going to happen. If it were me, unless I was in a prison where I had a high standard of facilities on offer and was able to persue some purposeful path I woudl probably say shoot me quick and get it over with.

Well, on moral grounds you could say that by imprisoning someone and taking away their freedom , while allowing them a reasonable standard of existence, you're not punishing them directly , but showing them some mercy by not killing them. And their conscience probably punishes them anyway if they have one...

Out of interest guys, in terms of costs it actually costs as much to put someone to death as it does to keep them in prison for life. Look at people on death row in America, most of them are there for over a decade whilst the various appeals take place (which i guess costs the state money in lawyers and stuff), and of course you're paying for their keep in that time.

I suppose Saddam will be put to death pretty quickly, but when you take into account the amount of money it's taken to catch him........

Yes good point. I knwo it really is a serious issues, and that if anyone is one death row they have to go through the appropriate legal processess and so on, but it does make me laugh when you think that the government allows these processes to drag on so much becasue it kind fo defeats the object of the capital punishment law doesn't it? As in keeping someone alive for 10 years at enormous expense and then killing them. When you think what that money can be spent on, considering that the US does have it's fair share of poverty, social problems and social deprivation, and no NHS, it seems completely unethical and ridicrulous to be spending money on that. All these lawyers are doing ok though right? :rolleyes:

I personally am against the death sentence because in a miscarriage of justice, you cannot attempt to put things right. And many mascarriages of justice have emerged in this country alone where we have a much fairer legal system than many, so I dread to think how many unknown miscarriages of justice occur not just in the UK but in more corrupt countries. I am not saying it is wrong to kill people who kill others, I am not sure what the answer is there really, but I dont; like the kind of social baying-for-blood mentality that killing people for committing crimes can, and has, created. That is just as bad as the mentality of beign too soft on criminals and doing almost nothing to punish them.

I'm also against death by electrocution as still happens in the US (although less so now) as it seems quite sick to me, and it has bene conducted most inhumanely by sick death row prison officers. And that is very disgusting. Whether or not you think a person deserves to be kille din one thing, but revelling in it and makign ti a nasty as possible is another and is just sick. Makes a person as bad as the criminal in many ways. Anyone who calls themselves human should feel some horror and remorse when a person is killed, even if that person is a murder. Lethal injection is IMO the most humane death sentence and I think that any execution shoudl eb doen in this way and also done outside of the public domain. I really don't find it appropriate to make thiese events public and inhumane.

Well, I hardly think that's a fair portrayal of the way things work. I have my issues with the death penalty, too, but I don't think that, in general, those who carry it out are getting some sick pleasure out of it. And electrocution was introduced originally as a more humane alternative to hangings.

Interestingly, I read up a little about it because of this debate, and there was quite a rivalry between Mr. Edison and Mr. Westinghouse, because neither wanted their own electrical systems associated with killing people. Edison, who was pioneering DC electric technology, won in the end, by having the electric chair use Westinghouse's AC technology.

Very interesting stuff. :)

I am nto saying that those who conduct the electrocutions are all sick btw, just a few things I saw on TV and read occassionally that would indicate that some did. I'm sure on the whole this was not the case and I must say it is nto a job I envy. You get those kind of sadistic people in all professions too, who enjoy makign people as miserable as possible so I am not saying it is exclusive to those Death Row Prisoner Officers. I do wonder how they manage to do that job though..I guess some must get hardened to it cos if you cared or found ti upsetting it would be unbearable.

Just out of interest Nick, how frequent are these Death Row deaths in the US? Is it exceptional or fairly common? And do they all make the news? :)

Really only a few high-profile cases tend to make the news. There are a handful of states that use the death penalty frequently (several cases to even dozens per year), but for most states it is pretty rare.

This is one of the places where I found inforomation about it:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

According to that site, there have been 50 executions in the US so far this year. So that's an average of one per state, but almost half of them have been in the state of Texas.

I do remember seeing a programme about this, and it seemed to say that electrocution was far from a humane way to kill someone.

Thats amazing . We only hear about the famous cases.

The searchable database on that site is quite interesting. I was surpised to see that there had been executions by hanging and by firing squad as late as 1996. :blink:

To be honest I don't know whether we would have been better keeping him alive and giving him life imprisonment. Make his life really miserable, give him nothing but four walls to look at each day. I think that's more of a punishment than belatedly killing him.

True. If peopel really think he is the root of all eveil and deserves to suffer as much as his victims have, then he shoudl have a slow and painful demise. It disgusts me though to think of that, and I coudl tno advocae it, but somethign like the guy in Seven who was killed for the sin of Sloth woudl fit. Horrid i know but as I say if you beleiv ehe shoudl suffer, then a quick death wont; make him suffer.