I just saw this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3738368.stm) on the BBC.

My favorite quote was

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

Shame is the only word that comes to my mind

Which Europeans? I have yet to see anyone, even the fiercest anti-war person denying that good boy Saddam committed atrocities. Sad to say but that kind of thing happens more or less every single day somewhere on this planet and I dont see much outrage over that. Face it, we dont give a damn if some two bit dictator so would kill a thousand babies a day unless he would happen to introduce extra taxes on the goods we sell in his country. Then we are outraged.

The people who do care, like Amnesty and similar organisations are mostly ridicouled by the people who are now playing up what Saddam did, the same people who said it was no biggy when the deeds were committed.

Hypocrisy is the name of the world and have always been.

Wouldn't it be a shame to condemn Hussain to death will he could be suffering for the rest of his life in an isolation cel?

Condemning a person to death seems more an act of pity, shame is the only word that comes to my mind when you are pitying Saddam and his fate, Snook *tsk*

Well, Europeans, joacqin! Those pro-Saddam, pro-profit, anti-freedom, anti-anything gits. ;) Never mind details or who installed Saddam in the first place. Shame where shame is due.

Sorry, i don't take any journalist serious, who refers to Europeans as if it's one race, one people. That's a grave insult.

Shame is the only word that comes to my mind
Well, that's the dilemma of the preacherman, I suppose. That's the price you have to pay for having strong moral pricnipels and are committed to spread those principels around the world, as you look as them as fundamental. Fundamental human rights.

Makes of course dealing with a rather imperfect and for the most part not optimal developed world difficult sometimes. From the irragations of China, the deserts of Saudi-Arabia and the plains of Texas, savages roam and barbaric rituals are still in place. Like the Death-Penalty.

Foreigner, meet pillar (http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/Treaties/Html/114.htm) of civilisation:

The member States of the Council of Europe, signatory to this Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed at Rome on 4 November 1950 (hereinafter referred to as "the Convention"),

Considering that the evolution that has occurred in several member States of the Council of Europe expresses a general tendency in favour of abolition of the death penalty,

Have agreed as follows:

Article 1 – Abolition of the death penalty

The death penalty shall be abolished. No-one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.
Obviously, can't be near anything as appalling and barbaric as that, particularly if you condemned anyone who does it for doing it. No one said being a paladin is easy. Won't you please keep that shining armour stainless steel, please?

Nah, can't make any exceptions if you're against death penalty. The principle either applies or doesn't. Is it OK to condemn Saddam to death but not OK to put an ordinary murderer on the chair? Is one murder any less murder than one of a thousand? What about the subjective element of guilt - does human life carry the same worth for a mass murderer as it does for a single time murderer? If lesser, perhaps one murder of a thousand actually means less than a single time murder? Perhaps not... Isn't the very idea of applying maths to murder outrageous? Scale belongs to maths and it's scale where Saddam differs from an ordinary thug, at least in the objective sense. Does he not deserve death then? Honestly, I don't know. I leave such things to God. After all, what do I deserve for things I've done? Won't all my evils some up to at least one murder value? Or maybe something I did somewhere some time caused or accelerated a death as a remote result? Who am I to judge who's worthy of living? No, don't kill Saddam.

Chev, it might be mathmatics but someone who murders two people is obviously worse than someone who murders one. A life is worth as much as a life. Two lives are worth more than one. Saddam will NEVER be released for his crimes so keeping him in prison at the expense of the state is pointless, just cap the bastard.

This is pretty gruesome stuff, but I think joacqin is right on this one. We only seem to care because it's related to something tangentially relevant to us. And because it helps prove that Saddam was a murdering tyrant (which we already knew anyway). The only thing that this changes IMO is the scope and brutality of his crimes. We knew he gassed the Kurds, we knew some of the things he did to his own people and to Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War (which the US backed him in). This is just one more thing to punish him for.

Consider, if you will, what happened to the likes of Idi Amin, "Baby" Doc Duvalier and Mengitsu. If those names don't sound familiar, I'm not surprised. Between them, they're responsible for greater atrocities than Saddam. Snook, this is terrible news, and I'm glad you brought it up. I just wish people were all as responsive to things like what's happening (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10226-2004Jun27.html) in the Sudan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3568766.stm) as they were to the fate of a deposed dictator. To their credit, the Bush administration is getting involved in this issue, but it's not getting a great deal of coverage in mainstream media.

Still, this finding doesn't justify executing Hussein - killing for the sake of vengeance is still murder, and while it's easier than permanent incarceration, knowing that the key architect of these atrocities languishes in a cell he will never be freed from will give a lot more people reason to celebrate than a simple lethal injection.

@ chev and others

Actually, the U.S. DOES impose different penalties based on the number of murders, and how old you are when you commit them. For example, mosts states will not impose the death penalty for a single murder - it's usually life in prison. The law in multiple states only authorizes a death penalty in the case of multiple (read: at least two) murders. Also, in states like Maryland, you cannot sentence anyone to death regardless of how many people he killed if they were performed while he was under 18 years of age (read: Lee Malvoe). That's why Malvoe was tried in Virginia instead of Maryland, as Virginia can sentence a minor to death for multiple murders.