At the very least, can't we come up with a better method than hanging? Jeez. Might as well wheel out ye olde guillotine and do it the old-timey way, just like mama used to execute 'em.

I heard Talabani, the Kurdish leader Hitchens mentions, on BBC yesterday. It was fascinating because he began the interview saying he was fundamentally opposed to the death penalty. Then he reviewed some of the atrocities Saddam is accused of - he believes that Saddam may be responsible for the deaths of 2 million people. He says he is in a 'difficult moral position' and can't really say whether he supports the judges decision. The reporter really presses him though and he kind of freezes up, gets very emotional, and eventually says he can't answer. Powerful stuff.

it seems to me that there is a special reason for not excuting saddam (not that i need one): clearly, martyrdom by death is very real force in muslim culture. it seems to me that there is everything to lose by martying saddam, and very little to gain. dying a slow, ignominious death wasn't too good for Pol Pot; it should work just fine for saddam.

i think hanging is older than guillotine. guillotine is pretty sophisticated.

the most obnoxious part, flea, is that saddam was anti-religion during his reign, and now shouts "god is great" as his sentence is handed down for the precise reasons you mention. what a dick!

boy, george w. bush sure is great at creating terrorists, islmaic martyrs and beaucoup des corpses. not so good at macrame, i hear.

Also, from the point of view of swift, painless death, the guillotine isn't really so bad. I've read it said, and tend to agree, that we don't use it because it offends our sensibilities as spectators, not out of some concern for the to-be-killed. I think lethal injection is probably most often most humane, but I certainly don't think hanging is any worse than the electric chair. Ritual execution itself is just straight-up archaic.

Flea, would Saddam's supporters think of his death in the terms of martyrdom? The baathists were/are pretty secular, [we/a]ren't they?

Lethal injection can be painful:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54799-2005Apr14.html

Oh, and re: JBG, Saddam's been playing that hand for a while- building the biggest mosque in the world, right? And compensating the families of Palestinian suicide bombers... But I'm curiuos how his actual present support base processes the whole thing.

Right- but relative to other modes of execution, I think it's *most often* the *more* humane option.

I don't understand why lethal injection needs to be painful at all. Why not just give them whatever they give everyone else before surgery, and then, ONCE THEY'RE UNDER, do whatever needs to be done to end their life. You could cut their heart out with a spoon at that point, it wouldn't matter.

Why is it so hard?

There's this mentally handicapped kid who occasionally hangs around the restaurant where I work. When he walked in today, he grabbed the paper and said "Look! Saddam is dead!"
Me: "Yup."
Him: "And I'm so happy!"
Me: "I'm not really sure this is something to be happy about."
Him: "You know what else? This means the war is over!"
Me: "I wish, sweetie."

It occurred to me this morning that doing it by hanging seems especially barbaric. Though maybe that's just because Western-culture background makes me think it's done in public squares.

I'm not against the death penalty; I think it should only be used in cases like this.

What kind of case is this?

i mean, anything i post will be somewhat anecdotal, but hey:

In Tikrit, Sheikh Al Nadawi, the head of the Baigat group of tribes to which Saddam belongs, said: ‘Saddam lived a hero and will die as a hero. The court was set up by his rivals... It is a historical farce.’
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/20...

In looking for the sunni reaction, it is quite tragic that there is a consistent refrain that this timing bears out suspicions that the tribunal was simply a political prop for Bush and the republicans. What a shame. And Kurdish comments, as far as I saw, say the crimes they encounter now are worse than under Saddam, and are torn. Everyone believes that violence will increase now, even if they agree with the verdict. Would this be equally true if he were sentenced to life in prison? I don't know. I do know it's all sad. People seem very lost. A good sampling of Iraqi reactions across the country:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/447901A5-7715-475E-858D-CC23EA5FD...

"Human Rights Watch director for international justice Richard Dicker said the trial should have been conducted by an international court and called the verdict a ‘lost opportunity to give a sense of the rule of law’."
-Yeah, pretty much.

Sorry, and the next paragraph:
"The White House welcomed the guilty verdict, saying it provides proof of the viability of Iraq’s fledgling government, while Britain said the former Iraqi president and his co-defendants had been ‘held to account’."
-The thing is that it IS a political prop on a certain level, no matter what else there is to it. It seems to me it's a ritual certification of the Iraqi legal system, on the level of the mission accomplished aircraft carrier stunt. Everything our government touches turns into a set piece. They're fucking awesome like that.

I thought we tried to do an international tribunal but it was vetoes at the UN by China/Russia? Am I wrong about that?