Should Saddam be "burned"?

[Zmid]

But seriously i think they have no choice but to put Saddam to death, as people have said earlier he still has loyal followers. And Saddam is their leader their figure head but if he is gone then they are leader-less. If he is locked up for years then these people still have something to fight for. True if they execute him there may be a higher rate of attacks for a while but with time they'll fade and Saddam will be forgotten. But if he lives they will not stop.

Personally, as far as that goes, I think the US and UK are screwed either way. If he is imprisoned, his followers will fight for his freedom. If he is executed, he will become a martyr to his followers, and, despite the fact this will probably be done through an Iraqi court, it will be seen as being down to the US and UK, because they were the ones who caused that court to try him in the first place.

[IgorTheBlack]

Well as for Osama i think that he will never be found, at least by Bush anyway or is dead from kidney falure.

He is too smart and will most likely organise another terror strike all because Bush is not smart enough.

 

America's next move will not be Syria or Iran or other countries that rumor has it being.

It will most likely be North Korea.

 

Reason:

"They have Nukes"

"They are Commies"

"They can wipe out Nevada\Kansas etc"

 

Frankly I think that America over the years has gone in way over its head on this one and finaly will get wats coming to them for all the wars they have interfered with over the years. And most of them were their fault!

 

Korea was started by America forgeting to add Korea to the area they would "protect" after WW2.

 

That leads to the division of Korea and now the North have Nukes.

 

It is a bit hypocritical (sp?) for the US to say "No you can't have Nukes" when they have enough to destroy the world about 40 times.

 

The non-proliferation aggreement stops the giving or sale of nuculer science and material to non-nuculer countries. If America was too lazy to keep its nuke designs secret then its their fault.

 

 

Please don't see me as an American hater. I have many friends in America and lived their for a while and is one of the nicest countries I have ever been to (With the exsption of Italy :) )

All i hate about America is their beleif that they can vulk up other countries and not be held responsible for it.

 

:end rant:

[vandorssen]

OT - Igor, I disagree with your assessment about a possible future conflict between Korea and the US only in so far as we have deliberately ignored them up to the present, only going through the motions of multi-lateral talks to stave off conflict. I do not yet think that the US has finished its business in the Middle-East, and further, Korea can offer us nothing we want, where as the Mid-East has oil and potentials for US contractors that the Far-East cannot match. The only benefit of doing anything with North Korea at this point in time is the good will of Japan, South Korea, and perhaps China. Personally I think this administration is hoping the North Korea issue will quietly go away, at least for the time being. Frankly the US sees that the only beneficiary of a conflict regarding North Korea is China, and we would not like them to gain the edge there, now would we.

 

Besides, I think we have had our fill of Korea. The last "police action" we engaged in there was almost as embarrassing as Vietnam.

[tyjet3]

I agree, america was way over it's head on this...

 

Anyway back on topic... In my paper today they got the voice of the Iraqi people and what should be done to Saddam.

 

Barber, Moha Ali, 35, said he had wanted "Saddam to be judged from the beginning, since he commited all those terrible crimes against our Iragi People."

Yet seeing the former president -- the face of Iraq and a man who championed Arab causes -- in such circumstances caught him off guard. "It's hard or the Iraqis to see their former leader on trial, eve if he is evil."

Others were unforgivimg.

"I hope they deliver Saddam to me personally because executing Saddam in one day isn't enough." said Sadeq Karim, 36, a laborer in Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite Muslim district of Baghdad that suffered under Saddam.

Karim said Hussein's regime had arrested him and executed two of his brothers, One brother was killed even after Karim paid the $30,000 that was to have saved his brother's life.

Hussein "jailed people. and now he is in jail. He killed innocent people and now both his sons are dead. He made a lot of women widow, and now his two daughters are widows. He deserves what he gets," said Karim

Also looking forward to the justice is Iraqi Kurdish minority, since many of the chares against Hussein stem from atrocities committed against Kurdish tribes, villages and political parties. Several Kurds in Baghdad said Hussein should be executed for such crimes against humanity.

 

Even his own people want him dead. That shoud tell you something about Saddam.

 

Keeping him alive would be to risky. He could escape and then he would have one hell of a grudge against america... Plus I don't think people should have to pay for his food, water, jail cell, ect. from taxes.

 

These number's aren't right but let me use them as a example. It cost $120,000 to execute someone, ok. It cost $100,000 to keep someone alive... for ONE YEAR. That means that if you are holding someone in jail for 10 years, you are sucking $1,000,000 out of the taxes. Now say you are doig this to 20 people. That is $20,000,000 of the tax payers money to keep 20 terrible men/women alive in jail when you could have had them executed for only $2,400,000... Money like that could have been spent much better in other places like education or medical research. But no, lets keep a cold blooded killer alive for ten+ years... So you tell me, which one looks smarter for our society?

[Brighid]

@surian: Are you telling me that killing a mass murder cuases more people to become mass murders? That makes no sense. If anything it should make more people not want to be murders because then they would realize they are thowing away their lives. And if they don't care about their own lives, that has nothing to do with different person's execution.

 

To put it simply Tyjet, places that have execution tend to have more violent crime. Violence begets violence, thus when the government is bloodthirsty and violent, the citizenry tends to be more bloodthirsty and violent.

 

from: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.ph...scid=12&did=168

"During this decade the murder rate in non-death penalty states has remained consistently lower than the rate in states with the death penalty. "

 

State sponsored murder is an abomination.

 

These number's aren't right but let me use them as a example. It cost $120,000 to execute someone, ok. It cost $100,000 to keep someone alive... for ONE YEAR. That means that if you are holding someone in jail for 10 years, you are sucking $1,000,000 out of the taxes. Now say you are doig this to 20 people. That is $20,000,000 of the tax payers money to keep 20 terrible men/women alive in jail when you could have had them executed for only $2,400,000... Money like that could have been spent much better in other places like education or medical research. But no, lets keep a cold blooded killer alive for ten+ years... So you tell me, which one looks smarter for our society?

 

from http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/dp...athpenalty.html

 

"The relative costs of execution and life imprisonment without parole:

 

* North Carolina: The death penalty costs $2.16 million more per execution than the cost of a non-death penalty murder case with life imprisonment (Duke University, May 1993)

* Texas: a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)

* California: In Los Angeles County, an average death penalty case costs $2,087,926, vs. $1,448,935 for life imprisonment without possibility of parole—cost of the death penalty in California "

 

The smartest thing to do here would be to research our points before we make them.

 

As for Saddam, I do believe that the US needs to keep its nose out of it, but I am suspicious of Saddam being tried by a US controlled Iraq (I know sovreignty was returned, but to a puppet government). I believe he should be tried by the International Criminal Court.

I am an American, but I also believe that both Bushes and Clinton should face charges in the International Criminal Court for their use of depleted uranium on civilians in many countries.

[surian]

These number's aren't right but let me use them as a example. It cost $120,000 to execute someone, ok. It cost $100,000 to keep someone alive... for ONE YEAR. That means that if you are holding someone in jail for 10 years, you are sucking $1,000,000 out of the taxes. Now say you are doig this to 20 people. That is $20,000,000 of the tax payers money to keep 20 terrible men/women alive in jail when you could have had them executed for only $2,400,000... Money like that could have been spent much better in other places like education or medical research. But no, lets keep a cold blooded killer alive for ten+ years... So you tell me, which one looks smarter for our society?

 

You are wrong. Very simply stated; what you just said is completely false. here is a quote from an ACLU report.

 

t is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment."56 A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs – including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs – are mostly borne by the taxpayer. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison.

 

So, the trial ALONE in a death penalty case costs more than it does to just incarcerate the person for life. If you are wondering why that is, it's because (as the quote says) of litigation costs etc... these costs are borne by the taxpayers because it is the STATE that is prosocuting. This isn't even to mention the fact that a capital punishment case requires 2 trials, not one. One is to determine if the person is guilty or innocent, and another to determine if he should be sentanced to death. It also doesn't cover appeals, which can cost a LOT of money and are more frequent in death penalty cases than in any other case. Nor does it cover the actual cost of the killing (which is, as you reported, in the millions itself).

 

The idea that it costs less to execute a man is a common idea, however it's wrong. Next question...

 

Edit:

I am an American, but I also believe that both Bushes and Clinton should face charges in the International Criminal Court for their use of depleted uranium on civilians in many countries.

--Amen to that! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black huh?

[tyjet3]

@surian and Brighid

I stand corrected. I don't know where i got my information but they were obviously wrong about the costs but @brighid your article clearly states that as death penalty went up crime went down.

 

In the past ten years, the number of executions in the U.S. has increased while the murder rate has declined.

 

I'm not talking about state percentage, I'm talking about National percentages. Murder rates went down in ALL STATES. Plus one very interesting thing I noticed was that in the charts, when execution rate was the highest (1999), It was also the lowest in murder rate... check the charts...Overall, the murder rate dropped as execution rates went up.

 

Back on topic... I agree with Brighid on this. The US needs to let the iraqi people handle it themselves. They only thing the US should do is maybe show some support with troops in the area and that is it. We need to get our politics out of there.

[Brighid]

You are correct, you only quoted the first line though. If you read the rest you see that states without the death penalty had larger decreases than states with the death penalty. Murder rates are also higher where they have the death penalty.

 

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.ph...scid=12&did=167

This page has a lot more information. All pointing to the fact that the death penalty, far from being a deterrent to murder, actually desensitizes people to violence.

Deterrence: U.S. Murder Rate Greatly Exceeds European Non-Death Penalty Nations

Data released by the British Home Office reveals that the United States, which retains the death penalty, has a murder rate that is more than three times that of many of its European allies that have banned capital punishment. (New York Times, May 11, 2002). The data challenges the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder.

During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty.

 

We definitely need to get our politics out of there. We also need to get Haliburton and friends out of there.

Companies actually held huge seminars on "how to profit from the war and occupation of Iraq"

We need to get them the hell out of there, and start thinking about what is best for the world, not the Bushies richest friends.

I honestly think a lot of the Saddam trial now is attempting to increase Bush's poll numbers in an election year.

[surian]

Well, the trial has everything to do with the fact that the Iraqis now have "control" over their country. However, the handover of power is most definately a calculated attempt at boosting polls for Bush. So while the actual trial may not be completely US politics in action the reason it's being held NOW most definately is.

 

Most Iraqis are not very happy with the fact that they have had power handed over so quickly. They arn't happy about havning the US stay either, but they also recognize that their new governement needs much more time to develop than it has. It's a no-win situation, however it's an outcome that was fairly obvious from the onset.

 

This thread has about a million different topics in it now, but as for the "would you burn saddam thing": You know my views on capital punishment, but in this case I don't think that what WE want to do has any real merit. The Iraqis are in charge of Saddam's fate and they will decide what to do with him. To be honest I feel that's probably the best thing to do with him. If the US tried him then there would be no legitimacy, if another country tried him it would be the same as if the US did, therfor it's probably best that the Iraqis do this themselves and they will have to choose as THEY see fit. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that will mean Saddam is going to be executed, but honestly, I can't say he doesn't deseve it. That doesn't make it RIGHT, but it means that he probably does deserve death.

 

But I have to make another comment about capital punishment in America too. Tyjet, there have also been studies that watch the murder rates in states that didn't have the death penalty and compair their murder rates BEFORE they had the death penalty to what they were AFTER they imposed the death penalty. In every case, the murder rate actually goes UP after the death penalty is legalized in the state.

[tyjet3]

I can almost promise you that Saddam will be executed by the Iraqi people. As I stated above in the news article, the Iraqi people hate him.

------------

One thing i still don't under stand.... if execution cost so much more and causes so many problems, why are states still trying to get it as an option?

 

Could you also please tell me your source for your execution cost?