Originally Posted by: earthman buck^^^Yeah, exactly.

I see what you're getting at, though, aschleman. The families of the people he killed probably wouldn't get any comfort from him being in jail.

I just think that if you're going to be put to death, it's mental anguish, but it's limited. You know when the mental anguish will end. If you're in prison for the rest of your life, you are living, but you're not free, and you know you never will be again. That would mess with my head a lot more than knowing I'm about to die.

I'd take death over life in prison any day. But maybe that's just me.

I think you're right but there is one aspect of this that we haven't touched on yet. We (all of us responding here) are normal folks. We don't engineer the deaths of thousands and thousands of people. We don't play God. We don't rule by fear, intimidation and torture. People (term used soooo very loosely) like him are not like us. They don't think and react like us. I am convinced that carrying out a death sentence is not so much to mete out justice against the offending party as it is a way, yes, medevial in it's way, of bringing about retribution and justice for the families of the victims.

I would be willing to bet that in his mind, Saddam went to the gallows as a hero. A martyr. The price to pay for the power he wielded. Sure, at the end, as he was trudging up those stairs or having the noose thrown over his head, I am sure that his heart was literally beating out of his chest. But it would not surprise me in the least that in the days leading up to his execution, he thought himself the victor over his captors.

And if they had held him with life in prison, it would be the same. Spitting in the eye of his captors.

He had his trial at the hand of the Iraqi's, he was convicted by these same folks and they executed him. Does it change anything? Wait and see but I doubt it. But the families of his victims can try to close that horrific chapter of their lives.

It's like when a killer is executed in this country. Capital punishment does not slow down violent crime. It does not 'punish' the killer. It provides him an escape in a way (unless you are a religious person and then you think that it just sort of sent him on his way to his own judgment). What it does is provide a sense of closure and justice to the families of the vicitms.

To me, execution or life in prison are both death sentences. Either-or.