"An Eye For An Eye Makes The Entire World Blind" (Mahatma Gandhi)

Well, Saddam Hussein has been executed.

(I�m kind of waiting for some South Parkean Hell-on-Earth to happen.)

I don�t quite know, exactly, how I feel about this. (Other than the �ghoulishness� of showing him with the noose around his neck on television. What the FUCK was that all about?)

On the one hand, I have no doubt that the man was a brutal dictator and was guilty of the war crimes that he was accused of. (Even if you chalk some of the charges up to U.S.-propaganda I doubt his hands didn�t have the blood of his people on them.)

On the other hand, I fundamentally disagree with how his execution came about (with the U.S. lead invasion of Iraq in the pursuit of �democracy�). Nor do I believe that any true democracy uses the death penalty as a form of punishment.

Don�t get me wrong, there are some crimes that, in my gut, I DO feel are so heinous that they should be punishable by death. But I don�t think that there is any way that the death penalty could be � forgive the pun � executed in any way that would (1.) ensure that it�s applied fairly, (2.) overcome the problems of absolutely knowing for certain that the right person is being executed for the crime in question, and finally, (3.) that its not cruel or inhumane to the person being executed. Fair trial, painless execution type of things.

Perhaps it�s because, as much as I hate to admit it, I�m of the camp that it�s better to let ten guilty people go free than to have one innocent person in jail or executed.

But I DO struggle with this. Do I believe (in theory) that the B.C. pig farmer who (allegedly) killed all those prostitutes should be put to death? Yes. Clifford Olsen? Yes.

In practice? Not so much.

My gut may say yes but I also know that the death penalty is an affront to human rights and civil liberties. (It�s actually antithetical to them.) I also believe that it�s cruel and unusual punishment. (Yes, even lethal injection. A University of Miami study submitted to The Lancet demonstrated that 88% of the 49 lethal injections that were studied indicated that the blood concentration of the anaesthetic agent was less than that required to induce unconsciousness for surgery. This means that it�s more likely than not that those executed were fully aware of what was happening (as the other chemicals induced cardiac arrest and asphyxiation killed them) but were unable to communicate this because they were paralysed from the chemical that would also, eventually, cause them to asphyxiate.)

But even if they gave a single overdose of a barbiturate � the only �acceptable method� (read: humane) to euthanize non-human primates* � and thereby prevent a torturous execution (such as those by good ol� Sparky in Florida) I�d still oppose the death penalty on principle.

The death penalty is nothing more than retribution (torturous retribution if you think about it) and has nothing whatsoever to do with punishment.

Why the hell else would the U.S. execute the mentally disabled and mentally ill?

(Though this goes without saying,) I fundamentally disagree with the U.S. policy of executing criminals who are mentally handicapped or retarded (I know it�s not the most sensitive term to describe these criminals but it�s the best term to demonstrate just how inhumane and, for lack of a better word, profoundly fucked-up the U.S. death penalty policy is), mentally disabled, or mentally ill. I�m sorry, but if an individual who is about to be executed asks his guard to save the pecan pie from his FINAL MEAL for after his execution says to me that the individual didn�t have the requisite mental capacity to understand the crime in the first place.** Nor could be assist in his own defence or even understand the severity of the extent of the �punishment� that�s handed down.

I keep thinking about all of these things and then I think about the Big Bads. Do I think that the Nazis executed at Nuremburg didn�t �deserve� it? They did. But I also believe that those people who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki also perpetuated a war crime and should have been executed as well. Fair and even distribution of the same punishment for the same crime kind of thing.

There�s the rub. It�s not technically a �war crime� if you�re the victor in a war, is it? (Or, in recent memory, it�s not really a �terrorist act� if you�re the United States � even if you do the exactly the same thing as the �terrorists.�)

*This is the same method of euthanasia that they use for companion animals because the animal just falls asleep and drifts away. No pain. No awareness of what�s happening.

**And, yes, Dubya, the U.S. DOES execute the mentally handicapped, mentally disabled, and mentally ill. The case I mentioned was that of African American Ricky Ray Rector, who wasn�t born mentally disabled. However, he shot himself in the head before he was arrested for killing a white police officer. What kind of people (BILL CLINTON) supports the execution of a man missing a good portion of his brain and who would � not understanding what was happening � later help them find the vein (after 50 minutes of looking) for the I.V. that would kill him? See Amnesty International�s website for more information on this.