We owe an apology to victims of mass murderers we have executed....

[Blackhatjack]

.... the act of executing a mass murderer fulfills the desires of those seeking only revenge and retribution. It does not address the needs of those still searching for the bodies of their loved ones that disappeared, nor does it provide answers as to what this mass murderer knew or did not know about their loved ones. Where the mass murderer had control of public money and assets, it cuts off a source of information to where millions and sometimes billions of dollars have been secreted, which could be used to restore those injured and make the public treasury whole again.

And most importantly, mass murderers keep appearing long after the last one was executed. By executing the mass murderers we have caught, we are losing valuable information which might help us understand how a mass murderer comes to be and/or how we might spot a mass murderer before he kills again. To that end we owe future victims of mass murderers an apology for not doing all we could to prevent their killing since our need to impose retribution on the offender outweighs the value of their lives.

And lastly, mass murderers like Saddam do not rise to such levels of power without the support and assistance of other powerful individuals and countries --who now will be protected from identification by Saddam dying without the opportunity to reveal his secrets.

Nothing in this post is an excuse or defense of the horrible acts of Saddam and his moral depravity. However, the lives of the living far outweigh the needs of those seeking revenge and retribution.

[Kagemusha]

1. With all due respect, Saddam's rise is a well known story.

It is not mysterious and nothing needed to be learned from his own mouth about it. He was simply the baddest dude around, rose through the ranks in the secret police protecting better connected people who went by the wayside, rose to take power himself, crushed his opposition, and cynically used whatever he had available - CIA assistance against Iran, later, religion, when his party's fundamental basis was secular Arab nationalism - to play people against each other and hold on to power. He trusted no one, but trusted those outside his clan, those without ties of blood to him, even less, which is the correct way to view Iraqi society. He was ruthless and simply acted with the lack of restraint of a psychopath. If he'd been at all competent in war he'd have been one dangerous dude but, his strengths lay in more mundane areas.

[Totallybushed]

2. And yet,

I still cannot think that Saddam's death was the wrong thing.