Should Saddam Be Hanged? 

Looks like the Iraq government will hang Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki predicts it will take place by the end of the year. That’s real soon.

U.N. human rights experts have warned al-Malicki not to carry out the death sentence, saying his trial has been seriously flawed. He was not given enough time to prepare for the trial; he was unfairly restricted in his access to lawyers and his ability to call his own witnesses. The tribunal itself lacked impartiality. One of his defense attorneys was kidnapped by Shiites and found dead. Another was shot. A third fled the country. His chief defense attorney was abducted by men in police uniforms and his body was found in Sadr City (a Shiite stronghold) with both arms broken and eight bullet wounds.

Saddam’s crimes are clear and he surely would have been convicted by a properly constituted international court, where he would have been tried by due process of law.  That should have happened but the Bush-ites deflected it and their Iraqui puppets forged ahead with this trial that was a caricature of a trial.

Gwynne Dyer, a Briitsh correspondent whose articles appear in the Bangor Daily News, wrote a column headlined “Witnessing the lynching of Saddam Hussein.”

Then there are the inevitable consequences. Hanging him will make him a martyr in the eyes of the Iraqui Sunnis, the group whose reconciliation is most critical if the Iraquis are ever to find peace together.

Seems to me, as a Green who believes in the 10 Key Values, one of which is Non-Violence and another is Justice, Saddam should be condemned to life imprisonment. The United States was founded on the principle of the rule of law. The Bush government criminally violates the rule of law here at home and abroad and it’s puppets in Iraq do the same. But wasn’t Bush’s announced goal to bring “democracy to Iraq”?

What do you think?  Should Saddam be hanged?

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