Saddam Super Sunday?

(AFP/File/Patrick Baz)


How will the world usher out 2006 and ring in 2007?

Perhaps with the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Creepy.

DUBAI (Reuters) -- Saddam Hussein has been handed over by U.S forces to Iraqi government custody, his lawyers said on Friday, in an apparent step toward his execution.

"I understand they have handed him over," said one defense lawyer who declined to give his name.

This defense lawyer makes it sound like Jesus is being handed over for crucifixion.

Another lawyer said that U.S. officials had asked him to pick up the personal effects of the former Iraqi president who has been sentenced to death.

"The American side called me and asked me to pick up the personal effects of the president and Barzan al-Tikriti," said Khalil al-Dulaimi, referring to Saddam's half brother, who has also been sentenced to death.

I wonder what sort of personal effects Saddam has.

Hair dye?

A Koran?

Look at this, from Reuters/Hollywood Reporter:

"TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution"

Television networks face a killer of a conundrum with the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, whose hanging could be videotaped and perhaps aired on Iraqi TV.

The timing of Saddam's date with the gallows was unclear, but late Thursday CBS, NBC and Fox News Channel reported that the former dictator, convicted this year in the deaths of 148 people in 1982, would be turned over by the American military to the Iraqi government within 36 hours and hanged before the start of a Muslim holiday on Sunday.

Several sources said Saddam's execution would be videotaped by the Iraqi government, though it wasn't clear whether it would be released to the public or broadcast.

"We will video everything," Iraqi National Security adviser Mouffak al Rubaie told CBS News.

Judging by the Iraqi government's release Tuesday of videotape of the hanging of 13 convicts, it could be a gruesome affair. Meetings were held Thursday in at least two network headquarters over how to handle the potentially graphic images.

ABC and CBS said they wouldn't air the full execution if the video became available.

...The operative word: taste.

"We have very, very strict guidelines with how to deal with that," said Bob Murphy, senior vp at ABC News. "If there were pictures made available of the execution, they would have to be viewed by senior management before we would put them on the air, and we would make a judgement of taste and propriety of what we would show."

Right.

The operative word is "taste."

If there's one thing that the networks lack, it has to be taste.

It's not like network TV hasn't aired footage of someone being put to death before.

In 1998, 60 Minutes aired a Dr. Kevorkian assisted suicide.

How is it that was touted as a humane act?

Granted, a hanging is more gruesome than a lethal injection, and Saddam isn't choosing to die; but I suspect the executives at the networks are salivating over the potential ratings of Saddam's death sentence being televised.

The entire mess depresses me.

Theoretically, I'm opposed to the death penalty.

If I'm to be morally consistent, even a cold-blooded, murderous monster like Saddam should not be killed for his crimes.

But I know if Saddam had ordered the slaughter of my family members, I'd want him dead.

Why should he be allowed to live after committing such atrocities on such a massive scale? Why should he get to continue to eat and sleep and breathe when he robbed life from so many?

He shouldn't; but yet, I can't support his execution.

So I'm a hypocrite.

It's a moral dilemma for me.

Everything is so ugly -- the mass graves, the hundreds of thousands dead, the war, all the death.

RJay has compiled some reminders of Saddam's lifework:

Mass Graves of Iraq: Uncovering Atrocities

NPR Iraq Mass Grave Photo Gallery

Bodies Exhumed from Mass Grave in Iraq

Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves

Human Rights Watch Gallery

Experts: 300,000 in Saddam's Mass Graves

Graves of Mass Evidence

Iraq Mass Graves Field Report – w/Video

How do civilized people respond to such inhumanity?

By giving Saddam good health care, three meals a day, Doritos and Raisin Bran Crunch for the next ten or more years, until he dies of natural causes?

That doesn't seem appropriate at all.

I don't know.

Then there's the idiot media.

The libs in the media claim to care about taste. What a crock of crap!

I bet they wish they could debate about televising footage of President Bush being executed. You know, "Too bad it's Saddam, and not Bush."

Is that unfair? Too harsh?

I don't know anymore.

I hate the war. I hate Saddam more.

I hate all the hate.