NY Times Against Death Penalty, Even For Saddam

To the liberal editorial board at the NY Times, no war is a good war (unless conducted by Bill Clinton and all from the air) and no crime is heinous enough to warrant the death penalty:

What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future. A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness. It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions.

It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.

Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.

Well, at least they called it a "looming civil war".

Saddam should've suffered the same fate as Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in my opinion, but was spared because the US military plays by the rules.

Here's a newsflash for the NY Times, Saddam Hussein used rape and murder of children and adults to cdontrol the population. He gassed the residents of Halabja while showing no mercy. He brutally suppressed the Shiites in the wake of the first Gulf War.

Look at the picture above and tell me this man does not deserve to die for his crimes.

Update: Even the WaPo gets it:

it’s hard to imagine the death penalty existing anywhere for any crime and not for Saddam Hussein — a man who, with the possible exception of Kim Jong Il, has more blood on his hands than anyone else alive.