Saddam Hussein Deserves to Live!

Eventually, within the next month, and before January 27th, 2007, Saddam Hussein will be hung and yes, you heard me correctly, the man should not be put to death. Besides the obvious gripes one has had over the course of his ridiculous trial (three defense lawyers killed, another seriously injured, anonymous witnesses, etc) there are obviously reasons why he should live.

First and foremost, this trial's death sentence outcome is over a 1982 incident where he had 150 people tortured, deported and/or killed. I know! 1982! What about all of those other brutal instances where he killed far more people? Why doesnt he get to answer for those crimes? In 1988 he poisoned over 100,000 Kurds, something he and others are currently on trial for, but something he wont be able to answer for if he is killed within the next 30 days or less....

When are we going to hear his side of the story about the occupation of Kuwait, the first Gulf War, the UN inspections, the "weapons of mass destruction", and the second Gulf War? We have so much to hear from this man that his death is an injustice to mankind. We deserve to know what he was thinking during all of these times. What good is knowing our side of the story when we dont have his side? Im not justifying any of the things he has done. I think he is a horrible person who should be punished each and every day that he continues to live. But it has always been said that humanity has to learn from it's mistakes. Mankind cant improve upon itself unless it studies things that have gone wrong and incidents in history. Saddam needs to be our insane leader lab rat. Once we start to delve into his mind imagine how much "saner" someone like Kim Jong-Il becomes.

The sad fact may be that killing Saddam is the quickest way for us Americans to begin our healing from this horrible miscalculation - the second Gulf War. What I mean is that Saddam is the largest piece of evidence that exists, both for and against this war. He can either validate the war by stating that he did stockpile weapons of mass destruction, or he can completely destroy it by categorically denying his ownership of such weapons. Either way, can we believe him? Or is it just easier to kill him, thus burying all hopes of establishing some sort of truth. Im sure it is much easier for our government to swallow the former and hang this bastard. Politically it makes sense, but doesnt it also fly directly in the face of what our government stands for?

I understand that the trial wasnt held in the good ol' US of A, but to think that we arent the puppeteers behind this trial is just plane ignorant, so please if this is your argument, please stop reading. In fact, you shouldnt be here in the first place, but I digress.

And no, just because I share the same birthday (April 28th) with Saddam doesnt mean I have a soft spot in my heart for him.

And has anyone else thought that if Saddam was on ecstasy he would be a much nicer person? Or where those just my thoughts?

While all my previous thoughts are well and good, the reason I hold in the highest regard about why Saddam shouldnt die is that dying is too good for the man. He deserves to live. To live and to suffer.

One of the few biblical sayings that I can get behind with one hundred percent certainty is the idea of an eye for an eye. If you kill one person, you deserve to die, that is if you are proven, without a shadow of a doubt that you are guilty. You even deserve to die if you kill multiple people as long as you are tried for each case, either separately or together, before you are put down.

But when you kill hundreds of thousands of people I can not agree that death is the best answer for you. I imagine that there are many people who have survived his ire, or who had family members hurt or killed by his hand, that want to see Saddam live out his days rotting in a jail cell, far from the opulence he enjoyed while being the enigmatic despot of Iraq for all of those years.

While I want the man to suffer for his atrocities, I am not inferring that he should be tortured. Knowing that his sons, his progeny, his name, were killed by the "infidel" Americans is torture. Living in a confined space for years upon years is torture. Having no outside contact is torture. There are many ways to make this man suffer; killing him should be the last thing we do.

Yet here we are, about to kill him.

Here is my suggestion. First, we try him for every single matter of injustice to human nature that he committed. That is, ever single matter that we can actually prove. Unfortunately, with the amount of bad that he has accomplished some is bound to slip between the cracks. It is a sad fact of quantity that we are faced with in cases such as this.

Second, we sit him at a table with a ball point pen and paper and tell him to write his autobiography, from beginning to end. I cant be the only one interested in the mind of a mad man. I want to learn much from him. I want to know his process of thinking and his rational behind events. We werent given the opportunity to read the crazy mind of Hitler - he went and offed himself before we had the chance - but we are now given the chance to read the mind of a similarly disturbed human being. The chance to learn about these maniacal geniuses (genius is correct) come too few and far between.

Finally, once we are complete running the gamut of tests on him we build him an eight foot by eight foot bullet proof glass enclosure (complete with working see-through toilet) and stick it in the middle of the most popular square in Iraq. This way he suffers. He has to do all of his living (and shitting) in the public eye. If any of the survivors want to confront him they can. And most importantly, other world crazies will see that when you commit crimes of his nature, crimes against humanity on the whole, you wont get the ease of escaping justice at the end neuce tide rope.

We, as Americans, and generally as the world as a whole, have this predisposed notion - possibly derived from too much hollywood imposed on our daily lives - that the bad guy dies in the end. What if some bad guys were meant to live? Not to do more bad, but to serve as a reminder; to serve as a tool of learning; to serve as a relief valve for our inner demons; to serve as an answer to our questions or problems; or to serve as a symbol of where we were and how we need to change for the future.

I say let Saddam live! Who is behind me?