This goes in the OMFG did he really say that ? folder Appearently it's the Iraqi government's job to "making it harder to persuade a skeptical U.S. public that Iraq's government will keep promises central to Bush's plan for a troop increase". Maybe that's because they want us OUT, not more of us!
Considering how may people have been executed here in Texas (particularly while he was governor), George Bush has no place criticizing anyone about executions. -monkey
He has to speak out against the hangings. In Texas, don't they kill people with a lethal injection right after they alcohol swab the skin? Or do they still fry em with the electric chair?
He is just bothered about the bad PR back home. The executions look like what they are: revenge killings and the elimination of a political opponent. Kind of hard to sell to your voters the idea that you are bringing Democracy™ when the new regime indulges in similar practices as the old one. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it... Saddam still had the smoother death though:
It is good to see he is prepared to admit the current tactics are failing, unfortunatly his new stratagy is more of the same. Also his issue regarding the hangings was not an objection to the hangings themselves but rather the maner in which they took place.
Pierrepoint set the fastest hanging on record with James Inglis - only seven seconds from being led out of his cell until the trapdoor opened to send him on his fatal drop. He also carefully calculated each drop needed from the height and weight of the condemned person to break the neck, and not either rip the head off or leave the victim to strangle to death. On retribution to the losers, after WW2 "...Albert was to travel to Germany and Austria twenty five times to execute two hundred war criminals."
War criminals. Just remember the victor decides who is and who is not the criminal. The Saddam may have killed his own people, so has Bush. Saddam did it in the name of his parties political views. Bush does it based on a country's political views? So the real question is.....whens does George make that "short drop and sudden stop"?
Part of me says that if we're going to be better than dubya, we have to BE better, which means sending him before the international court of justice and giving him a fair trial (Somthing denied to Saddam), then locking him away forever. Otherwise we are no better than he is. The other part of me says "the sooner the better!"
lol Sounds like some sort of quality brand label: "Killing 'em dead by lethal injection... Since 1977"
Hey, there has to be a procedure. Anything that makes the act a detached ritual, distancing it from the reality that it is a killing act. Call it a form of denial.
I thought there might be a medical reason, like it makes the vein more obvious? With me (drawing blood), they tell me to clench my fist; pets don't do clenching. The reality (with the several elderly dogs and cats I've watched go over the years) is that it's a very quick and calm way to die; I hope I go as easily. But then, I hope I'm not strapped to a gurney after a few years on Death Row...
i figured the swabbing was because it's proper medical procedure. if it's not done proper, couldn't someone sue? could it be considerd cruel and unusual not to administer the swab? does kinda seem pointless though....
On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading/hearing that a firing squad was equipped with only one (maybe two?) real bullets and all the others were blanks. That way, each of the firers (say that five times fast) could go home believing that they weren't the one to kill the executee.
Yeah, in old gas chambers the bag of sodium cyanide pellets was suspended over a bucket of water/sulfuric acid mix by a wire. Three prison guards cut three wires with a razor. The idea was that no-one knew which wire actually connected to the bag. That's the thing with the death penalty: many people think it's a good idea, and can think of at least one criminal who deserves it, but nobody actually wants to be the one dealing the death blow...
At the time of that recent cock-up (Florida? Another Bush...) I think I read there was often a problem getting real doctors to do the injections. Yup, Florida. And Ohio. I love this following the medic problem; How the **** can you keep somebody on Death Row for 25 years? That's totally 'cruel & unusual' apart from not being all that unusual. Actually it's pretty sick, whatever they've done.
