In reply to:


But our criminals are not innocent people, and that makes a difference. You might say that Saddam's people were guilty in his eyes, but that's not enough. We do not execute people for idle crimes.



A small but significant portion of US convicted criminals [in particular those on death row] are wrongly convicted (and are/have been proveably innocent) and therefore have been and no doubt will continue to be killed unlawfully...

...This is a problem with the US justice system.

Any country with death penalties faces this problem. Its a major reason why death penalties are no longer practised in most "1st world" nations. The US being a notable exception here.

So if you say the conviction makes the difference, then criminals in the US are convicted and killed [wrongly] - no less than some "criminals" in Iraq were.

This is merely flip-sides of the same coin. If you routinely kill people as part your justice system, you're going to make mistakes.

In reply to:


Saddam was without question evil, no matter what we have or haven't done. If you think that badness is relative, or that what Saddam did was OK because he had the right title then you're certainly entitled to that opinion. I just disagree and believe we can call what Saddam did evil.



Evil is a value judgement. Not a statement of fact.

However, if you assume that there is a ranking/relativity of "good" and "better" countries/regimes - and by your previous statements/comments I assume you'd agree with that.

Then you must also agree that the same goes for "bad" and "badder" countries/regimes.

So, yes, maybe we can all agree Saddams regime was "bad" - but the $64,000 qeuestion is was it actually a worse regime than any of the (many) other "bad" regimes out there? [say the Teleban?], how about North Korea? Iran?

And if so, why was it "worse" than the others? And also, is it the "worst"? If not, then why is it being singled out for "special attention"?

These questions I have yet to see anyone answer properly.