Justice upon injustice

Bob Murphy, the senior vice president of ABC News, said the network planned to interrupt whatever program was being broadcast to report the news of the execution in the form of a brief report. “I suspect there will be some form of video released that will confirm the death for the Iraqi people,” Mr. Murphy said. ABC will “fulfill our obligations as journalists in documenting the event,” he said. But he emphasized, “We will absolutely not go too far in showing graphic images. Taste and propriety are the two key guidelines." New York Times December 28, 2006 This comment by a network executive seems oddly, even touchingly naive, in the face of the total lack of taste or propriety around the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator. While reading some articles on knowledge management and business tonight I said a couple of silent prayers for his soul...and, with more enthusiasm, for the souls of the tens of thousands of people he had killed. His death amidst the backdrop of this awful war, raises more issues than it answers. There is some question (well, many questions) about the way his trial was conducted. In allowing the trial to be conducted in ways that raised questions about the defendant's rights, the Iraqi courts lost a chance to show themselves significantly better than they were under the dictator. His death will most likely provoke more violence on the part of the Sunni minority-another marker of the lack of planning that has made this war a model for failed revolutions. I don't happen to believe that capital punishment provides true justice for the death victims or heals the suffering of the living. In this case, it will probably just spark the deaths of more innocents-is there some kind of moral or Biblical justification for that?Then there is the gruesome manner of Husseins' death-hanging someone in this day and age seems like a means of death that ought to be consigned to a century when people were also burned alive at the stake. "Why don't they draw and quarter him and put his head on a spike outside the city?"I asked my dad tonight. He responded, with a bit of gallows humor, that perhaps no one had thought about suggesting it. But the manner of Saddam Hussein's death may be the most realistic touch in this tragedy-providing the warlords their bloodbath and intermission, but no real finale.