Remind me sometime to do a post on what a shambles the first Nuremberg trial was. Most of the condemned managed to swing, but a paltry handful of those sentenced to prison served anything approaching their full sentence. Göring in particular, who deserved the worst, managed to commit suicide before his execution. A lot of the doctors who murdered the disabled or enabled the mass murders went back into private practice and lived out their lives.
My point? International criminal law is a crock. Period.
Dan, I was quite impressed with some aspects of the Nuremberg trial itself. The notion of convicting war criminals with their own paper trail was a stroke of genius.
The same method was used to convict Hussein. He was convicted of ordering the deaths of more than 140 Iraqis in Dujail, and the reason this crime was chosen for trial was that his signature was on the warrant ordering their deaths. That kind of evidence is a mite hard to defend against.
Kevin, FoxNews.com reported that "Saddam Hussein initially resists guards before being executed ..." Perhaps he really didn't believe in the expectation of 72 virgins awaiting him. Given the reports of how much he liked real virgins, what else are we to think?
The case against Hussein was domestic criminal law rather than international. It's Milosevic and his ilk who escape justice through feckless international 'courts' - a tradition set, not at Nuremberg, but in its aftermath, and then confirmed by the abolition of the death penalty in all of Western Europe. Even for mass murderers. This is, to swipe a phrase from John Burns in the NY Times, 'evidence of a profound moral corruption.'
The execution of Hussein, after the application of due process and in a timely manner, is a repudiation of the European approach to mass murderers of the last 50 years.
Note:
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JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2006/12/swift-justice.html (3 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Remind me sometime to do a post on what a shambles the first Nuremberg trial was. Most of the condemned managed to swing, but a paltry handful of those sentenced to prison served anything approaching their full sentence. Göring in particular, who deserved the worst, managed to commit suicide before his execution. A lot of the doctors who murdered the disabled or enabled the mass murders went back into private practice and lived out their lives.
My point? International criminal law is a crock. Period.
Dan, I was quite impressed with some aspects of the Nuremberg trial itself. The notion of convicting war criminals with their own paper trail was a stroke of genius.
The same method was used to convict Hussein. He was convicted of ordering the deaths of more than 140 Iraqis in Dujail, and the reason this crime was chosen for trial was that his signature was on the warrant ordering their deaths. That kind of evidence is a mite hard to defend against.
Kevin, FoxNews.com reported that "Saddam Hussein initially resists guards before being executed ..." Perhaps he really didn't believe in the expectation of 72 virgins awaiting him. Given the reports of how much he liked real virgins, what else are we to think?
The case against Hussein was domestic criminal law rather than international. It's Milosevic and his ilk who escape justice through feckless international 'courts' - a tradition set, not at Nuremberg, but in its aftermath, and then confirmed by the abolition of the death penalty in all of Western Europe. Even for mass murderers. This is, to swipe a phrase from John Burns in the NY Times, 'evidence of a profound moral corruption.'
The execution of Hussein, after the application of due process and in a timely manner, is a repudiation of the European approach to mass murderers of the last 50 years.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>