Further coverage on Saddam Hussein execution along with unedited footage of hanging and the Letter from Saddam Hussein to the People of Iraq

http://www.crusade-media.com/news40.html

Hussein was captured by the U.S. military and was in the custody of our military. He was our P.O.W. and, as such, should have been handed over to the Hague for crimes against humanity, not to Sadr's Mahdi Army for lynching.

From a more secular position, I come to the same conclusion as John H: the state, being a compact between citizens for the mutual defense of life and liberty, maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of lethal force. That means that it alone can kill. Abroad, it kills in war. At home, it kills in the line of police work or in the administration of justice. It can do these things, but it is really up to us as a republican state to make choices, especially in the case of the administration of justice, on whether the state employs the right to kill or not. I would argue that, at home, under the safe tentacles of the leviathan, justice can afford mercy in the name of humanity, compassion, and, above all, good taste (after all, killing someone strapped to a table is just so . . . ugly). Abroad, on foreign battlefields, the state simply must kill. At home, we can afford a little mercy. It's a simple as that. As it stands, the people are insufficiency repulsed by killing criminals, so the death penalty stands. I guess I don't really have a problem with that, but I will maintain my rather unprincipled opposition to the death penalty nonetheless.